The Girl Who Kept Running

13. The Girl With A Nocturnal Life

24 September, 2050

She shot up on the bed, her back ramrod straight. 

It was pitch black. Or her eyes weren't opening. 

She touched her face, reached her eyes and made sure they were open. 

It was spooky. She felt like she was hung in an abyss. Her heart was racing, then sweat began streaming down her back. 

An eerie feeling plunged in her bowels: she was not anywhere she was supposed to be. 

Hell, she wasn't even sure if it was her or just a surreal avatar of her 15-year-old self that her traumatized limbic system kept resuscitating time and again.

***

10 June, 2047

She was hiding in the closet and trembling. The fight had spilled into the room through the splintered door. 

Fuddy was losing the fight. She could tell. He was no match to anyone with his paunch and that loose roll of fat around his neck. She started smelling blood. 

It had been going like a regular evening. TangoCard, Fuddy's work contact and friend would be visiting in a while. She hurriedly washed the remaining dishes, put the food away and set the table for the celebration. Fuddy was going to attempt to ease tensions, convince Tango his served up tissue-donors would be par with PetriGrow standards.

She went to the only room and locked the door inside. Fuddy had graciously offered it to her with the bed and the closet, and moved his stuff out into the living area when she'd arrived six months ago. She had the chain-lock installed the next day.

She quickly set up the table for study and turned off the lights. 9pm was always company time for Fuddy and she had no wish to discover or be discovered. The room had always been off limits to visitors anyways. 

She tried to delve back into 10th grade algebra but couldn't. The light of the red-shaded lamp fell on the lower half of Cecilia's framed face. That was Fuddy's sister, kidnapped at nineteen, twelve years ago. Mutilated parts were found dumped months later miles away from home, identified by the distinct tattoos.

Fuddy had given his sister's nickname Cecil to her and respected her boundaries from day one. She had asked permission to keep Cecil as an alias - staying anonymous was a priority now - and he didn't mind. She enrolled in the local school as his niece and erased her v-space. There were always rumors that the thing could never be permanently deleted but she had paid a hacker to do it for sure. This after getting two local jobs, one after school hours, and another on weekends. Fuddy's community connections had proven useful there.

TangoCard had arrived by now and the night would be getting boisterous. Inside, she sincerely hoped things would go well, but Tango's voice got higher as the celebration went and took an a sharper edge. She pushed away her workbook in unease and picked up her phone. 

She had already destroyed her old 5G by submerging it in vinegar for three days after a farewell message to Vera on arrival. Her new phone was old school - no AI, Virtual Reality Operating System, or holograms, and hopefully no built in sitting-duck vulnerability. A basic WiFi-limited Smart, that's all. She learned the ways of darknet and made new accounts on two ancient haunts with one leg down in onionland: an old email server that won't die off and the resurrected Twitter. All the in-crowd had long moved from either and she felt safe. Vera obliged her by joining Twitter at last so they could stay connected. 

There wasn't any tweet or DM today from Vera so she tried to get into the world of Scott, Jem and Boo Radley but the ghosts in the real world called. TangoCard sounded openly disruptive now, names and expletives galore with some pushing around. Concerned, she shot up and glued herself to the door, when she heard a low thud with Fuddy exclaiming: “I bought it for you, Tang”.