Ruby turned out the light and drew back the thick, dirty brown curtain carefully as it rested on the wobbly iron rod before throwing herself in the bed.

As night fell, the beautiful moonlight penetrated their gloomy room through a small window that provided a contrasting view of the stinking garbage bins and shabby-looking ragpickers. Two creaky wooden beds, a wardrobe tilted against the corner of the room for support, one induction plate for cooking, and a toilet with a petered-out water supply were their major problems. Still, they were breathing. Breathing the air of monarchism under Madame Tào's slavery kingdom.

She was going to jump on Emily's bed with eager approval. But rather toppled over something smack-dab in the middle, and ended up like an egg benedict with sprawled legs and hands on the vinyl flooring.

"You must have accidentally stumbled over the bedpan. Look up." It was a trickle of water leaking from the roof which was to become a pond after six hours. Emily stretched her muscles casually as she helped her friend to climb her bed.

However, this accident bashed the exciting part straightaway as despondency ran over Ruby's face. "I hate my life! This stupid bedpan and more importantly this stinky rat-size room!"

Emily bit her lower lip as she didn't expect Ruby to go into an unsettling tailspin. Instantly, she pulled Ruby into a hug. And a few seconds later, Ruby was a crying mess. "Emily, I want to know why they brought me into this world when they were to abandon me. Without even showing their faces they disappeared from this world. What sort of punishment is this?"

Leaving behind the sign of their twenty-year-old breathing sin . . . that was Ruby. She didn't have a clue about her parents, and although she believed that she had no place for them in her heart, still wanted to see them just once.

For all these years, Ruby had buried her tethered soul under a facade of a happy-go-lucky girl.

"They must have had their problems, one can only guess. Ahh, Ruby come off it. Can we please change the subject and talk about that handsome guy you met at the party? Or do you want to go back to your bed? Decide." Emily pushed Ruby's shoulders violently before wiping her tears softly as she tugged her closer again. This was their bond.

A pang of heaviness naturally inclined her head toward Emily's shoulder and rested there for a while.

Ruby rubbed her half-swollen eyes, clearing her throat. "What do you wanna talk about him?"

"Like . . . did he lend you his umbrella?" Emily's sweet voice traveled into her ears. She came closer to Ruby, swiping her tongue across her lower chapped lip as she uttered, "And stop crying, you are not a kid anymore."

Making a squealing sound, she flapped her hands. "Yes, I did meet him and, even got under his umbrella. He escorted me to the place."

"Woah, so you knew him."

"I was mad taking care of my dress in that rain ─ got no time to study a stranger's face," Ruby explained, shaking her hand.

She would have hardly closed her eyes when somebody's frequent knocks on the door caused her to sigh and pull the blanket over her sleepy head, for she was not in the mood to attend to anyone.

"Like always, it should be Madame Tào with a flat envelope of today's earnings," Emily calmly asserted after looking through the peephole. She warned Ruby to act asleep and not to pick a fight with the miser.

Emily opened the door. Madame Tào's boring voice rang in her ears like sirens. "Take this. I can't see Ruby. Where is she?" Madame Tào handed over two flat envelopes just as stated by Emily, and peered inside only to find Ruby lying on the bed peacefully (not exactly). Emily closed the door after bidding her good night.

A couple of minutes later, again a chain of knocks caused Emily to retract her steps and open the door. She found the same pale, double-chinned face of Madame Tào, keeping both her hands on the waist. Her skeptical eyebrows shot up. "Who was the man Ruby was talking to?"

Upon hearing that, Emily felt a twinge of terror shooting up her spine. "Uh, just a random folk . . . simply liked our performance and sang appreciations. Nothing much."

"These appreciations are of zero value when one doesn't bring any business."

Ruby could hear all of it so clearly under her blanket, that her ears started to bleed with anger. But a sudden mention of that man amid a conversation had her rolling her eyes for the millionth time.

Ruby didn't hold back her fury and that's why she flung off her blanket to the side, storming toward the door. "You should get this problem fixed first." Ruby flew a hand toward the utensil that had been water-filled to a little finger length.

Madame Tào's face twisted at the sight and once again brought out her iron-willed side in light. She left and Ruby stood watching her go farther and farther away until her head appeared pint-sized.

"Did you see that bitch's attitude?" Ruby said, opening her mouth in disappointment.

Emily nodded helplessly. "Forget her. You, I, and Layla are going to have an eat-out tomorrow. Yes! There is this person who sells hot and spicy chicken nuggets down the alley. You will love it." She raised a high five and Ruby snatched her envelope from her hand.

She stooped down to change into her sneakers and wore her long denim long coat that was hanging on a feeble nail sprouted from the wall. "I'm going for a run, will be back in ten minutes."

"Just don't go far in the dark areas. It's unsafe for the girls." Emily waited on the door until Ruby swaggered down the staircase.

Ruby's hand was warming up inside her coat's pocket with money. She wanted to smoke a cigarette, a bad habit that she had picked recently and the only thing she had kept from Emily.

She sat on the armrest of a dusty sofa in the deep alley, deliberating pushing back the thought of violating Emily's mandate. Several other retarded items surrounded her densely. Her thin fingers slid into the sofa cushion and she impressively lit it with her lighter.

She was fascinated watching how easily the polluted balls of tobacco mixed into the tepid air. In between taking the long and hungry drag of it, she wilted and began coughing hard. Her eyes were hanging from their sockets; She was guilty of complicity. "Argh, it was almost going to choke me to death." She pulled out her tongue in distaste.

At another moment, something thwacked near the street pole against the metal shade tilted on the bricked wall, and she got frightened, standing in the pose of a surfer, "Oh-Jesus-save-me."

It turned out to be a dog whose ribs were subtle, staring at her from afar and going on his mission to find a mouse or something.

She grew agitated and tossed the middle-finger-sized burning cigarette in the crushed tin trash can that was lying horizontal, and decided to walk home.

She would have hardly come out of the alley and was only a dozen-long- stride away from her destination when she heard a livid man's loud moans erupting and breaking the dull ambiance of the area. He was sitting on the bench with a MacDonald dinner box. "Lovely taste! I wonder how will I finish this whole meal."

Ruby gulped thickly, reveling in the white sauce trickling from between his fingers, and the crunchy noise of spinach crushing underneath his teeth.

"It's getting messier," he laughed, enticing interest in her. "But I'm lovin' it."

She rubbed her abdomen as her eyes overstayed the burger because the man's half-face was covered in a hat. A cryptic thought tacitly ordered her to grab the other burger wrapped in brown paper and sprint to the underground parking area of their building.

Suddenly, the man resigned himself to finishing that whole item up. He rubbed his fingers with tissue paper and kept his leftover burger inside the paper bag. He stood up to make a call. Ruby discerned that there was enough food inside and she looked up at the man who walked a little farther from that bench.

Ruby wanted the man to remain as it is; as she was obsessed with the insanely juicy image of that burger and had made up her mind to change its ownership status.

She cast a glance at him without actually mapping out the essential: how, where, and when ── she bound ahead as silently as she could. His back faced her and it provided her succor. Just as she sensed him returning to get what was initially his, Ruby swooped down the package and took on her heels.

"Hey! Hey! You thief!" His foot screeched at the surface.

She suppressed herself from yelling out the thrilling pleasure of getting helluva chased, for she believed she had a cutting edge over him by knowing all the zigzag routes and hideouts in that area. She leaped over the hood of a small, rusted, bared car in the alley, and snapped her head to see him struggling to get past it.

"Wait! You- I can't get past this shit-"

Ha, ha . . .

She smirked at her supremacy until she realized he had found his footing in the dark. She sped down the underground parking area, dumping the packet in the opposite direction. It was pitch dark and there were all sorts of dirty Toyotas and vans parked next to each other. She harbored some relief as she quickly hid behind a huge black pickup truck in the first row, and breathed heavily.

She constantly protruded her head for the man, planning to engage him in the burger's smell while she skipped her way out.

But he didn't come. She was now getting scared.

After ten minutes she emerged in the light, feeling tension-free. "Oh, shit. I was going to lose you, my baby." And decided to take the long way home by picking up the packet. Then she heard someone's equally tired breathing sounds; it became clearer as she stayed frozen to the spot.

"Ah, are we done with the cop and thief game? I sorta need to see ─" The man had only extended his hand when she darted forward.

He stumbled on his heels and managed to pull her hoodie with a vice clutch. In warding odd his attack, Ruby lost her balance. And just as she skidded on the greasy patch, she dug her fingers into his biceps, taking him with her.

And the man had placed his arm under her head inadvertently to avoid gifting her a concussion.

Boom.

Their soaring hot breaths fanned each other's faces once he lifted his face from her chest. Ruby was sure as hell that she had seen these black irises before. So, she removed his hat slowly.

"Are you dogging me?!"

On cue, a pair of mini headlights of a car from above the slope basked them in its warmth; the couple screwed their eyes at the beaming light.

The car honked at them again.

****

Her interest in knowing him took a second place, as Ruby swiveled her head toward him, flipping her hair back angrily. "This place is damn worsening with just anyone cramming in here," she uproared, trying to undermine the cause of their meeting. She didn't want him to judge her by her drab outfit and tendency to steal things, solely because he had seen her dressed beautifully at the party earlier. "What are you doing here? You stalker."

"No, no-no. I'm not stalking you." Joseph wanted to guise their meeting as pure happenstance. "I think we were destined to run into each other."

"Just go! You have already caused an unnecessary spark in Madame Tào's mind. What if she was in that car? You know how miserably shaken I was," she relented and looked around with growing alarm, the fear of the third pair of eyes caused a lump in her throat.

"But, she was not."

"Stop following me around. This locality isn't safe. You don't know who pounces on you from anywhere, chops your body into pieces, and dumps you into the garbage box. It's dangerous. Really dangerous."

Without taking notice of her anxiety, he walked abreast of her and scrutinized the decaying three-story building with grudging interest. "Indeed, these buildings look very dangerous ─ over fifty years old or something. And, God forbid, this rain can collapse them for sure. It isn't safe for you either."

She was exasperated and narrowed her eyes at him. "You see this leg. It's completely flexible." She dangled her leg and then rotated her head. "And there are zero neck injuries. I've survived in this place for about a decade and will continue until I die. Surprisingly, I'm a fine single piece. No fixations anywhere." Not that she'd ever tell him about the dilapidated condition of their room and its ceiling which only ebbed the chances of seeing the other dawn to gain his sympathy. And more practically, it was way better to have a place to hide their heads than to live in homeless encampments and fall prey to prostitution, rapes, assaults, needles, drugs, and feces.

"Well, I think you are talking with the right person," he said, and Ruby slowed down to a halt. She gave an expression of confusion. "I work as a personal assistant of Katherine Warner. You must have heard her name right?"

"No."

"Maybe watched a clip of her on any news channel?"

"Depends on the TV signals. But not a big fan of watching the news."

"Then you must have met someone who would have told you about her."

"There's no someone besides, Emily."

"Maybe on your phon--"

"Hey- just stop."

"Okay, no problem. I think you can buy one with your money. Not just a phone, but even move out of this grody place to a decent suburban house."

"Ah, stop making fun of me, will you?" In her attempt to dissemble her desire to live in a posh condo ─ one of her many desires, she wore a carefree expression, inserting her fingers in her tight jeans' back pockets.

"My Boss is throwing a party this Saturday. She has friends in high places. And guess what? I'm in charge of organizing everything. I can help you earn some decent money."

"But why me?"

"Hmm, I just took a look around myself and realized there's someone who deserves to benefit from this gig."

She addressed him, without glancing at him. "You have a great skill of making a complicated situation look more simple and real. But, sir, I've got a chain of problems attached to me. Wherever I go, they make a very loud sound."

"What are your problems?"

"Actually, my entire life is a disappointing problem. Are you sorry you asked?" She was convinced he was ready to jump ship.

But to her surprise, he said, "Lay it on me. We could meet in some nice place tomorrow. I'm ready to hear you."

"Don't follow me around since you got my answer," she insisted and turned her back on him and continued walking with a pretentious disinterest. She mumbled in a virulent tone, sparing a last glance over her shoulder, "I can't understand why is he gunning for me. Just go and find someone else."

"Your financial stars are strong! You just have to state the amount and she will pay you. I'm acting as a mediator, Ruby," he exclaimed and helplessness echoed into the airless night.

Surprisingly, she wasn't attracted to the prospect of earning more money, but there was a sudden pain in his voice that caused her to confront him.

"Don't shout in here and . . . and why are you at pains to help me?" She closed the distance and looked into his eyes darkly. "What are your plans, Joseph?"

He tried not to give any signs of back-and-forths, instead, peeped over her head. "He's the same man who misbehaved with you right? Why is he out in this dark hour?"

Her breath hitched as he saw Horan talking to a man representing his troop right at the entryway of the building. His body was sidewards, and he was getting his cigarette lighted up by another man's lighter. She sheltered herself after dashing toward the doggy gap between two buildings.

With his hands in his pants pocket, Joseph jutted his feet up to avoid falling into a pothole of dirty water that could harbor the Great White Shark. There were wire meshes above their heads. He waited for her answer standing in the face of rubbish dumps.

She jumped in her place, sticking out her head to see if he was going inside. "Fuck, what time is it?" She grabbed his hand savagely.

Joseph nodded after cross-checking. "8: 13 to be exact. What's wrong? By the way who's he? And why are you getting so tensed?"

"Why can't you just leave? You bring me such bad luck," she spat.

"Let me tell you one thing if I go from here, no one is going to save you from that man or whoever is the big straw." Suddenly, Joseph placed a hand on the decrepit wall and pulled out his phone. "Phone number."

Ruby rolled her eyes and snatched it from his hand. "Now. Help me."

He smiled and told her to hide behind a van parked across the street as he strode toward Horan to trap him in his ruse. A little while later, Joseph showed him a hand and the two men rolled down onward. Ruby raised her head slowly and watched them move past the van which provided her a shield. Soon, she sprinted through the entryway with only her toes touching the surface.



Word count - 2700

a/n; Poor chap 😥

Plz don't be a silent reader, I want to know your views on my writing style, storyline, and my characters.