riotheclown | Brigit's Flame, week one, Aug. 2012

Prompt: Catalyst
Title: Lady Justice
Word Count: 650 words or so
Warnings: none really
Author: Urb-banal
Genre: Futuristic (?) Social/Science Fiction

Bessy watched the girl as she stumbled over the rubble. Her boots went all the way up to her thighs and were spiked; not made for this kind of walking but that was "her style". Her skirt was covering her bottom, just. Her poke-a-dot halter exposed a large area of midriff under a puffy hot-pink fake-fur jacket. Bessy watched her as she passed the chain link fences, the vacant lots of burned out buildings, the piled up useless cars that had been turned into homes from her squat in "central park”.

They had a good fire going in the barrels. The circle of faces gathered around them for warmth turned like sunflowers to the sun as the girl passed them.

Bessy, hacking a cough, managed to shout at her, “Hey Lady! You’re looking good! You got a date?”

“Fucking right I do! Big shot too!”

“Good on you! Be safe now! God bless!”

"You take care yourself Bess! I'm going to get you some medicine. Don't worry about me!" She struck a pose, licked her finger and touched her bottom with it and acted like it was on fire.

Lady had been keeping Bess alive, keeping her community alive along with her no good drunk of a father. Everyone knew it. She didn't have to. She could have of got a nice place and kissed them all goodbye. Instead she spent her money helping out them out. She was a local hero, just fifteen years old but good the way most her age were not. She was a whore, sure, but that was a good profession in these troubled times.

***************

When she didn't come back there was talk of her finally nabbing a big fish and getting set up in her own apartment in the gated city where all the executives lived but when she didn't come by for even a visit, after three weeks there were questions and even more theories.

"It was that big shot in the company that killed her", Bessy said to the others, "KILLED HER!"

"She NEVER DID ANYTHING WRONG to nobody!" someone shouted.

" You see her daddy wandering around crying all the time? He said she was killed for sure and all that's left for him is suicide!" Nobody said that he would be doing them all a favour if he did, that was besides the point at the moment.

"It's wrong! You know they are taking people to that laboratory of theirs and experimenting on them! Maybe she's been shot up with some new contagion!" Toothless Joe smiled at his use of such an expensive word but frowned quickly in light of the seriousness of the conversation.

"Everybody who works there gets sick eventually. You know it, I know it, everybody knows it! They pretend they are making pharmaceuticals but what they're making is death!" Bessy could throw out the big words with the best of them and she reminded Toothless Joe with a stern look.

"Executives don't get sick! Executives don't have AIDS or hunger or poverty. The company knows who to save and who to kill..."

"KILL!"

"So what are we going to do? We can't do nothing. We never could do nothing." one of the more quiet and despondent of the group said.

Everyone sat down again on their boxes.

As the darkness of another cold night descended on them a voice beyond the light of the circle said, "I know what I'm going to do. It's only a matter of time. I am going to go to the gate of the factory and I'm going to pull down that fence. I'm going to have Lady's name on my lips, Lady's goodness in my heart, Lady's justice in my hands and I'm going to kill them all."

When they turned to see who said this, there was no one there that they could name.
*********

this is the link to the story that preceded this one, with the POV of the Lady character, if you are interested.
http://urb-banal.livejournal.com/370910.html#cutid1