Shock Totem 3 by K. Allen Wood

Author:K. Allen Wood
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Shock Totem Publications
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

• • •

During the day the children of the city ran its streets while everyone else slept in safety with the daylight. The threw rocks through windows and they picked through the piles of garbage and rubble in the streets. They shit on the sidewalks and they pissed in the gutters. They ran with each other, they ran after each other. They beat each other bloody, and they fucked each other numb, and they did that very badly because they were too young and no one had taught them about proper lovemaking because it had left the world along with all its colors years ago.

Leper ran because it made him feel alive. Because he was always one foot in the grave. Because there was nothing else.

He left Moo-ma at the apartment at dawn. A group of strangers had shown up with a couple of gallons of fresh water. He kept to his particular borough, as did most of the kids in the city, so he knew most of them by name. He ran around a corner and found Pinky and Ira throwing rocks through a large square department-store window cut into the face of a skyscraper.

“Hey, Leper,” Pinky said. “You got creamed yesterday. You got to keep your hands to yourself. Especially you.”

Unlike everybody else in the world, Pinky still had a little color in her cheeks. She wasn’t a big girl like Rosa Lee, but she was fat and she looked like she was blushing all of the time. She was a nice girl, all things considered.

Ira was very thin and said nothing in the way of salutations. He pulled his old brown ball-cap down over his eyes and turned his back to Leper to throw a rock.

“What are you thinking, anyhow? Going after Rosa Lee’s shit,” Pinky said. “You’re lucky she didn’t kill you.”

Leper shrugged his shoulders and, with his bandaged finger, cut a mock swath across his throat from ear to ear. He hung his head to one side and slumped his shoulders, and if he could he would have stuck his tongue out, too.

Pinky laughed. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re pretty much halfway there already.”

Leper liked Pinky because she at least talked to him sometimes. He wasn’t sore that she didn’t step in to help when he was getting creamed by Rosa Lee. She was a big girl, but Rosa was big-boned and mad as a dog. No, he wasn’t sore at all.

Ira picked up a big rock from a large pile of rubble and heaved it through the department-store window. It fell in daggered shards to the pavement. The kids stood there and watched for a moment. Leper walked toward the opening.

“Careful with all the glass,” Pinky said.

Leper whistled over his shoulder in reply.

“Why we got to hang out with that kid?” Ira said.

“Shut up,” Pinky replied. “You don’t like it, go run around with some other kids and get your ass beat to hell.”

Ira shoved his hands in the pockets of his corduroy trousers and shut up.

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