Scavenger's Daughter

Scavenger’s Daughter

Published by Owen C. Schultz at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Owen C. Schultz

Cover Photo: istockphoto.com/IgorIgorevich

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Scavenger’s Daughter

A Futuristic Novel for Adults

PART ONE

TOWARD THE ARX

Chapters One through Thirteen

Chapter One

Nunchucking the Old Golly, Anno Dim 2095

It was then New York, and I then Robert by name, when this tale began. Five años from the millenium, we were, and I myself living in a treeless Woodhaven, suffered to seek again my fortune whose fortunes had been made by marriage now sundered. On my lones, like many of the block, who ranked upon spring’s porch unwanted by the cuidad – yet all was smooth for me in disregard.

Where once I’d been a ficial and noted cit, a person of property, then I was without wife and barn, prickled and craven and sore to the touch. I wished least to awaken, being in dross and crumbled as were my peers of the strauss, wanting most a discrete finish to which none could point and say, There another cobarde better off for his loss. Por sepuesto, all I did was toward that end.

Main, I fended poor and watched the viddy noche and dag, dreadful. Which was how the old golly and his daughter came to me, and awoke me to pestuous life.

It started with a screamer in the strauss, a kind of older gentle down on his marbles, familiar to we of urban ilk. I was in my blued-out room gazing at shows, tired out from hunting a stint of arbeter, some remunerative labor to keep the edges of poverty sewn tilsammans, some income to keep the flapping of outcast wings at bay. Wanting nothing in the way of interaction with my slummy neighbors, who’d trade the bones of their favorite doggone for transient pleasure, there I was, as millions were, part of the woeful communion, sitting placid and blipped, waltzing the cathodes around and around the dear little roomer I called home.

I recall like my first feel of tit what show was blipped then toward my inattention: it was a newsy retro. I see him still, a true unctuous slicker lipping more of the infogluttonous in all our porches simultaneous, recalling the past bygone of the same day twenty five years ago, fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, and such like. His show was meant to affirm the bounding gentility of our nowness, the un-darwinian inevitable progress which had brought us all into such stateliness: how bumbled our forefathers, how bright the lights of today -- how dim and drudged it had been, how stirling the present toothed grin.

Whereupon, in order to thrust home the punta, to make the point about how better and bigger now than then, the slicker recalled us all to the same past March thirteenth in the ack emma, where at 38 Kew Gardens in Queens, my own Borough of the City of New York, Catherine Geneovese was slashed innumerable with keen edges, stroke, stroke, ‘thousand, hundred twenty-five years ago, whilst her hellish pleading, outright dreadful screaming to all her kith and surrounds that she was being murdered brought narry a person to her aid.

Fenster’s dranged closed around her, to cut the sound from they ear, dred as nasty’s work was today. None, I thought, hinder the nasty in the strauss from they work, even now, so where was the change? Except that the upper mids and ficials were safe from drubbing, I realized. Only the poverish beat upon the poverish, slash and drab, while the minion keep all guarded for the rico... that was the difference. The richers were protected.

Directly on the thews of that mordant reminisce, the slicker proceeded to recall the opening of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge of the same year, arcing like spread smooth legs of a dancer between Brooklyn and Staten Island. He made sly comment about how the founding Dutch of Neuva York would have been astounded by the feat, unimaginable.., then snappy segued into greasy presience of the future, how in the third millennial it would be endearing and tepid to look back upon us hambled folk, and feel the rage of progress across the bosom of the Hudson, the calm and curing waters of the world, and such like mumbo-junk, meant to assuage.

But the Kew Gardens grimtale seated itself within my mind, taking intractable residence, and would not cease even when the slicker intoned onward about other occurs of that same year, low-so-long-ago and hoary. For instance, he said that the year was also the birth of zip codes by postal cervix, a digit now long enough to catalog all the stars in the night-time sky.

Yet I could not disremember her unattended murder among plenty, our kind hiding away and watching the warble of the cathode that night as well, watching the newsys report the folding of the Studebaker-Packard outfit, smiling at the last words from Sproul Hall at UCAL/Berkeley by the free speech movement. I who had lately been rico himself saw good reason for the impover upon my block to be safe as well, and that it was not right.

There I was, therefore, primed by the pump of remorse and embarrassment at our craven, how one among us could die at length without rousing another to action, thinking what matters whether the bridge was 4,260 feet from end to end, from massive pediment to pediment, whether it rose starling to the night sky, gave succor to wary steamers bowing metallic across the Atlantic?

When another scream in real-time, aside my own actual doorway, likened immediately to the Kew Gardens warble, rattled the ground-floor pains of my poor home, a place off the street and subject to all invidious assault to the olfactories, to the auditories.

And was that not a warble from fear, I will testify true. Punctuated as if some limb struck a drum of flesh, I could hear over and beyond the program on the cathodes this high fearful pitching about, a search by the narrow throat of an old un for the perfect pitch, Ahhhhhh, then a thump on the drum of flesh, then another Ahhhhh, and finally a rousing series of yips like a youngest pup stepped upon.

Primed, as I said, by the newsy of twenty-five years ago, I waited not upon the resolution of my fellow, scabrous as they were and probably glomming upon another channel of professional wrestle wherein such antic is applauded -.- yet none can say it has no ill effect upon the massives watching, others how could I have been moved to such alacrity by the poor piteous in the strauss, wailing and being beat about the cuerpo, and he the only one to open door wide, to switch upon the street the wattage of my own house current, the safety bubbles which never burned for penury, but which I readily flashed that even, sending lumens aplently across the cracked and bruising walkways of the cuidad?

Directly align with the light, in the bay of my place in the world, I saw both victim and victimizer, startled by the lightning of the bubbles casting a bright revelatory over them both.

A hambled old gent was being struck, rheumy and wizen, shrunk by drug and mystery of past years. He was holding lean arms ahead, bending to knee, and bloodied about fiercely with carnadines. He wept too, over the rugged pave; over-all his klader, sweat-smelling garb from the missions, was overcome with gore from his poverish beat head.

Next to him, Verrazano over Staten, was this nasty with nunchucks, tool of eastern dire, who swung a carnadined whipping chain through the airwaves, drumming upon the old uns cabeza, his naked and running skull. The nasty was mightily lusting and breathing as if in sex, thrusting the twinned pikes of the chuck, linked with steel, whizzing around in the yellow lumen, giving blast and dent, only to rebound again over the nasty’s shoulder, coming down and biting with hard ash and brutal chain upon the drum of age kneeling at my doorway.

The burst of light had coned the night, cutting both figures out intaglio, sending the balance of the strauss into dimness and distance, as if no other existed but your author, recalling Catherine, seeing the plain and horrid plight of a fellow creature in need, as I myself might be in need when past the primes and descending unto the harsh pillow of softened bones.

Thinking no more of the pellegro, of the danger to myself as would a hound protecting master, I ran off the porchway and across the burned and cankered grass of the patched lawn, heading straight at the nasty and comminating fearful, as vox’d as I could, meaning to scare and cease at whatever cost, but it is told that character is for testing. There was truly a voice glooming down upon me saying at least not this time unassisted.

I leapt forward to the nasty, who whirled nunchucking in my direction as if practiced in the gymnasium, as if he had expected intercession foreward or to the rear. He swung the chain and ash toward my legs as I kicked out and upward, putting all of the weight behind I had garnered over thirty years chowing.

The kick, aimed torso hard as I could, took him truly, with my own pride I must say so, took him fairly in the neck and head, coming up under the slather of his jaw, snapping backward his cabeza as he had been snapping the old un’s, and he went gravity for me, angry and snarl of expression. Falling downward, he crack me a chuck upon the shin as a weak remembrance, which hurt ganglionic but proudly for I had done my stuff unaided by the forces of order.

After the nasty had been dispatched, I turned to the old golly kneeling upon the sprinkled street. The piteous outlook of the old un glazed upward, ruby from his thin scalp to his tremble chin, all broken about the tooth and crooked. But I was able, under all the goring he’d suffered, to see him heaving a small confused gratitude at me in the cone of light from my porches, knowing he’d survived by my grace of intervene.

Proud, that is it, how I began to feel fast in the moment. Without thinking,

thankful even that I had not thought deep and opportunist about the matter, but jumped in along the path of righteous, I had saved the old golly from fate, sent the nasty to sick rest upon the strauss, and saved our block from Kew and other slander.

I bent forward, feeling the chock to my leg the nasty had delt me, the tender blueing of vessel and drummed meat upon myself from a glance of the chuck, and wondered how the old un could live with so much nunchuck going on about him, and actually, for one of the few times in my livlihood, felt pity for the man and his time.

We rose, wavering from the moment on my part, and from the wounds upon his, and headed houseward. His brogans upon the walk were smoothed at heel and toe from strolling bleak, his breathing rankled through the night afume, Sheep mated upon his long coat even in the crisp March night, wool and rutting and odor following as lambs to us, herding him to the doorway and the safety of a call to order.

He made whistle though broken denti and swollen tongue, coughing bits of bloodied upon himself, along with drool from eyes and tooth—cut lips, but he kept his feet down and upward, bent at the knees but making way toward my poor roomers.

When of a sudden, out of the cone of night, came a gristle hoard hid among steps. They were ten dim flits of cits, uneasy on the lid, each horrific and bale, who’d waited down stinkholes to watch their mate do the nasty upon the old un originally, as if a program for the night I then supposed.

But then nothing but fear I knew, and the old golly too, for he began to say again, Ahhhh, Ahhhh, even though no one struck a blow, nor raised an arm against us, but gathered in the cone of light with their fearful manos holding one weapon after another, a collection of beaters and slicers, bats and blades I had rarely seen in time before.

They drew to the light slowly, with beating of leather wings, the slither of chaining. Of both sexes they were, man and boy, woman and girl, all armored and made as if for war across the face with paint of lurid hue, hissing at us as snakey as doom, ten together.

I looked from left to right, and began to scream aloud in supplication to my neighbors and kin living on the block. I dragged the old un to my thick door and pushed him through, wherein he fell with a spraying of blood from his hands and face upon the cotton carpet, filthy from dust and detritus from the stone curb. With clever mixed notion I sprang the lock upon the door, so that it would bar entry as soon as I passed through. Yet one of the slither managed to hook a cruel curved blade through the lower of my leg, directly where the muscle leads mythological to the heel, and drew me backwards screaming, I admit.

Painful is a word for the bathroom and razor-nick; this slicing of the blade through the narrow and bared tender of my leg, pulling me backward even as I stepped forward, Waring dismemberment and cripple if I moved forward, dropping me to my patelas as had the old golly upon my own porch, under my own light.., that was otherwise, otherwold. Someone, I thought, has to see, under my light, this noxious grouping, armed and playfully mortal to me, drug as an oxen upon a hook back toward the strauss, screaming aloud for help.

Another reached upward with a panga, steel brilliant in the light, and swift as falling in a dream, broke out the lamp and sent us into dark. The old un inside the doorway rose on one elbow, glazed again at the pile of munkers in the portal, and slammed the door to with his broken peds, he with his old shoes and weakened gam. He shut me out together in the bathybic, underneath the tide of malicious over me.

They held me fast, then carried the nasty I had triumphed from the walkway where his gums revolved in his head, blitzing his brain. They brought him still dragging his nunchuck by the paw as a gelid hands in death, all the way to the porch under the shadow of my roomers, out of the faint street light, to stand over me weaving, snuffling through a ruined nose.

Braver, he lubbed to me through his mouth where booted by myself, gaping and rent as trenched men under fire. Surprised by his culturo voicebox, by the suave remaining even under the painful dunting of his throat and uppers, I glozed up at him myself, feeling one with the old man and for a moment not blaming least his closing the doorway in the face of such pellegro.

He’s a braver from the streets, we applaud, don’t we all? he asked his fellows, who snickered like power, hefty kilowatts of main line. We’s see that, certain, he’s a braver, saving the old cunt from a little work, see? Except for old golly’s own good, it was, and here’s one who’s spaniard us, even well meaning.

All the snickpaint made his cara deft but difficult for me, shadowed in wraths, who could not see how it was for the old golly’s good at all, except an old un like pains, which they are replete anners.

And see, how others come upon us, here, who were hid. Eh, cits? He asked the nine around me, who glozzed about, indeed seeing more come, yet togged in kiader of different hue. So now he’s in place, so to say. Now, no harm’s in him, but we’ve no choice, as is writ. Otherwise, he say to me, explicate softer, they’ll be upon you dire, with not corazon for your plight, which I did not ken, not at all.

Back we’ve come, he yell, loud for all to hear, gather nine and then fifteen more, mayhap, in shadow. How much better, he said to me, bending downward in my face, gaping toothy and sly, to have a man about the house!

So saying, they spread me upon the wooden slats, tongue and groove, with each standing rude boots upon my hands and upon my feet, bending them foreward with cracking and pain.

Sorry I is, cit, for this, he say sotto to me, my limb creak, but mix you would, ignorant.

First, and oh I shall never leave it, the nasty outs with his whizzer and wets me down, a urinous arc through the dark upon my own cuerpo, soaking my klader in his own villainous piss, my face and even into my mouth, batted open with a nobbed club by a young girl to one side. Oh, God, I screamed, over and over, even inhaling his water into my lungs, spitting and drowning upon the hateful rising within. After bladdered out, still in a circle as an early devoted gather, they slipped together over me, deciding what should follow upon the piss toward my person, craven as craven, and not a light upon the block, no rescuing coming from any other doorway, even for all my yelling and fear.

The old un watched through the plate of the portal, one hand on the proofed glass, but made not a move to phone or open, nor any other motion I could take hope from.

It dries, see, the nasty said to his fellows, and all’s gone. This, he said, prodding me, has given me a nose for weeks, bent and whistling side to side. Braver, he deserves a mark for braver, and to eat and sleep with hereafter. Agree?

All gathered in the circle agreed, as if a behavior in code was consulted, and they lived by the word of some document.

Walking? he asked them. What do you say to walking?

Several grunted affirmation, saying yeas over the body of mine, intoned.

Then walking still it is, I agree. See now, conspicuous I want it to be, and therefore, it’s... he said, looking from one to another, clever. They waited out a silence, turning to the youngest, a girl of perhaps eighteen, with raw leather and breasts like dovers showing, curples bulged and tight under the skins, with broad eyes truly beautiful but unwashed.

"It’s mine,