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It's not always easy, being the one who survives.
It feels counter intuitive - she survived, she made it out, she won.
And yet still here she is, huddled on the slab-of-concrete roof of a slab-of-concrete building, wondering whether she won anything at all.
Whether it would be easier to number the dead, the lost, the forgotten in the ashes, than to face the sunrise each morning, to trawl the streets, to spin constantly so your back is never exposed, never weak, never vulnerable.
To turn belly up is submission, to turn spine out is certain death.
She refuses both.
Death may still linger on her, may draw gentle fingers through her hair, may call in the sweetest, softest tone that it was time to come home, to return to the arms from whence she came, but she will go out on no terms other than her own, and her contract is not yet signed.
She will not go gentle into that good night.
The sky above her is filled with phantom-stars, the red and green flickers of drones, the steady trail of planes in the nights sky, smog leaching out into the atmosphere until all the true burning giants are lost to the grey. It's a pretty metaphor, she thinks, for the way this City swallows its people, for the flames who slip through the cracks, who are lost to the concrete jungle.
She's one of those, she thinks, one of the many who come to hide in the fractures of a broken system. She hangs in the corner, the trapdoor spider in the flesh, spins her webs, waits for a street rat or two to separate from the pack, to come crawling down her alleyway, and then she'll drop with her fangs and her venom and her merciless hands.
Perhaps it's a trade - a life for a life. Blood on the concrete to save her own for another day. Sliding souls through the letter box in exchange for Death to cease his knocking a little longer.
Cannibalism, she thought it was called. The act of taking the flesh of another person into your mouth, of consuming in the most savage manner, a line that even the worst of the demons that crawled these streets would hesitate to cross.
She had been barely aware of it as she'd tripped over that line, fell face first into the scalding warmth of the guts of one of the wolves who patrolled the streets, had sunk her teeth into the blood and the heat and the give of flesh, and had found something familiar in it.
And was it truly cannibalism if neither of you were truly people? They were rats and roaches, wolves and bears, she was a spider, a mantis, an angler fish in the dark, luring the unwary with a face of utter innocence.
She wasn't quite sure what they meant by that - it was something she'd overheard, when she'd stumbled across a meeting from the rooftops, and something had caught her attention long enough to pause. An angler fish, they'd said. A demon wearing the face of an angel, a monster with eyes of the sweetest ocean blue. She did not look into mirrors, as a matter of course, but she could not see what they meant in the ripples of puddles and the sheen of a half-shattered window pain.
The way they had spoken, in their hushed whispers and looks over shoulders, her face was a mask, something false to cover the black pit of a soul underneath. But no matter how hard she picked at the skin, how many shreds she tore off her cheeks, her jaw, her hairline, she couldn't take it off. Did beauty have to be antonymous with evil? Could her face not be the truth of her tattered soul?
It didn't sit right, as she slowly stood from her hunched position on the rooftop, watching the first hint of orange across the sky with deep suspicion, that they thought that the monster and the preserved corpse of a little girl could not coexist at the same time. She was rotting, of course, but from the inside out, not the outside in. She was a hollow tree still sprouting leaves, she was the damp inside the walls of a historical residence, still elegant and proud, yet slowly, slowly crumbling apart.
The bakery on the street was already alive as she approached, the sun not risen, yet a figure moving inside, the door through to the kitchen propped open just enough for her to see the silhouette inside.
She did not enter through the exit, as the True People did, those who exchanged folds of paper and heavy coins for food that was not peeled off of concrete, but rather she stepped around the back, slipping into the alleyway that snaked down the side of the little brick building. Moving with the wariness of a cat kicked one too many times, and yet with the anticipation of a stray who'd learnt that the waft of fish was for her.
The door - forest-green, gloss-paint, round-top - was cracked open when she scaled the little gate that kept less adept strays out, and there was a little box sitting neatly on the step. She would be allowed inside, she knew, if she so desired - the door would creak, and the warmth would flush her cheeks, and the cold-eyed-kind-smiled Angel would spare her a nod and point to a chair, where she'd be handed a knife and a bowl of whatever needed slicing, and she could eat while she worked.
She did not crave the warmth today - the street was chilled but not as bitter as some nights, and her welcome would not be revoked. It had taken a while to realise that.
Instead, she pulled out a still-warm kidney from her pocket, wrapped careful in newspaper, and placed it where the box had been, an exchange that made far more sense than the scraps of paper she sometimes burnt when she needed some light. His food healed the scrapes on her knees, the cracks in her hands and feet, her torn nails and her bruised arms, and in return she gave something of equal sustenance.
The City was waking, now, as the sun ran gentle fingers through the last strands of dusk's hair, and she ignored the few looks cast in her direction - they saw a rat, she knew, something that did not belong on these polished streets. But they saw only the shadow, not the demon who cast it, and it would be their folly if they shined the flashlight a little too close.
The Angel of the Bakery had asked her where she lived, before. She had not answered him then - her mouth was inept at forming the clumsy words that poured so easily from others lips, and it was better to stare in silence than to hear the cracked windchimes that were not hers. But it had weighed on her mind a little. True People had places to live, did they not? The Angel had called his house Casita, and the drawers had rattled in welcome. She did not think most houses were alive as Casita was, but nonetheless, the thought had drifted through her mind. And so she'd been searching. For a Casita of her own.
In the end, it had not been her that had found it, but rather it that had found her. True People held more caution, she thought, when stumbling into the open maw of a chute, yet she had paused only a moment before allowing herself to be swallowed, jagged teeth tearing the backs of her legs to shreds, warm blood spilling over as she skidded. The harsh concrete was not a kind landing, and something snapped in her ankle as she dropped, sending quiet sparks of pain through her leg. It was of no consequence, only annoyance as she pulled out the box from her bag, a sturdy fabric pack she had stripped when skinning a rat a few moons past, and she had time to look around while bone snapped back into place and open wounds scabbed then smoothed.
She knew she had found her Casita from the first time she saw the table. Intimately familiar. She knew what it would feel to lie on it, to have her hands in the straps. Panic rose in her chest, and yet, so did elation. For never again, would she be on the table. She would learn, she thought, to be the one above. She needed to learn to be a True Person, and what better place than here to see exactly how they worked?
Grey floor, white tile. Rust red floor, rust red tile.
The air was not the chemical sting of theplaceshemustnotthinkoftheplaceshemustnotname, but it held the acrid tang of something deeper, of copper and iron and fear and smoke.
Her exploration came in soft fingertips, drifting across the rust-spotted blades, the vials and bottles of strange liquids, the scribbled notes and the ink splotches where haste had overtaken.
The corpse was long cold, in the far corner. A bag sat next to it, clothes spilling over the half-closed-zip, along with a handful more of books and papers and ancient blood.
She wondered what he'd been so scared of, in those last moments. She wondered what had buried into his eye sockets, leaving them gaping and hollow.
And then she wondered more, how he had not rotted, in the years since his brain had been neatly scooped from his skull. Why he resembled more a lemon left a little too long than the rotten apple core she would've expected.
The coat was too big for her. The shoulders draped, and her hands were swallowed, and it dragged on the floor when she took a step. But the white fabric, stained only a little at the neck and the hem, fell in crisp folds over her. She could take a knife to the excess, could roll up the sleeves, could bleach out the old stains and replace them with new.
It would do for now. Perhaps she'd grow into it. She thought she was young, and did not young people grow? Maybe by the time she was a Person, she would have grown as well.
For now, she left the doll-splayed corpse behind her on the floor, and buttoned up the doctor's coat she had claimed around herself. And then a thought struck her, pierced through her skull like a shard of glass, and she giggled, startling herself with the high echo off the walls. hands lifting to press against stained lips.
The Doctor will see you now.