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!"

"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.
*********

Title: Sage, Rosemary and Time

“But my dad always said that cotton breathes better.”

“He meant compared to synthetic fabric and he was right. But we can’t grow cotton and we can’t make synthetics either so it’s linen or wool or leather.”

“I can’t dress a baby in leather!”

“Well Lady La Dee Da, we will cut down some old clothes and sew new ones for him.  But we will run out of old clothes eventually and you need to learn how to spin.”

Lady was holding Sage, her tiny new born, in her arms. She was sitting next to the iron pot bellied stove that had been inserted into the original hearth in the kitchen of the 17^th century farm house. Martha, her neighbor and the friend of Sage’s father, who had recently been murdered by an angry mob in the city was sitting on a stool in front of an old fashioned spinning wheel by the open door.  The light was streaming in and Martha was in silhouette along with the spinning wheel; the shadow of them both reaching across the hard dirt floor to Lady’s feet.

Sage, her new born, was swaddled tightly. Martha, a former nurse practitioner, was adamant about how he was to be wrapped up.

“The Native peoples of North America have proven that a cradle board will prevent sudden infant death. You wrap the new born tightly with his hands folded over his heart and he will feel secure and connected to the beating of his own heart.” Martha had told Lady.  She had shown her how to stuff the blanket with dried sphagnum moss for warmth and also to absorb urine.  Martha carefully monitored his urine, his weight, and his responses.  He seemed to be healthy, so far.

Lady thought that Martha had a great many doubts about Sage but she too worried about his future. How was a child going to ever feel secure when he learned that he was born on the day his father was murdered?

But he was perfect. Lady smiled down at the sleeping baby. She and Steven picked the name: If a boy, Sage; if a girl, Rosemary.  Steven like "Sage" because, as he explained, it would take a long life to become a venerable old "Sage" or wise man. It was an optimistic name. Lady liked the name because sage was used to improve memory. The cure for Alzheimers was a dirivetive of sage.

“I’ve had some nice cheery wood planks waiting for a special project. I don’t think you can get more special than a cradle for his Lordship himself!” Henry was smiling.

 “Oh Henry that is beautiful!” and not a cradle board, thought Lady. There were carved roses in the head board and it was stained a dark red. It rocked smoothly and had stops on the rockers to keep it from tipping.  Lady placed Sage in it and clapped and grinned before running around and throwing her arms around Henry’s neck. 

Martha clucked.

Since Steven had been killed they had all been taken up with the birth of Sage. Martha and Henry found her in the barn and brought her back to their cabin.  Martha checked her and washed and treated her with gentleness that felt tender and then did the same for Sage. Lady was a girl who loved easily and who always responded to kindness like desert flowers did to rain. Martha and Henry and Sage filled up what would have been an unbearable loss for her.

“He didn’t love me. He wouldn’t have married me. I have no right to stay here.” Lady said finally to them both, her head down, looking at Sage in the cradle.

“Where would you go? There is no place to go. The city is burning. No electricity, no communication, no water, just anarchy…” Martha was now standing over her, her arms folded in unison with her brow knotting. Henry came and stood beside her. The two old people fit together like salt and pepper. Martha was short plump, black and peppery and Henry was thin, white and salty; both were very old.

“Yeah but the anarchists are probably from my old neighborhood…”

Martha interrupted her: “And you are wrong. Steven loved you. He wasn’t good at communicating his feelings but we could tell. You belong here as much as anyone… We owe it to him to see you and Sage are safe.”

Henry put his hand on Lady’s tiny shoulder. “Martha would go crazy if you left. She’d be left with just me to boss and I’ve learned to ignore her.” He smiled. “We love you. We want you here.”

“Gee” said Lady, “My own dad never said anything as nice as that to me.”

Bridgits Flame Prompt: “There must be 50 ways to leave your lover…”

The writing challenge this week is to create a story inspired from one of your favorite quotes. Pluck it from a song, a movie, a book, that witty next door neighbor, whichever you like. The only requirement is that you include a citation for the source in an author's note. Have fun!

Author:  Urb-banal

Title: He Wasn’t Expecting This

Word Count: 1350

Genre: Sci-Fi

He Wasn't Expecting This

Steven drove his truck into the city. It had started to snow. He turned the heat on and volume up. He was listening to some vintage mid-twentieth century music; his favorite era.  The sweetness of the male voices belied the message:

 The problem is all inside your head, she said to me 

the answer is easy if you take it logically.

He thought back to leaving her that morning, a tussled mess in the bed; the swell of her belly like a volcanic island rising out of a sea of blankets. The girl was infuriating and captivating at the same time.  He had touched an auburn curl on her forehead and she stirred. He was acting like a newly wedded fool.

 He was going to be a father, at his age! He was insane.  Martha, his neighbor, had told him Lady was going to be trouble. He should have had a vasectomy. He could afford it but he thought by this age he would have prostate cancer not a girlfriend.

He had successfully avoided all romantic attachments since Agnes had left him and returned to London with the boy thirty years ago. If there were any grand children his son would know better than to tell him.  The only solution for the world’s over population was to stop BREEDING. He knew it forty years ago.  He made no secret of his opinion. 

And here he was about to repeat the mistake.

When Lady announced that she was pregnant, he was so angry he thought he might hit her.  Instead he paced back and forth as he had done compulsively as a child when stressed.   She had taunted him cheerfully, “If you keep pacing like that you’re going to wear the floor  deep enough you won’t hit your head on the rafters anymore.”

 It was a restored farm house from the 17^th century when people were all very small, like her. He often hit his head. Because her laughter was infectious instead of it making him angry it made him laugh:  But not this time.

He had gone out and chopped wood.  It was a repetitive activity like pacing but it had an element of violence that needed releasing.  She had stood in the doorway and shouted at him.  “Good your chopping wood! I feel like a cup of tea!”

She was crazy. He didn’t understand how she had lived so long, fifteen years, with a mouth like that. But she tore his heart in a way no one had ever done and so when he was bent over the iron stove and she had wrapped her tiny arms around him from behind and whispered, “Let me have this baby. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Just let me have it.” He had dissolved into tears. What if the child was deformed, all those weeks she was still working at the factory... but she didn’t care. She said it had to be beautiful because what she felt was happy, for the first time in her life.

She broke him. He was a potty, love sick old man about to become a father again.

He had managed in his life by keeping blinders on. It was the only way. There was so much suffering and devastation in the world. If he looked around his heart might break, and yet without thinking he had taken her in and now he loved her. There was nothing to be done for it. There was no cure. 

As he drove closer into town the stench of decay became stronger even with the windows closed.

In his youth he had been a hailed a genius for his work in developing vaccine therapies for cancer.  He was knighted by the Queen in 2015 at the tender age of 28. “The boy wonder” it had said on the news. He got a prestigious position in Guildwood Pharmaceuticals. There was a slippery slope that followed, personally and professionally.  How was the world to survive with so many hungry and the soil depleted? All solutions had unexpected consequences.

 Guildwood Pharmaceuticals had gone from making medicines and research to looking for cures for illness caused by the world they helped create. Was the byproduct an intentional control of population? Steven could not allow himself to believe it.  He preferred to think it was a combination of ineptitude and honest mistakes. The wars that kept erupting everywhere, the riots and the famine took their toll on populations too. Mankind was at a precipice and hundreds of thousands were being thrown off the edge.

Despite the failed attempts at controlling the sterilization virus (which resulted in a new sex, albeit an infertile one) despite hunger and homelessness, people still made babies.

What science came up with to feed all these growing populations was cloned muscle tissue, no brain, just meat.  It tasted like chicken and was pumped full of vitamins but life expectancies were getting shorter.  Chronic illnesses and hunger and the failing infrastructures for sanitation, water and power, had made life a cesspool.

He knew it was wealth and privilege that kept him alive to such an old and healthy age. He ate organic food.

He pretended he was trying to find ways of re-introducing sustainable agriculture but in truth he knew that his little farm in the Green Valley was an expensive hobby that he shared in secret with a select few.  He was no different than the despot in olden times who would go into his vault and swim in gold. Lady was part of it.  All his efforts to teach her how to make things, to teach her animal husbandry, to teach her how to live away from the crumbling city were just selfish acts of a man who learned too late what was important.

I'll take your part

When darkness comes

And pain is all around …

Agnes would have called Lady, his “Welsh whore”. His heart clenched at the thought. Agnes had despised him in the end. He welcomed her rancor.  He felt he deserved it. He was contributing to a terrible evil in the world, not because he was evil but because he could not break free of the path his life was taking.  He was weak. He was then. He was now.

As governments and economies failed it got easier and cheaper to find laborers at home.  No more branch factories, no more developing economies, just homegrown serfs who would put up with anything for a job.

Lord Steven Lawry and his Lady, a grateful milk maid indeed, Agnes would have laughed. 

If he had turned on his radio he would have known it wasn’t safe for him to drive into the Guildwood. He would have known that rioters had stormed the gates and killed the guards.  There were thousands of them, a tidal wave that overwhelmed the fortress even though they used gas and bullets and deafening sound to stop them, they just climbed over the bodies of the fallen and they kept coming. 

A small group broke off and surrounded Steven’s truck.

He got out of the truck, holding his hands up in the air, he said, “I understand the inequity. I sympathize with your plight…”

They descended upon him like beasts, like a pack of starving wolves.

 The next track of mid-century American music began to play in his truck…

 Riders on the storm

Riders on the storm

Girl ya gotta love your man
Girl ya gotta love your man
Take him by the hand
Make him understand
The world on you depends
Our life will never end
Gotta love your man, yeah

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we're born
Into this world we're thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm

Author: Urb-banal
Word Count: 2013

Prompt: Britain, 2067
Genre: Sci-fi
Warnings: Language, sexual references

Okay, this is entirely new but drawn on an old story from years ago.  This is better.  If you want the insiders scoop, this is Lazarus mom.  He was a character from my Trek thing future end of the world, bla bla bla...   I'm feeling fried.  Writing is too hard!

This probably sucks. 
Everything Old is New

Lady leaned into the mirror and squinted. Her eyes were bright, no redness, no puffiness.   She pursed her lips in a fake kiss and then winked.

She pulled her boots all the way up to her thighs, and wiggled a bit to make sure her skirt was covering her bottom. Her poke-a-dot halter exposed a large area of midriff; she threw on a puffy hot-pink fake-fur jacket.

“Where are you going all tarted up?” Her father said from the cot in the kitchen. He rolled over and grabbed the bottle from under it, propped up on one elbow and took a swig. “Off to the disco? You make sure you get me some more whiskey. This one’s almost empty.”

“Sure thing, dad!” Lady didn’t tell him she wasn’t going to the disco tonight. She had a proper date with a company executive, the Plant Manager in fact. He was picking her up, not at the house, the pavement was too broken up to get a car down the street; it would be at the turn-off for the main highway.

It was quite a walk but she never wanted any of her dates to see where she lived. They all could find out easily enough just by looking up the address on a company file but it was not the same as witnessing what her home life was really about. She needed to seem carefree. Nobody wanted to spend time with a drag.

“You conduct yourself proper. No sex without a condom and a gift of either money or booze before…” her father yelled after her.

“I wasn’t born yesterday dad. I’m 15; I know what I’m doing!” Lady said with her hand on her hip. She was getting into character, Sassy Lady, circa 2010. She loved that era.

It was hard walking over all the rubble. She passed the chain link fences of her neighbours’, the vacant lots of burned out buildings, the circles of useless cars that had been turned into family homes with their central “parks” of  burning barrels and the glowing faces gathered around them for warmth. Sometimes someone would call out her name.

“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!”

As she got close to what was once a strip mall her senses went on high alert. Armies of little kids would sometimes rush the unsuspecting pedestrian and strip her of all her valuables in the blink of an eye.

“I got mace you motherfuckers! If you think of rushing me you’ll be sorry. My date’s coming and he’s got a big fucking flame thrower too so just stay in your hide-dee-holes and we  will be good, alright?” She yelled as much to calm herself as to frighten anyone else.

A man with money for a car and gasoline was something special. Mr. Lawd, the Plant Manager was easily in his 60’s but that meant he was already a grown man before the in-vetro influenza epidemic of 2025 that caused half of the babies that survived in the womb to be born hermaphrodites. Lady had no problem with them, but she loved vintage porn and it was easier to imagine that she was in a movie if her partner had just one sexual organ. Executives were never hermaphrodites it seemed. There was no policy against it but no one Lady knew had a clue how executives even got to be executives. So who could say? Perhaps they were all born executives.

She was shocked when he asked her if she would go away with him for the weekend. She didn’t think their first conversation had gone well at all. She had in fact argued with him. She was holding one of the test chimps in the lab, just a baby, cooing to it and rocking it like it was her baby; the animals that were normally freaked out all calmed down when she held them. It was a talent she didn’t know she had until she was promoted from the floor of the plant to the lab.

When she was with one she was in a completely altered state of mind, as if she was disolving into a warm bath, disappearing into the a moment of complete and utter contentment.

So when he said something about them all being better off dead, instead of turning on the charm and batting her eyes she said, “This little baby is happy right now, with me, it doesn’t want to die!”

That got his attention. He asked her name and made a slightly rude comment about it being the name for a dog but then he made up for it by saying he had never met a real lady before.

She liked that. She liked the sliver of his hair and his perfect teeth. He was super tall, maybe 7 feet and he looked fit for his age She also liked that she would get to go to his executive apartment in the high rise with electric lights and hot water Jacuzzis and cold soda pop and telephones!   

 She thought he looked sad. She wanted to make him happy. She hoped they would have fun together at least.

Instead of a company car a brown pickup truck slowed to the side of the road where she waited. Her heart started pounding and she wished she had the mace as she claimed. She looked around, feeling a little desperate until she saw him leaning across the seat.

“What the hell are you wearing?” he yelled at her.

“This, oh… What the fuck are you driving?”

“It’s my truck, four wheel drive, we need it. Climb in!”

“How can you afford your own truck?” Lady asked as she fastened her seat belt. “This thing looks ancient!”

“I know!” Mr. Lawd was smiling.  Lady had never seen him smile before. It made him look a bit stupid.

“Well aren’t we going to your apartment?”

“No. This will be much more fun. It’s a surprise!”

“Mr. Lawd, please, I …”

“Call me Steven. I don’t want anything to remind me of work for two days!”

“I can do that.” Lady said, more uncertain than she usually was.

“It’s got a ‘CD player’ circa turn of the century!” he said pleased. He popped in a “CD”. Do you like old music? I’ve got vintage originals!”

“Umm, I like the last century pornography, some of that has music.”

“This is way better than anything you will have heard then! They are called, “Broken Social Scene, oh and I will play you some Owen Pallet, Earth, Wind and Fire…you are going to love it. Vivaldi, you ever hear of him, completely old… We’ve got a long drive but I have plenty music!”

Things were not shaping up the way she imagined at all. She was worried he didn’t drink and she’d have nothing to take home to her dad. She also worried she was going to die of boredom.

She fell asleep. None of the roads had been particularly good but they were consistently bad to the point of lulling her to sleep. Now the truck was pitching back and forth, occasionally revving loudly as the wheels spun in mud before lurching the truck forward. It was still dark but she had a feeling it was approaching morning.

“We’re here!” Steven shouted.

“Where are we?” Lady asked no one. Steven had already gotten out of the truck and was heading towards a dim light down the hill.

“Wait!” Lady was having trouble in her high heeled boots.

Steven stopped. “Oh sorry, here take my hand. This place is totally isolated. Nobody except my closest friends know about it. You’ll meet them. ..”

Lady was starting to feel frightened. She had been lucky so far. She had never run into a real freak before. She supposed no one would miss her much. Her father would eventually sober up and wonder but there wasn’t much he could do… Steven gripped her arm firmly, “Watch your step, this is slippery … I wouldn’t want you to get your party dress dirty!” He laughed. “But we’ll get you out of it soon enough. First I want to show you something. It’s in the barn.”

“I want to go home!” Lady said pulling away from him.

“Don’t worry! I get you home, but first you have to see this!”

“I don’t want to see anything. I want to go home!”

Steven was laughing and pulling her along behind him. “Stop making such a fuss!” He opened the barn door and shoved her inside.

Two people in overalls were bent over something lying down in the straw. 

Steven turned around and beamed an enormous goofy smile at her. “Piglets!”

Martha and Henry, a very old and very happy couple greeted Steven. 

“This is a great day in the Green Valley Steven. Our first 16^th century cloned hogs have given birth to their very own piglets!” Henry mopped his teary eyes with a cloth. “I wish you had been here to see it. I was scared to death something would go wrong, we’ve been up all night and all the day before.” He shook his head with the wonder of it.

Martha was eyeing Lady up and down, one large bottom lip jutting out further than her nose in a total lack of effort to hide her disapproval. “Ummmhummm.”

“This is Lady. She works at the plant. She has a way with animals it seems.”

“Snakes most likely.” Martha said squinting at her.

Steven didn’t get it but Lady did. She laughed out loud. “That’s right, and I tell you, for a minute I thought I was going to get trust up and served at some freaked out sex banquet.” Looking at the piglets she said, “Oh can I hold one? Please!”

“Not yet. They are like human babies, very vulnerable to germs the first few hours. Once they are nursing for a bit and we know they are okay maybe…” Henry told her.

Steven asked Martha gently, aware now that he had somehow crossed a line by bringing Lady, “Martha, I am afraid it is my fault that you and Lady got off to a bad start. I wanted to surprise her and frankly I hadn’t thought to bring her until two days ago…”

Martha seemed to physically shake off her previous temper. “That’s alright Steven. You know this is your place as much as ours. You are welcome to bring anyone here you like, no explanations. Now maybe she would like to come with me and I’ll try to find some clothes more suitable for her to wear.

Inside a small stone house Martha rummaged in a trunk and handed a bundle to Lady.

Lady was sure Martha picked out the ugliest shirt and baggiest pants she could find. She walked out still wearing her ridiculous boots. Martha handed her some ratty old cotton shoes. “Don’t have extra boots, sorry” was all she said to Lady.

Steven gave her a tour, “This is a refurbished 16^th Century working farm, completely isolated and TOP SECRET. We’ve been fixing it for fifteen years, we’ve got an orchard, a wheat field, a hay field, a kitchen garden and a vegetable garden. We don’t use any gasoline powered equipment. We mill the flour with a grinder that runs on methane. We make our own methane.

We’ve got a horse and an ox and a cow and a goat. We’re going to artificially inseminate them all and start breeding heirloom chattel from pre-engineered era DNA. I have a kiln and an outdoor bread oven and a bellows!

 Oh and we’ve got chickens. I hate the dirty birds but I like omelets. Let me make you one!” He looked like he was going to start skipping. He headed off towards a small stone cabin.

“Fuck!” Lady said to no one.

“Not likely!” Martha said with a laugh. “More like ‘Muck!’ as in 'mucking out the stalls', you can start right after breakfast!”

Lady suspected rightly that she wasn’t going to get a hot bath without a lot of chopping wood and hauling water. “I don’t suppose you’ve got an indoor toilet?”

Martha and Henry both started to laugh.