Page 19 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

I had to get out of here. I couldn’t let two men with green wristbands corner me without an escape plan. Especially when I simultaneously salivated like an idiot at one, and my mouth dried out from the revulsion the other provoked in me.

But here he was, possessively throwing his arm around my shoulders. “Pretty, isn’t she? I get bored with the one I have at home, so I come to play with this one.” Suddenly leaning down, he licked my cheek. I recoiled, and his arm tightened, locking me in his hold. Highlighted by an upturned nose, his eyes the color of an early morning sky pinned me. “She likes to fight. Never gives up. You should experience someone like her at least once in your life. Won’t want anything else. Unfortunately, I don’t share. Not my thing.”

“That’s fine. Have fun,” the nasty man said dismissively. Undiluted evil stained his smile as he continued. “Punish her for me. She wasn’t very polite to her superior.”

I snarled, squirming in the stranger’s grasp to wrench away and punch the greasy-haired man’s smirk off his face.

A dangerous voice slithered into my ear. “Play nice. Or I’ll come find you in the middle of the night and do exactly what he said.”

Stilling, I tracked the abomination walking away from us with my teeth bared. The other’s hold on me vanished, and I swiveled around, ready to face the unexpected opponent, but he was gone, already five yards away, sauntering down the busy street, with not a care in the world.

What was that all about?

And who was he?

“Move. You’re in the middle of the sidewalk,” a pedestrian striding past me complained, his tone matching the angry stares from the others. My pulse was beating in my ears so loudly I’d forgotten about the bustle of the street I was in.

I longed to get out. Out of this street, out of this city. But I knew very well that it was impossible now. That sordid night guard wouldn’t let me through anymore. They were completing the changes in the security system today and would track all openings and closings of the gates from now on.

And so, the place where I could breathe, actually breathe, slipped my reach as I became permanently locked behind the city’s wall.

But not for long. I didn’t hope my life would last long once I’d implemented my plan to wipe out our government.

The smell of freshly baked goods traveled up my nostrils, butter and eggs, flour and sugar, and tears threatened to well up at a memory of a flaky cream puff. I couldn’t remember the last time I could afford a pastry. Its cost was my entire day’s pay.

“What would you like?” a woman behind the counter asked the man with a green band at the front of the line.

Hypnotized by the alluring scent, I hadn’t noticed how I came inside the bakery.

Fine. I’d listen to my legs having carried me in here. After my awful first day at work as the Assistant to the Head of Welfare, and the strange encounter mere minutes ago, I deserved to drown myself in sweets. My life was dull enough, with no prospects for improvement.

Someone pushed me from behind, and I barely held my balance not to hit the person in front of me.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I tripped. I didn’t mean to bump into you,” a hollow-cheeked young woman apologized, her hand resting on her slightly rounded belly hidden under a flowing, light pink dress.

Her emerald wristband sparkled in the bakery’s light, and it hit me. She was pregnant. She was so scrawny it was hard to tell.

“Don’t worry about it.” She was so young… She had to be a teenager, or barely out of those years. “Getting something for yourself? Your partner?”

I hoped for the former to be true. The city provided sufficient nutrition for its citizens, and enforced mandatory feeding to the baby-carriers—a weekly injection of nutrients and vitamins—but if you dreamed of a chocolate croissant or a sweet peach? Youhad to pay for it. And if your job was to expand the population, well, you didn’t get paid. Another invisible chain locking you to the city, rendering you incapable of taking care of yourself.

“Just a few things he asked for,” she explained.

That gave me my answer. Her assigned partner had to be starving her. On purpose. As long as she had enough weight to carry out the pregnancy full-term, the city wouldn’t intervene.

I counted up to five and down to calm the rage rising from the depths of my soul. I couldn’t wait to set this damned city aflame.

I exited the bakery with my precious package wrapped in brown paper, a single flaky cream puff, still warm and squishy, like the humid summer air clinging to me and plastering my pale blue uniform shirt to my back, the waist of my loose black pants soaked in my sweat.

Look at us.

The last cities scattered across the continent with a stupid number of offspring from the unfortunate survivors, the majority unable to reproduce. Those who could? The cities like Ilasall controlled them. Day and night, from the moment you were born.

Ilasall, one of the cruelest, testing the young and separating the ones able to have children and not. Imprisoning teenagers in their ostensible schools with no real education. Why would you need it when they viewed you solely as a means to enlarge the population or as an expendable resource?

The only chance at a half-decent life was if your reproductive organs didn’t work properly. Even then, your life was going to be miserable at best.

And yet, most of us didn’t have the courage to end our lives.