Throwaways
The morning light stole in, as it always did, eventually, even after such a long and frightening night as Hallowe'en. For the young female rabbit crouched down behind a dumpster in the filthy back alley, the real terror was just beginning, again, as it always did. The light of a new day was not exactly a gift for the doe. All it meant was that she was still alive to see it, and despite all that's said of the promise of a young life, she had a number of reasons to think otherwise.
She moved her head very slowly, partly from the stiff muscles acquired from having to sleep rough on so cold a night (and the nights will only be getting colder, she thought, dreading the very idea), and partly so as not to wake her twin brother who had curled up against her for warmth. Lyal needed as much sleep as he could get. The rattling sound in his chest was only getting worse, and her deepest fear was that it wasn't really just a chest cold. There was little they could do about their situation, perhaps even less that they could do about getting proper medical treatment, much less a better place to recover from illness of any kind. She'd look after him as best she could; together, they were the only family they had left. She'd do anything she could to take care of him.
Yes, she thought miserably, even that. Again. And again. And again.
Next to her, Lyal shifted a little, a shiver passing through him as he opened his eyes. At least they were out of the direct wind. Lyal had the neat idea of shifting the dumpster a little and opening its lid to prop up against the wall as a makeshift roof. The cubby-hole was hardly prime real estate to be flipped, but between the brick corner and the dumpster lid, it was at least reasonably secure. A few flattened boxes insulated their bums from the cold of the concrete, one more between their backs and the wall, and that was as good as it got.
"Lyris?" he whispered. He looked up at her, his slim little body so unlike himself. Ordinarily, Lyal was a strapping buck, not over-muscled, but lean and hard and athletic. The two were not identical twins, but they had starved themselves so much that they both seemed thin as heron's legs. The ash gray of their body fur gave way to an ordinarily creamy white patch running from under the chin down past the belly, now more dark and grimy than when they were attracted to mud puddles as kits. On both, their head hair was dark gray and curly, his less so and only down to the middle of his back, whereas hers fell almost all the way to her pointed powder-puff tail.
She shushed him gently, feeling him shiver, holding him closer to her. "Easy, Ly-bunny, just rest a while. It's still early." Too early for the sort of thing she'd in mind to help pay for breakfast and some medicine. There was a drug store down the block, and although shoplifting was a venial sin compared to what she was contemplating, it was actually a lot more difficult to get away with. People are more quick to condemn a street urchin for stealing something actually worth money than they are to condemn the male who wants to get his knob polished in a back alley by a thing that used to be worth more than money to someone...
Angrily, the doe pushed the thought aside. This was what was real now, and this is what they had to deal with. They wouldn't go back, not ever, that wasn't even a consideration. This didn't look like moving forward, but it at least looked like moving away, getting away, that's what they'd been forced to do, to get away, escape...
She breathed raggedly, calmed herself again. Lyal was in no condition to make choices, or even to move. Breakfast, medication, anything else... it would have to wait a little longer.
Without warning, Lyal's entire body jerked in a wracking cough that shook him from tip to tail. Lyris reached out to pet his long dark gray curls, smooth down his long ash gray ears. He always liked the feel of having his ears touched softly. Trouble was, everything felt damp and cold. The air must have chilled to the dew point before they woke. She pulled away from him a little and started unzipping her grimy fleece athletic jacket.
"Lyss, I'm fine," he croaked softly.
"You're freezing," she said, "and you're sick. C'mon, let's get this around you." She suited actions to words, and in moments, the young buck had relented, reaching out to hold her close. She smiled down at him, teasingly. "I always get my way, you should know that by now..." She began humming softly, a tune that she didn't know correctly perhaps, but she knew it well. It was something that her mother had sung to the two of them when she was just a kit. Lyal probably knew it better than she did; she was a little tone deaf when it came to singing, but somehow she knew that it was just the sound of comfort that made the difference. It did when she...
She resisted shaking her head, instead letting her ears flex a little in the old lapine silent language to express her need to dismiss the thoughts. Looking down into his sweet face, all but a mirror of her own, she felt her heart clutch and cry out for her "little brother." Truth told, they were born minutes apart, and (just like a male) he had pushed his way out first, but she was always there to take care of him. And, she had to admit, he was there for her too. She would never forget that, nor allow anyone else to take it away from her, from them. They were born together, grew together... granted, they had faced some horrors visited upon them separately, but were together now, and they would stay together now, now and forever.
As the young doe rocked her brother gently in the cold, wet air of the alleyway, she hummed to him, held him, rescued him as best she could. The city was waking around them, bustling and busy, oblivious to all but itself... but if it would just leave them the hell alone for a little longer, just a little longer, maybe it would be okay...
Hot tears grew cold as they ran down her softly furred cheek, until finally she dozed again...
* * * * * * * * * *
Barton Seamus Patrick Matthew O'Malley, lapsed Catholic with his Saint's names intact, known to some of his massage clients as "The Honey Badger With the Magic Paws," let himself into the front door of his spa at his usual time, a good few hours before the 10:00am opening. He left the lights dim, even though the autumnal gray outside lit very little inside the shop. He know this space better than anyone, and in some ways, the darkness was actually comforting. The front shades still drawn, the place empty and quiet, he said aloud the words that spoke every morning, to the spirits of friends and customers and others who seemed to linger gently in the otherwise empty stillness of the home-like shop: "May God bless all here."
His assistants - Una, Treyna, and Malik - all did good work and rarely left a mess for him to find in the morning. At his own insistence, he asked them not to take the trash out to the dumpsters at night. The alley was relatively well-lit, but he had his own reasons for not wanting them back there in the dark that came early this time of year. It was no chore for him to gather up the various waste bins into a big sack or two and carry them out in the early morning light. The several mane-dressing stations, some few rented to very good stylists who took the overflow and generated their own loyal customers, were quite well tidied up; he took a large garbage bag from the supply room and worked his way from front to rear, humming an old Loreena McKennitt tune.
"I can see lights in the distance, trembling in the dark cloak of night; candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing a waltz on All Souls Night..."
He continued through the two massage rooms, looked in on the sauna, checked the break room (Malik left a teacup out again, the silly meerkat, but it was tough to criticize so slight an infraction when he worked so hard between his college classes), looked in on his own office space... as if he had much right to criticize others for neatness when his office was so happily cluttered! He paused, as he so often did, to look at the picture on the wall near his computer desk. The faces looked back at him, so young (it seemed now), so filled with love and bright future.
They were quite a team, he and Wallace, and truth told, it was Wallace's spirit that he most remembered with his Irish pub blessing each morning. Together, there was nothing they couldn't do. It had taken them a long time to find this perfect bit of Connecticut town. His family had thought him mad when he gave up being a corporate slave in favor of (of all the foolish things) becoming a mane-dresser and spa-keeper, especially in a small town. They'd done their homework, though; West Hartford was large enough to support his services and small enough to be reasonably friendly, not to mention easy on the wallet in terms of housing, office space, and taxes. It was an excellent location, a perfect place for happily ever after...
The badger shoved the contents of a small trash can into the bag he held in his other paw, nearly ripping it. He paused for just a moment to breathe, remembering that he had inherited his temper both literally and figuratively from his Irish parents. It wasn't for nothing that he was named for St. Nicholas, not the Christmastime figure of jolly old Santa, but a fourth-century bishop later decreed to be the patron saint of boxers. He had learned over the years to pick his battles carefully, not to let his anger overtake him wantonly. What made him angry, in this particular case, was that this wasn't a fight he could ever win. It really wasn't Wallace's fault, or at least not all his fault, but it wasn't right to lose him like that, it wasn't right and it wasn't fair...
Sounds like a black wolf's left leg, Wallace's voice chuckled in his head. Yeah, that's exactly what he'd say. Despite himself, Barton's muzzle twitched with the hint of a grin. To that degree, the silly old meerkat was still alive and well. Rare was the time that some comment or doubt in Barton's head wasn't countered by something clever or snarky that he heard in Wallace's tender slightly Afrikaans tenor. He set the trash can back next to his desk, looking at the picture of his younger self and his sweet, lost lover, the almost silvery eyes looking back at him from within the dark circles of the not-quite-mask. The smile on that muzzle never dimmed, even in Barton's worst moods. Sometimes, it was the only thing that brought the honey badger back from that darkness.
He breathed slowly once more. He didn't always have the desire to shout, or to cry, or even to let himself become melancholy. Maybe it was just now, last night having been All Souls Night, and so close to Wallace's birthday. November was the rare month for them, a time when they'd take a long weekend ahead of the Thanksgiving crowd and do something special together. Something, as Wallace said, to celebrate life. How long had it been, the badger wondered, since he felt that particular desire? He shook his head and resolved to throw the melancholy out with the trash.
* * * * * * * * * *
Lyris' eyes popped open with a start. Something had roused her from her doze. How long had she been asleep? What time... so many clouds, can't see where the sun is, but brighter than before, maybe even the slightest bit warmer. Lyal's head still lay against her chest; he seemed to have drooled a little on her shirt, not that it made the slightest difference. She lay still, letting her long ears go up, letting them pivot in search of what woke her, because she was sure now that it was a sound, and one not that far away...
The doe moved as slowly as she could, trying not to wake her brother. His ragged breathing told her stories she was almost too frightened to hear. After careful maneuvering, she had him lying on his side, his head propped up on one of their two backpacks, still somewhere between being asleep and unconscious. Silently, she crawled to the outer edge of their hiding place and looked for the source of the sound that she still couldn't quite identify.
The slamming of a door was unmistakable. She looked further down the alley and saw a large white bag, lengths of red plastic somewhere between a tied ribbon and thin handles at the top, resting not far from a closed door with the legend GETAWAY painted in simple block letters. She wondered why it didn't say KEEP AWAY or NO TRESSPASSING or something similar. Whatever it said, it meant trouble; the bag hadn't been there before, so there was no question that someone had put it there, almost certainly from behind that door. If they just set out trash, it meant that the haulers could be there at any moment, and she and Lyal couldn't be there when they did.
She crawled back to him, hating to wake him, but she had to. Even if she were properly fed, she couldn't carry him for long. "Ly-bunny," she said softly. "We're gonna have to go, hon. C'mon. We gotta go now."
The buck was slow to rouse, but they had been on the streets long enough that he knew what "we gotta go now" usually meant. Lyris could see that he was making an effort to move, but even sitting up pained him. It wasn't just the cold that was the problem; his ribs still hadn't healed properly, after all this long time. If they could just catch a break... Ah hells, who was she kidding? She tried not to sigh loud enough for him to hear her. She didn't want him thinking that she was exasperated with him.
That sound happened again, and this time she knew it for what it was - a door opening, a slightly creaky hinge, not at all uncommon in the colder weather. Frantically, she waved at her brother to stay where he was as she crawled back to the edge of the dumpster, her nose twitching with anxious curiosity, to take a look down the alleyway.
A large male honey badger propped open the GETAWAY door with a small cement block, and took up the garbage bag and a second bag that he'd apparently gone back to get. He moved slowly but with purpose toward the dumpster.
Lyris felt her blood freeze inside her. She couldn't let anyone find them. They still were under legal age, and they'd be taken away immediately, first to a hospital, then to some social worker with twelve dozen cases cluttering up her desk, and some quick decision would be made, and they'd be even worse off than before... or if she found out who they were, they'd be forced to go back. That was not an option. It simply couldn't happen. She would not let that happen. They wouldn't go back, they would never go back! Maybe if they were quiet and still, the old guy wouldn't see them...
The sound of a hugely congested cough came from behind her, not something like a light tickle in the throat, more like trying to hawk up a lung through the mouth. There was no question that the badger heard something; he stopped short, his eyebrows coming together, looking right at the dumpster, knowing the sound had to have come from there.
Franticly, the doe looked around her for some way to defend her helpless brother, anything that she might use as a weapon. The smell of the dumpster alone would frighten most furs. Her eyes fell on a long metal rod, rusted, discolored, looked like it might have been part of the fire escape at one time in its sordid past. She reached for it with a trembling forepaw, trying to grasp it as quietly as she could, but pulling it off the ground proved to be tricky. It was heavier than she thought it would be, and as she picked it up, the far end of it scraped loudly on the concrete.
Only a few dozen meters away, two paws full of garbage bags, the old badger stood frozen to the spot. Lyris moved out from behind the dumpster, holding the metal bar like a two-pawed sword in front of her. They weren't going back. Win, lose, or draw, they weren't going back. Heart in her throat, shaking from tip to tail, the young doe prepared to defend herself and her brother, no matter what it took. She was weak enough that she could barely hold the metal bar in front of her, and she'd never actually hurt anyone before, but if she had to... if she had to...
* * * * * * * * * *
"Who's there?"
Barton instantly felt ridiculous. Why do we always do that? A bump in the house in the middle of the night, and we don't call the cops, we ask for I.D. The badger dropped the bags at his side, feeling what would accurately be described as "getting his Irish up." He took two careful steps forward, his forepaws balling into fists. Trying to ignore the pungent odor of Eau d' Used Beer, he steeled himself against the source of the ragged cough. At first, he couldn't see anyone, and what really worried him was that the cough sounded horrible. Unworthy as the thought was, the first one to pass through his mind was that he didn't want to catch a debilitating dose of superflu from some vagrant. The second thought, much more charitable, was that the cough was deep, like a heavy chest cough, yet sounded as if it had come from young lungs. Whoever it was, he (she?) wasn't some old wino... and young street cubs could be dangerous.
As Wallace had discovered.
When the figure finally emerged from behind the dumpster, he was filled more with pity than fear. A child, by all appearances, early teens and almost as thin as the metal bar she tried to wield before her. The fear rose up again as he looked into her eyes. She was no killer, but she was trying to brace herself to be. She had something to prove, or something to protect, and she wasn't going to back down easily.
The badger let his forepaws unclench, still wary. He held up one in what he hoped was a placating gesture. "Listen up, lassie," his brogue adding to the cliché and helping steel his resolve. "I've got a well-connected cell phone, and two fists that have met more than a little resistance in their day. If ye can get up and walk away, like the auld song tells it, I'd advise ye do it. Cops require paperwork, and a punch-up requires more, an' I've got a full plate today. Now let's be smart about it."
She hesitated for a long moment, and Barton took in the sight of her. Her hindpaws were bare, and although her clothing might have been designer-labeled, they'd seen far better days, and they hung on her as if two sizes too large. Her grey tank top had been through hell and back (or perhaps just too many high-heat commercial dryers), but he could still make out the heart and the words "Eat, skate, make out, repeat" written in faded white across the front of it. She wore no jacket, which puzzled him; at the least, she should be wearing a couple of shirts, in this cold, unless she simply didn't have any others. Her chest (much more pronounced, thanks to her enforced diet) was not only easily visible but, due to the cold that seeped in when she stood up, her nipples were erect and pushing against the light fabric of her shirt. It wasn't his being gay that kept Barton from being aroused at the sight; it was the gut-sinking hurt of realizing how cold and desperate the poor doe had to have been.
She must have had something to fight for, because the badger's words seemed to give her some kind of resolve. She stood straighter, a good meter and a half tall to the top of her head, and she threw her ears up straight and high to add another 30cm to the mix - the old lapine trick of making oneself look taller and more fearsome to a predator. Barton had never thought of himself as being a predator, at least not in any civilized society. He was a masseur and mane-dresser, so much so that his appraisal of the doe's condition prompted him to assess what a proper spa treatment would do for her, although what she really needed was several days of rest and good food. He saw that her muscles trembled, possibly out of fear, but it looked to him more like fatigue, like muscles long since out of proper body fuel and running on adrenaline. Her entire frame quivered like a struck harp string, tense, terrified, and quite possibly more than a little crazy.
Barton shook his raised paw slowly, a sort of "no more" gesture. "There'll be no need for that now, missy," he said softly. "Not unless you're really lookin' for a scrap."
He swallowed hard, hoping she didn't notice. You can't show fear, he thought, you have to have the strength to resolve the problem in whatever form it takes. But even as he told himself this advice, it was Wallace's voice that said to him, Don't assume she's dangerous, lovely. Just don't assume she's friendly either. Walk the line, Barty. Walk the line.
"Ye look like ye've been sleepin' rough. Ye look cold as hell besides. I heard a cough, a bad one. Ye all right?"
"Make you a deal, mister," the doe said, slowly lowering her makeshift Claymore. "You go back inside and don't call the cops, and I'll put your garbage in the dumpster for you. I just needed a place to sleep for the night, and it's day now, so I'll move on and you won't have to worry about it, okay?"
He was no spring pup, but his hearing was still good, and Barton could tell one thing right away: Anyone with a cough like the one he'd heard a few moments ago wouldn't have a voice high and sweet like the doe had. She wasn't alone; he felt certain of that. It wasn't just herself that she was defending. "If I'm nae grea' mistook, yer nae alone, lass. That cough wasn't yours. Who's with ye, then?"
"I'm alone, mister, but I can be dangerous if you--"
A huge and ragged bout of coughing echoed from behind the dumpster, making Barton's blood freeze, not from danger but from memory. His father had sounded like that, in the beginning, before it became the double pneumonia that finally claimed him. His father, who had lost his own mate to Alzheimer's, even though she was still alive - if you could call it that - in the only nursing home they could afford, on the other side of town from the hospital where the old badger had made his last stand against the end. Barton had held his paw, so weak, so sunk down into that hospital bed. His father looked up through eyes that had almost lost their light, and he managed to croak out, "Don't let me drown..." And only a week later, he did just that. And Barton stood by the bed and listened to the last terrible gurgles as his dying father gave up the ghost. He had informed his mother the next day, as best he could, not able to know if she really understood what had happened. Exactly sixty days later, she closed her eyes to sleep and simply kept on sleeping; Barton sincerely hoped that she had eternally lucid dreams of being happily with her love again.
"Lyss..." whispered a voice from somewhere behind the doe.
"Shut up, Ly!" she shouted back at him, raising the weapon again, desperately and fearfully looking like she was trying not to look desperate and afraid.
"Who's that behind ye?" The badger didn't move but again raised his empty forepaw, palm outward. "That cough sounds bad. If ye need help..."
"I said walk away, mister!" The rabbit moved as if to wield the metal bar again, but her arms didn't seem to be cooperating with her. The cold night and malnutrition were expressing themselves quite visibly by now.
Barton dared taking a step closer, holding up both open paws, trying to sound calm, helpful, and above all, non-threatening. "Ye do need help. Look, I can help ye to a shelter..."
"NO." The doe's flat refusal was loud and final, despite her condition. Something in her eyes, the old badger saw, something terrible in her eyes, terrible in the old sense of the word. Haunted. Hunted. Almost feral. Something had terrified the lass to within an ace of her life.
Cautiously, the badger took one more small step forward, closing the distance to something less than ten meters. "Who's after ye, lass? Police? Parents? What kind o' trouble are ye in?"
"What difference does that make?" she half wailed, the hysteria in her voice telling him that she was riding the thin line between giving up and lashing out.
"The difference between me helpin' and you dyin', that's what difference. Tell me now. Who is it?"
Trembling, the young female whispered, "What if it's better that we're dead?"
"If that's what ye wanted, ye'd not have run. That much, I know f'r sure. To go through all this..." He waved a paw around the alley, the trash, the stench, the stinging cold. "Ye'd rather be here than there. So ye'd rather live this way than that. And if ye really want to keep livin' like this, I'll let ye be. But just so ye know... I used to be Cath'lic, and we take guilt pretty seriously."
He wasn't at all sure that the comedy was warranted, but it made the doe pause. She suddenly looked behind her, and the old mane-dresser saw that a forepaw had reached out from behind the dumpster to touch her calf tenderly, a paw of the same ash gray as her own. The raspy voice behind it called out. "Lyss..."
"Ly, stay -" Whatever she might have been going to say was cut off by a short, sharp scream. She dropped the metal bar to the ground and fell to her knees near the back of the dumpster. Sounds of a conversation, brief, hurried, and then sobbing. Barton stepped closer, hoping that the doe didn't have another weapon secreted somewhere out of his vision. He came close enough to look, close enough to encounter odors like an olfactory slap to his muzzle. He saw no weapon, only the young rabbit clutching someone about her own size, age and coloration - sibling, perhaps even a twin? She cried softly, holding a body that seemed nearly lifeless, save for that horrible ragged breathing.
"Please, mister," the doe managed to squeak out. "Please don't call the cops. Please. If we go back, they'll kill us..."