Page 28 of Cry for Help

After finding my mother in Portland, I’d run away.

I’d heard the creature eating her and knew deep in my bones I was next.

There was an Irish phrase my mother used to mutter, waving her hands in prayer as she spoke.

Níl luibh ná leigheas in aghaidh an bháis.

There is no remedy or cure for death.

I’d slept rough for a few weeks, only remembering the fatigue and hunger that came with the cold streets as I stood in the Human district alone.

My new clothes kept me warm, the only comfort I could find.

I had to keep moving.

Away from the train tracks and the demon part of the city. The ground grew more uneven, the asphalt cracked and in disrepair. I’d thought Stolas lived in a bad part of town, but the further I got from the tracks, the worse the human district got.

Closer to the wall surrounding the city, even the scant street lights struggled to blot out the shadows.

A single bastion of hope stood on the road to the wall. A bar with a neon sign flickering in the darkness.

Pete’s. A human name if I ever heard one.

I had credits. Mr Jingle had said so. They were attached to the sigil on my arm. I’d get a drink, Dutch courage, before I found somewhere to settle for the night once the people were off the streets. Somewhere sheltered from the rain and cold.

I pulled my jacket up to my throat as I pushed into the bar, my prison-issue sneakers stuck to the floor as I padded into the warmth.

I’d been arrested shortly after my eighteenth birthday. I’d never been in a bar before. Prison hooch didn’t count when it came to alcoholic experiences, either.

I approached the bar, giving the bartender a sheepish smile. It was loud, but not loud enough that I could disguise my silence as anything else but strange.

I pointed to the closest beer tap, and the bartender got the message—even if I wanted something more potent.

“Hey!” A female voice called out, and I turned toward the sound. My neighbor Aimee stood up from her table, waving her hands like a mad woman.

The bartender pushed my beer across the bar, gesturing for my arm. He scanned my sigil with something akin to a wand, and I went to Aimee’s table.

“Guys!” Aimee’s smile was sloppy. “This is... My neighbor.” I noticed the pause as she hesitated over my name. I had never told her.

Another woman sat next to Aimee, her hair perfectly coiffed in a style more fitting of the nineties. Opposite, two men sat, deep in conversation.

Aimee waved her hands to the blonde woman. “That’s Darla.”

Sometimes, I hated my silence, but this was not one of them.

I lifted my hand with a limp wave, excused from summoning awkward small talk.

“She doesn’t speak,” Aimee whispered to Darla, covering her mouth with her hand but not lowering her voice. She was drunk.

Darla’s lips ticked with a pleased smile.

One of the men, his hair pulled back in a ponytail and his shoulders bared in a muscle top, stood up. “Shots!” he declared.

I breathed a sigh of relief, agreeing with him. Shots, indeed.

Aimee, Darla, William, and Winston worked together on the Red City crew. Darla did hair, which I should have guessed, and the W’s (the nickname for the collective members of the gay couple) were both makeup artists.

I wasn’t updated with the Real Housewives of the Red City. There had been one television in the rec room in prison, and programming depended on who had the remote. But I managed to follow along with the conversation, nodding appropriately.

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