The Darkest Womb

“Damn bitch, you should be dead.”

He meant it as a compliment, amazed by the inexplicable convergence of their worlds. The car’s airbags probably saved her life; gotta love that German engineering, he thought. Perhaps struck by why the quiet ambiance of the night should be so rudely interrupted by her head on collision with a solid brick wall, she did not answer.

Her attempt to make a concertina out of her transportation, proved successful, impaling a Mercedes on the alley’s urine christened dead end. She emerged from her metal sarcophagus, unscathed. Somehow she managed to untangle herself, uncoiling like a Mojave rattlesnake. Her curvaceous, yet supple body fell straight out of the pages of racy men’s magazines. She staggered towards him, perhaps motivated by a need for assistance, still his instinct for self preservation kicked in way before she uttered any cry for help.

He regretted running away. The City refused to treat the homeless well, especially past midnight. The wasted junkies pissed on him while he slept, and sometimes the local gangbangers forced him to eat dog shit in return for loose change. Why would she be any different, he reasoned? Since the City’s crackdown on panhandling, he felt more akin to society’s punch bag than an unfortunate victim of life’s travesties.

He sought the usual hiding places. Decaying buildings overlooked the trash strewn alleyway casting dark shadows under a somber moon. The car’s gas tank ruptured and ignited, blossoming into a small mushroom cloud of liquid fuel, shooting caustic flames of havoc into a cloudless sky.

He focused on her startled face, pale amid the fire and smoke, with luscious green eyes. She reminded him of his beloved wife, Olivia. Truthfully all women resurrected his departed soul mate. He could still see Olivia’s mangled naked body twitching on the bank of the City’s turgid East river, just before he pushed her in. Maybe the current led her to the ocean, and with all the blood, the gators ate her, either way they never found the body, not one solitary molecule.

The City’s corrupted law enforcement tried hard to pin Olivia’s disappearance on him, hard to prove without a body. Even without key evidence the grand jury indictment almost succeeded.

Fortunately, an expensive legal team, and some clandestine political donations to the Mayor’s favorite charity, namely Mr. Deckland Hinds himself, relinquished him of a few million dollars, but kept him away from a jury of his peers, and out of jail. Anyway, his children, Robert junior and little Lucy adored him, and they’d already lost one parent, he would not let them lose another.

His conscience finally tracked him down after Robert junior graduated law school. Absurdly ironic, he thought, his son’s quest to become a lawyer fuelled by his obsession to find his Mother’s killer. After Lucy opted for college abroad, his vast estate manifested into his prison. Alone with his guilt, his foul deed came back to haunt him. Consumed by regret, and driven to some say madness, he found himself opposite the stunning young woman in the alley. She appeared to be rolling her tongue around a conundrum in her perfect mouth. He guessed she wanted to articulate some benign thought, instead she spat out a vile mixture of blood and puke. He swore something hard bounced off the grimy surface, most likely a tooth. He edged backwards, attempting to secure a safer distance from her, as she knelt beside the smoldering debris.

He tried to recall the vehicular blur. He shuddered, fearing there may have been another unfortunate soul in the vehicle; after all, she dragged herself out of the passenger side. As the rampant flames intensified he wanted to assure her no one could survive such an impact, or the subsequent explosion, it bordered on miraculous how she managed to walk away.

He fought the nagging compulsion to aid her. Hard to believe he was once considered a gentleman. Chivalry demanded he offer her some comfort, or assistance; as she might be in shock, or have internal bleeding. He elected to give her his most prized possession, his raincoat; it would at least keep her warm. Survival remained the name of the game on the street, yet his inhibitions, or shame, discouraged him from venturing any closer, momentarily terrified of scaring her away. He so rarely entertained company. Cars exploding, even in such a lame excuse for a City, usually alerted the police, and the arm of the law brought unwelcome questions. There were some recent petty indiscretions the ‘pigs’ may have wanted to discuss with him. However, if the night got any colder, an overnight stay in a cell would not be entirely unwelcome. Against his better judgment he stuck to his more thoughtful plan, and peeled off his encrusted trench coat, and carefully laid it before her. He remembered being respected, and clean; so very, very clean. Now he ate garbage, and begged for change. The rappers say ‘life’s a bitch, and then you die,’ they were wrong, or perhaps never slept on a City sidewalk, life can get so much worse, dying was the bitch. He spied her gracious acceptance of his ‘offering’. She inspected his only possession at arm’s length, sprightly raising her other hand to cover her mouth, as if impeding an impulse to retch. The tilt of her head implied a battle with an invisible foe, possibly the stench threatened to consume her. She tossed his ‘gift’ into the nearby dumpster he usually slept in. Admittedly his coat did need the Electric Dry treatment, ‘Electric dry will keep you fly’, he loved their commercials; they dry cleaned anything, supposedly. He caught her emerald eyes searing through the oppressive black cloud, still presumably searching for something, or someone. Although he attempted to stay perfectly quiet and still, his stomach growled in hunger. He remained hidden in front of a long forsaken warehouse whose doors were unfortunately well padlocked. He witnessed the side of her mouth turn up, and just as quickly drop. A second explosion distracted both of them. The spotlight of a City police vehicle cut through the ill mannered smog, and wandered into his neglected home. He cursed his continuing misfortune; trapped between the cops and a gorgeous piece of ass. Yet the predictable appearance of the ‘men in blue’ offered his ‘guest’ hope of medical attention. Holding his breath, he still drew time to marvel at the near silence of early morning, the City slept, as always, restlessly. She checked her Rolex; he recognized the jeweled time piece instantly, an updated version of the famed Pearlmaster, and his darling Olivia’s favorite accessory. Curiously, the squad car reversed out of his domain, accompanied by a siren and flashing blue lights, but they were not for his, or his intruder’s benefit. She squatted out of the range of their searchlight. Like him, it seemed she wanted no part of the authorities. The City’s finest must have been called away to a more pressing emergency. In truth, no one liked venturing in the alley, for too long. Pure evil lurked beyond those dilapidated walls, he didn’t know in what form, and he didn’t care, he just knew something unholy dwelled there. The narrow passage served as his own purgatory, or as his Rabbi once said, ‘his prison in the depths of Sheol’. But today, the merciful Jehovah gave him a cruel and torturous glimpse into Heaven, a visitor, an Angel. He accepted such innocence might flee his ‘atonement’, and return to wherever beauty dwelled. Hopefully she would find a hospital, and get checked out, and if she returned, she might bring food, or more importantly, change. “Why are you hiding, Bobby?” The hairs on his neck froze. She spoke his name; only Olivia ever called him ‘Bobby’, to everyone else he’d become ‘Crazy Bob’. The shock alone caused him to unconsciously stumble into the moonlight.