Stray Women

POP! The noise was so loud that it was painful as if someone had slapped both of her ears hard and suddenly she was no longer standing in her living room at night but in the morning sunlight of a strange city. She had fallen about a foot to the pavement of a sidewalk and although it hadn't hurt she'd been disoriented by the sudden change and crumpled to the ground. She wondered if this was some kind of dream, but sat up looking around.

She was in an unfamiliar city. There weren't skyscrapers, but smaller two and three story buildings of reddish brick with some residential houses mixed in further down the street like she was on the edge of a business area or in a small town with mixed zoning. As she looked around she only saw one person, a woman hanging a rug on a fence more than a block away and beginning to beat and brush it with a broom. She hurried down the street to talk to her.

"Excuse me, can you tell me where I am," she asked, when she got close?

The woman turned quickly, an older woman in her sixties, holding the broom and beating the rug. There was a look of surprise on her face and her jaw fell open, but the girl was equally surprised at the look of the old woman. Her skin wasn't pale and pink, but instead the old woman was blue. It wasn't a deep, bright blue like in the movies, but a pale turquoise blush as if someone had airbrushed pale paint onto her skin.

"You've got all the nerve," the woman suddenly screamed at her, "thinking you can talk to me!" Without any hesitation the woman ran at her, swinging the broom so that the handle caught her across the temple and she ran panicked as the woman chased her. She was younger and was able to outdistance the old lady, who ran behind her still swinging the broom.

"Get the hell out of her you little, pink whore! Keep your filthy cunt away from me," the old woman yelled. She gave up chasing and turned back towards the rug, mumbling. "Damn strays, think they can just march up and talk to people..."

She'd heard of people having a disease or something that made their skin blue. She vaguely remembered something from a movie, a woman that had cancer and her skin was greenish. She supposed the old lady was sick.

The girl was mystified but hurried further up the street to avoid the old lady. Instead she walked up the deserted street toward a brick building that looked like the back of some kind of business on a narrow block. A door was open. Someone could be heard moving inside and was talking. The girl looked inside and was met with the astonished face of a middle aged woman, who spoke immediately before she had the chance to ask.

"Get out of here! I don't have any food for you. Leave before I call the police," the woman told her.

She turned away, more surprised than she could overcome. The woman had been just as blue as the old lady.

On up the street she walked, seeing only a few people. A man at the next corner had stopped to look at her from a block away, hesitated as if wondering if he should talk to her, looked around himself to see if anyone was watching, then started off in the other direction to avoid her.

The girl had just started up a deserted ally when she was suddenly shoved from behind, against a dumpster and knocked down. She was able to turn quick enough to see her attacker and came face to face with another girl, smaller, with greasy blond hair and filthy torn clothes. The other girl was surprisingly strong, though she was smaller, and she pinned her to the ground and peered into her face intently.

"DAMN! You're new here, aren't you," the girl said in a tone that wasn't asking.