101 Writing Prompts

#5. Lowlife

Prompt: The streets weren't safe after dawn.

The streets weren't safe after dawn.

Cam knew it, but she was hungry, like after Mrs. Hammond fed her stone-cold soup and insisted it was filling but just made her all open on the inside. Mrs. Hammond liked to pretend she was a Missus, but Cam knew that no Daddy in his right mind would marry her if she fed him open-up soup for dinner, so she just called herself a Missus and got Cam instead.

It was so cold outside that she almost couldn't feel her nightgown swishing about her ankles, but she didn't mind. Cold was good, said Mrs. Hammond. Cold meant goblins and ghosties wouldn't eat her up like open-up soup, when she was the most hungry. Cam didn't care about goblins or ghosties – or maybe she did a little bit. She called out for them before walking into the alley, but no one called back, and she checked extra careful behind the bins before diving into them.

The bins always had food, better than open-up soup, crescent moons of bread and strips of tough meat and sometimes a little candy in its wrapper, and it smelled like what Cam thought heaven might smell like, all light and breathy and sweet. Mrs. Hammond liked the other kinds of things in the trash cans, especially the bottles, which she drank up and then sniffed and sniffed until her big long nose got tired and she threw the bottles out the windows. She told Cam that was what heaven smelled like to her, but Cam thought heaven wasn't bitter and sour and it didn't make your eyes sting. Heaven was a little pink-and-blue wrapper. But Mrs. Hammond didn't care what Cam thought, and she kept sniffing the bottles like a big ol' hound dog and told Cam to go away whenever she got too close and hiccoughed a lot.

But Cam didn't care about the steadily rising sun, or the slightest change in warmth in the temperature, because her grimy nightgown pockets were full of dented fruit and tips of meat and wilted vegetables to make the open-up soup a little better, and she didn't care until someone stepped into the alleyway.

She was only four, but she knew what scared was and she could feel it when she heard the steps in the alleyway. The only people who came to the bins were the people who filled them right at the start of the nighttime, when it was safe to go out again, and once a big stripey old cat who had sat on top of the bins and purred when Cam got real close. She had pet his long fur with her dirty hands and he didn't even mind, but whenever she touched Mrs. Hammond's things she would swoop down and snatch up her hand and huff and puff like a broken locomotive. But this person was too big to be a cat, and didn't have any hair at all except for three wispy wavy lines that stuck out from the top of his head like grass. It was so silly it almost made Cam laugh, and she wasn't scared anymore.

"Are you a goblin or ghostie? I didn't think Mrs. Hammond was being 'onest about them..." She had learned a lot about 'onesty over the years, and Mrs. Hammond said she was always 'onest. Cam didn't believe her, though.

"I think you're a ghostie. Because your hair floats up, all like that." Her hands were full of scraps, otherwise she would have stuck her hair up to show the ghostie how funny he looked.

The person at the end of the alleyway was still, though. Cam took a step closer, her foot splashing in a puddle that made her toes feel frozen.

"Mrs. Hammond says ghosties are bad, but you don't seem so mean, Mister. Where do you live? Do you like the sunlight too? Mrs. Hammond says I shouldn't. She says we was born for the dark. But I don't think Mrs. Hammond is being too 'onest. What do you think, Mister?"
The person looked like they were about to speak back to Cam, but then the door to Cam's house was busted open and Mrs. Hammond came out, still wearing her fluffy tiger robe and snatched her up in one arm, then slammed the door again with such force that the entire house rattled.