Ashes Of The Phoenix

For a long moment there was nothing but silence, which was interrupted by retreating footsteps.

The girl stood still, waiting, ready to pick up any noise that came from outside, and after several minutes she became convinced that the boy had left. She returned to the ritual he had interrupted and grabbed the basket with the dirty dishes, and then she slid the safety bolt, opened the door and checked that there was no one in the foyer.

She glanced around and jumped when she saw the sudden flash of two reflecting circles in a corner of the foyer. For a second she thought it was a cat, but the two circles were too large to belong to a domestic feline. She took a better look and saw the boy she bumped into at the market, sitting in a corner with his head between his knees: the reflection came from the goggles he was wearing. Beside him he had two big overflowing shopping bags.

“You’re still here!” She snapped.

The child suddenly raised his head and she recoiled when she saw that his round black eyes also reflected, like those of a cat.

The two studied each other. His face looked like he had just woken up from a deep sleep. She looked at him with a mixture of distrust and fear, and her hand was ready to pull out the knife. “Just to frighten him,” she thought.

The boy stood up, rubbing his eye. “Hello” was the only word that came out of his mouth, and then he stood waiting for an answer.

“What are you still doing here?” She asked, after a careful scrutiny.

The brat then picked up the bags at his feet. “The food, remember? I brought you something to eat!”

“I’ve already eaten, now shove off! I’ll walk you out” she answered, regretting that last sentence as soon it came out.

“Never be too kind,” she chided herself making her way out of the hallway.

From the foyer to the front door, the girl could not help but think about that strange situation. Once they reached the main door she turned to the child and, with a nonchalant tone she asked: “How much stuff did you buy at that market?”

“The bare minimum for dinner! In this bag...” raising the heavy bag he held in his right hand, the boy explained “... there are all the foods at the base of the food pyramid, and in this other...” he made the same gesture with his left hand “...drinks and juices!”

“The bare minimum? All that stuff would last me for weeks,” she snorted indignantly.

“I also got something for you, you can keep it!” The brat continued undeterred.

After that chatter the girl blurted out: “I don’t want anything from you! May I ask why you followed me here?”

“I’m lost,” he continued, looking at her with those bemused little black eyes that Fade couldn’t stand the sight of “...and when I met you I knew right away that we were alike.” He pointed his finger to her wacky hairdo. “That’s why I followed you.” He concluded.

She gave a sigh of resignation, unsure whether to kick him out or investigate further. Watching him better, that pink bob, those red goggles on his head and that lab coat aroused the desire to learn more about him rather than to get rid of him. “Show me what you’ve got there!” she concluded, trying not to look like a quitter and, gloomily, she returned to the door of her shelter.

“... and don’t touch anything” was the last in a series of recommendations she made to the kid before opening the door to her one room apartment. The boy walked quietly into the room, taking the shopping bags with him. He looked quietly around; his look didn’t reveal any of his impressions on the miserable furniture. He simply put his bags on the ground and waited silently for instructions. The girl came up skating on her rollerblades. “So, what do you have there?”

He sat on the ground between the two bags, and with an excitement he had never shown until then, he began to bring out the products and describe them in detail, setting them all around him:

“Chinese noodles, artichokes in oil, butter, cereal, milk, chocolate snacks, soda, peanuts, potato chips, hamburger buns, pear and apricot juices, hot dogs...”

The girl had already lost the sense of all that was happening and was no longer listening to the long list of products he had bought. She got a tremendous headache, too overwhelmed by that absurd situation and still trying to find out what was wrong with that weird kid.

“And here’s the best!” Cried the boy, standing up and showing her a large bottle full of a dark liquid “Soda made with caramel and food colouring!” Having said that he proceeded to open it, but as soon as he unscrewed the cap, the bottle, evidently shaken for all that time, began to pour out the contents uncontrollably, spraying all around the room.

Fade’s thoughts came to a halt. Wet from head to toe with that sticky liquid and seeing the motionless child who was still holding the despicable bottle in his hand without doing absolutely anything about it, she screamed with a shrill voice to stir him. He winced, as if he had awakened from a spell, but by then the bottle had lost all its contents.

The red-haired girl grabbed the kid by the collar, sodden with the drink, and pushed him out of the door cursing the disaster he had caused. He sat on the ground for a while still holding the empty bottle in his arms while behind him he heard the door being shut by the girl who insulted him, the sound of furniture being moved, and things falling to the floor.

Suddenly the door flew open. Fade angrily handed him a basket of empty bottles and ordered: “Go get some water from the fountain below! Immediately!!” The child didn’t answer, he grabbed the basket and with soggy shoes he started down the dark hallway.

Meanwhile the girl roughly rinsed her hair using the water of some bottles she stored in the bathroom. She hated washing her hair, first because she had to do it with cold water - frozen, in the winter - and secondly because she had to redo her elaborate hairstyle, which was quite challenging especially when she had a headache.

A short time later she heard a shy knock at the door. With her hair wrapped in a towel she went to open it, however, first she made sure it was him. The child entered the room tiredly carrying the basket with the bottles full of water. She seized one giving him instructions: “First take that sponge and wash all the furniture that you have smeared with the damn drink, and when you’re finished take that rag and wash the floor. I’m going to the bathroom to get changed, and don’t try any tricks, if you run away I’ll catch you!”

Having said that, she closed the door behind her leaving the brat alone, who sadly set to work.

Sitting on a rickety cabinet, the girl slowly passed a wet sponge over her fair skin. The contact with the water made her shiver; it had been a long time since the day in which, for the last time, she had had the pleasure to wash with hot water, but she cheered herself up: at least now she knew and appreciated the value of things that she had taken for granted before she had lost them.

For the umpteenth time she went over in her mind the principles on which her existence was based: “I shall steal only the essential to survive, I’ll never despise or waste anything; I’ll reuse things as long as possible...”

Repeating those rules distracted her, allowing her to suffer less from the cold. She now passed the sponge over a long scar on her left leg. As if it was a kind of eerie path, Fade slowed her motions as she followed it; the girl followed the long trail passing over the cross marks of the stitches which had now healed, and in doing so she counted silently: “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven...”. Seven stitches were needed to heal the gash she had been inflicted. “Don’t harm other people’s lives” was the last point of her list, while the cold rivulets dripped from her legs to die in the shower tray.

Once she put the dirty clothes to soak in a bucket, Fade left the bathroom wearing tattered pyjamas and the rollerblades at her feet, to find that everything was clean. That unexpected order made her reflect on the fact that she hadn’t even allowed the child to dry up; she took a better look and noticed that his clothes didn’t look wet, or dirty.

“But how...?”

“It’s a synthetic cloth: it doesn’t get wet nor does it stain” he anticipated her.

She was puzzled, but realizing that it had been quite a while since she had stopped following fashion, she had no arguments to rebut.

“Where are your parents?” She asked finally.

“In a distant country” said the boy vaguely. After a moment of silence, he resumed: “I need to go somewhere, can you help me do it?”

“As long as you get out of here,” she replied disdainfully.

“Alright, now let’s eat something.”

She didn’t like that tone at all, for she found it quite bossy and demanding, but she merely grabbed a couple of packages of food and sat on the bed, which, fortunately, was spared from the earlier flooding.

The child sat on the ground and opened a packet of paprika flavoured crisps.

“He has weird tastes” she thought.

After having eaten a couple of chips, he asked, “What’s your name?”

She hesitated a moment: she was no longer used to confiding in someone, more so with such an unsettling person.

“I no longer have a name in this city. People simply call me Fade.” She answered.

“Then you can call me Jag” said the child, in no way intrigued by the phrase he had just heard.

Another endless silence stretched between the two.

Following the hearty - and high in carbohydrates - meal, Fade stood up and walked to the door; she pulled back the bolt and, with an elegant and sarcastic wave of the hand, she invited him to leave. “You don’t mind sleeping in the lobby, do you? Surely there is no place for you in here!”

“I don’t mind” said the boy standing up and approaching her. “But first,” he paused for a moment, “May I use the bathroom to wash my hands?”