The Girl: Chapter Two
Seventeen nights into the mission. Ten men, two women dead. Eight who had families. Two "random" stabbings, four apparent suicides, three heart attacks (or injections that simulated such a reaction), and three that simply "went missing". An uncounted number of stakeouts and hasty consumption of grubby meals.
And a partridge in a fucking pear tree.
The rest of Logan's time was spent in the tenement, where the water ran in spurts and the lights flickered regardless of how fresh the bulb was. He did not buy new furniture--that would be a waste and an unspoken lie of how long he intended to remain in this shit heap-- unless a TV and clean bedsheets counted as such.
At least four radios could be heard blasting at any given time, the static grating his ears more than the music. Underweight babies screeched and were shushed by mothers who were louder—who in their turn were sworn at by their husbands/boyfriends/kidnappers. But at the same time the building was wrapped in a feeling that resembled silence, an isolation that said everyone could make as much noise as they chose because The World would not come to shut them up. The World did not hear them, did not even know, or want to know they existed. They were in a vacuum, a black hole you could call Poverty or Ghetto or Human Waste—whatever you wish, because with any name it never changes. They were alone.
Logan followed this tradition of indifference by ignoring it. He ignored the smells and sights and the noises and the floor when it dipped alarmingly beneath his feet. All in all, it was what he expected, and so: tolerable.
Except for the girl.
The girl…The girl was pissing him off.
She was there every time he left his rooms and every time he returned from a kill. On the stoop outside and in the halls and in the stairwell. She was Always Fucking There. Holding library books and wearing clothes that the Salvation Army would have laughed at. She never said a word, hardly looked him in the eye--but she was there. Watching him, stalking him. Just traipsing around this crack den like it was her palace, like it was filled with servants and guards rather than the worst of the worst. Didn’t the kid have school? A job? Something?
Only once did he fail to see the girl, and it nearly drove him mad. It was four o'clock in the morning, and he had just pushed a man’s body into the river. Logan had grudgingly resigned himself to the expectation of her. That reproachful expression on her face. As if she knew. She knew what he’d done. Judgmental bitch.
Logan trudged up to his room, sniffing intermittently though the building’s fumes clogged his airways. He told himself: she’s around this corner. Around this one. This one. And when Logan reached his door, he turned right back around because seeing her was already ingrained in his mind. He needed—he had to know where the girl was lurking. No surprises.
He tracked the faint smell of peaches to an apartment on the second floor. He stood in the hall, inhaling deeply and confirming that she hadn’t left.
And then he went away.
What right did she have to bother him when he was trying to work? All those little peeping glances and nervous smiles. What did they mean? Why was she sending them to him? What fucking right did she have to duck her head, press against the wall when they passed in the corridor. Clinging to those books like he’d steal them. As if he’d hurt her. As if that was the only thing he was good for. What fucking right did the girl have to look so hungry. And tired. And scared.
It…it was bullshit. A ploy. She was probably just trying to make others here feel guilty. Wanna feed her. Buy her crap. Touch her thin shoulders and say nice things. Ask—who gave you that black eye, honey?
It wasn’t working.
It wasn’t.
It wasn’t.
Little…little bitch.
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Logan was in the laundry room, standing guard over his clothes and the one available dryer (dented and produced sometime in the eighties). The girl was in the same room, sitting on the counter that ran along the wall, picking the fuzz off a small armful of clothes while she waited for him to finish. It amazed him how she could sit on a dirty step or in the middle of the hall like it was the softest of couches. He tried very hard not to imagine what her home, that apartment on the second floor, must be like for this to be so.
It didn’t matter, didn’t make any difference to him. But when Logan—bending down to retrieve a sock—caught sight of the books (Jane Eyre and Lord of the Rings and one whose cover had been ripped off) crammed into the space between the dryer and the wall, his…frustration…became too much. When the machine stopped rattling, he yanked his shirts out. And on the way out a twenty dollar bill somehow managed to slip from his hand to the greasy tile. If the girl knew how to stretch it, it oughta be enough for a couple meals...and maybe one or two of those dollar store paperbacks. But if it wasn't, he could drop some more. He could do that. Anything to make her--
"Hey--hey Mister."
Logan wondered how she made her voice sound like wind chimes. Timid and soft and scratchy, but wind chimes all the same. It was a neat trick.
He turned.
The girl pointed to the crumpled paper. She was closer to it than him, but did not go to pick the money up. Probably didn't want to risk handing it to him and coming into arms reach--a thought that Logan would growl later about.
"You dropped something," she said in a tone Logan refused to call either sweet or shy. He didn't use those words.
His jaw tight, Logan went back and plucked the bill off the floor. Crammed it brusquely into his pocket. He didn't speak to her. If the girl was too dumb to help herself, that was her problem.
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That resolve lasted a week--three men who cried before Logan gutted them, one who screamed for his mother. Twenty sniffles from the girl, a cough, and extra screaming from the second floor.
Kurt Stebbins had been forty five, with no wife, no children and as far as Logan could tell, no friends. Not that he deserved any. He lived in a loft behind a bar and paid his rent with the number of boys, ages five to eleven, delivered to his bosses. His claws had barely made their appearance before Stebbins started bawling. He cried, "No! No! Mom! Help! Mom! Mo-omm!"
Logan didn't understand. He'd died plenty of times without even grunting. His disgust was so great, the mans yells so irritating, that he made Stebbin's death quick. Quick cut through the heart, some gurgles but no more "Mom's". And then silence.
Afterwards, he bought a pizza from a man who seemed to have been making them since the Nineteen-Thirties. All the toppings, even sardines 'cuz didn't kids need some sorta fish vitamins?
He carried the box up Prewer street, boots sloshing through gravy-thick water, cigarette foil and beer caps. He thought about Stebbins, what a waste the day had been--no names collected at all--and people who wouldn't steal money when they find it on the ground.
Down the entrance corridor, small as a rabbit hole and twice as dank. Skeletal drug addicts who looked at Logan once then hurriedly at their feet, an acknowledgement of the Alpha that they didn't even understand.
A reedy voice on the second floor chattering out a plea, "Jus-jus-just gimme-gimme the stuff n-now. Okay? Okay? Okay? And I'll-I'll getchu the money. I will. I will. I will."
A little boy who followed Logan--or the pizza--until his grandmother shrieked at him.
The third floor was devoid of those pesky light fixtures--probably stolen--and rat droppings fell from the holes they had left in the ceiling. But his vision was sharp enough on it's own to see the girl in the stairwell.
She was on the top step, just outside the fourth floor. Cross-legged, bent over a book the kid couldn't possibly read in this nonexistent light. A moment and a stiff later, Logan realized that was true. The girl was not reading, she was merely staring at the place the book lay.
She smelled of misery.
And cotton.
And peaches.
He climbed up, skipping the steps that were green with mold, the ones that would give way if a cockroach stomped too hard.
"Hey." Logan said, with every ounce of casualness he could draw together. Everything would be alright if he--if he could just get this kid out of his way, out of his head. (The idea that she had not done anything to him never entered his mind.) Focus on the mission. "You want some of this?" He gestured with the box.
The girl looked up--first at him, then the pizza. She stared at it a long time, with a degree of want that was almost dizzying. He noted a red tint below each eye, a scarlet brushstoke of tears. Then her gaze was drawn back to Logan, forcefully. And she there she held it, refusing to let it slide back to that beautiful torture of potential food.
She opened her mouth, as if to ask a question. It was the longest time Logan had locked eyes with her. She could be kinda pretty, he thought absently to himself. Nice--nice lips. Nice chin. Slender little neck. Pale.
But wariness must have won out over hunger, because the question he sensed changed before it even touched the air. "No. No, thank you." the girl murmured fearfully--an animal refusing the bait but knowing he is still dangerously close to the hunter.
She lowered her eyes.
Smart, not to take food from strangers. Especially in a place like this. But...but...
Logan grunted, glared at her a bit--an expression she couldn't see but felt. When he stepped past she seemed to curl inward upon herself, without moving. Trying to turn invisible.
Why are you surprised?, Logan asked himself as he walked to the door that belonged to him. You're not a nice person. You don't do nice things. Stop pretending.
Fuck her, he thought a little wildly. He swallowed, seeing again her pale neck, the slim curve. Her little knuckles and the creamy palms of her hands. Too-thin wrists. He couldn't scrape the images out.
With an irony that fell flat even in his own mind, Logan thought, You could always kill her. It's what you do. Ain't it?
He swallowed. Growled, reflexively. And suddenly he was absolutely certain the pizza smelled like a corpse.
His legs carried him back to the doorless threshold of the stairwell. Jerky, angry muscles. The girl jumped, but before she could run Logan had plunked the box down beside her.
"Here," he barked roughly, furious for no logical reason. The girl flinched. "Throw this out when you're done, okay?"
And he turned away again. Logan left her confused and frightened....but standing still and listening back inside his apartment, he heard the scrape of cardboard, then tentative chewing.
He closed his eyes, not sure why he was so relieved.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Thank you to the awesome, amazing, brilliant, cool ( insert every good word in the alphabet) people who reviewed the last chapter. I promise that whatevery time/effort you took in giving your feedback was returned a thousand times in my grattitude. I'm about to be kicked off this computer, so in short....please enjoy, and please review!
Chapter End Notes:
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