Wanted

#17 | Alone Again

[This chapter was uploaded two weeks early to my website: ajmstories.com!]

Voices cried out as if a whole crowd of angry people were yelling at her.

"Vile child!" a woman said. "Get out, you dirty vermin!" another yelled. "Never come back here!" a masculine voice called. "Stay on the streets where you belong!"

Mabel's skinny arms were covered in bumps and bruises from people hitting her in retaliation for stealing from their market stalls. Her frail legs were sore from carrying her 75-pound body through the dusty streets of Onyxlanding. The extra small clothing she stole was baggy on her skeletal frame. Even when she ran and hid in the alleys with the rats—which she often tried and failed to catch and eat—the scowls of everyday people were branded in her mind and their abusive speech rang in her ears.

"You useless child!" "Nobody wants you around!" "Go bother someone else!" "No wonder your parents shut you out!"

Mabel jolted awake and sat up in the sand. Darkness engulfed the desert around her, but a faint glow was growing steadily on the eastern horizon. She took deep breaths and thought about the nightmare. She closed her eyes and brought her knees to her chest, hugging them tightly. The early morning air felt cool despite the heatwave in the daytime; it was a comfortable temperature, but Mabel felt cold. She shivered on the ground and hid her eyes under the brim of her hat. The events of the night prior replayed in her mind—the conversation about trust, Sly's confession, her reaction.

Her reaction...

After walking for some time, the sun was fully revealed but still very low in the sky. Its scorching rays returned after a night's break and were quick to overtake the senses even in the early part of the day. In every direction Mabel looked, sand and sparse shrubbery consumed her perception. The pale sky blended into the distant landscape. Not a cloud was in sight. She was honest with herself from the moment she stood up that morning: she was lost. She had no food or water, and no idea which way she had come from, or which way could lead her back to her camp or the nearby Yellowtusk. She had no idea how far she had walked in the night before dropping to her hands and knees and crying herself to sleep. Yellowtusk may not have even been nearby anymore.

She scolded herself for being so hasty in her decision to ditch the boys last night. Why did she insist on walking until she could no longer see the light of the fire? Why didn't she remain calm like in every other stressful situation she went through?

Lester Langley. He was why. He had made her flee her family once before, and now, indirectly, he had made her do it again. But why? The single-worded question took a thousand forms in her mind. Why did he have such control over her after so long? Why couldn't she hear his name without freezing up and returning to the state of mind she held as a seven-year-old being chased through the desert until the bottoms of her feet were worn to the bone and her heartbeat was visible through her protruding ribcage? Why did she care who worked for him if they didn't directly take part in the destruction of her home life? Why did she care so much when Sly was only trying to admit his wrongdoings and make amends with someone affected by the orders of a man powerful enough to erase the existence of anyone who disobeyed him?

She paused her wandering, shifting focus onto herself.

How could she have been so consumed by emotion to blindly walk into the blackened desert without food, water, or a method to find her way back when she got lost? Her thoughts came to her only as questions, but there were no answers to be found in the landscape of her mind, nor in the landscape of dust around her. The dunes were quiet and left her with only her own thoughts to fill the silence. Her shadow was her only companion out here and even that seemed to be fading under the harsh sunlight. The heat made her sway like a blade of grass influenced by the wind, but as she stood motionless, no breeze passed over her.