Authors: Sam Kepfield
Pygmalion Unbound (16 page)
This morning, though, there had been a small envelope under her door, with her name printed in an elaborate feminine cursive. She opened it, and found a greeting card with a photo of three kittens on it. Inside, the same elegant script:
Alannah;
Thank you so much for teaching me what I needed to live. I know what I have to do now. I will always remember you, and love you. Maybe when it is safe I will visit you.
PS — give Tigger and Tallulah and their momma my love.
There was no signature, but then she didn’t need one. It was postmarked from Kansas City. Three days ago.
Kelly sat back. Tears began rolling down her cheeks, tears of relief, joy, but also loss.
“You’re finally human, honey. God be with you.”
22
Epilogue — Six Months Later, Lawrence, Kansas.
Another night sitting on the sidewalk, dirty bucket hat on the sidewalk in front of her holding an assortment of crumpled bills and coins. “Spare some change?” she asked a well-heeled well-fed young couple in khaki and earth tones who ignored her.
Assholes
,
don’t know what it’s like,
she thought, but she knew what it was like to be them, had been them a few years ago before the accident that left steel rods in her back and the hunger for the pills to kill the pain that remained after the prescription and the money ran out and then the pharmacopoeia turned to the illicit and the long slide began, turning a hopeful premed into a dirty street beggar.
I wouldn’t have paid attention to me either
, she thought, watching the couple recede, focusing her attention on a couple of new prospects, who passed her by, and then an attractive woman, dressed in khaki shorts, sandals and a brief top walking towards her.
“Spare some change, ma’am?”
The woman sat down on the concrete, leaned against the brick wall. “You look like you need more than that.”
“Just the change is fine.”
“Where do you stay?”
“Around.”
“Where’s around?”
“Where I can. Last night was in an abandoned house with some dude gave me some pills. Maybe again tonight if I hook up with him.”
“Sounds like a real bag of nails. You deserve better.”
“Is this a pickup?” Not that she was opposed; she went both ways, enjoyed it, women appreciated her skinny flat-chested build more than the udder-addicted guys. The woman was attractive, dark curly hair, great body, slim and flat like her, wore a loose belted dress that bared her arms and her legs up to mid-thigh.
“Not quite,” the woman said, examining her with big brown eyes. “I’m here to help.” She got up, extended a hand. “What’s your name?”
“Gail,” she said, taking the hand and letting her be pulled to her feet. “Thanks. My back’s fucked up, hurts to walk sometimes.”
“Tell me about it,” the woman said. So she did, from the mom dying at eight to the distant father who bankrolled her school until she came out and then threw her out which caused an alcohol binge that led to the car accident that left her semi-crippled and begging, filthy and unbathed and unshaved on a city street, living day to day being used by people if they noticed her at all, usually fuck-for-drugs to ease the hurt inside and out.
“Sometimes I don’t even feel I’m person. Just a thing to be used, buy pills, get off, whatever.”
The woman stopped, took her hands and looked into her with those big liquid brown eyes. “Oh, but you are a person, one of God’s children,” she whispered, and then leaned into Gail, kissed her forehead. “People may not treat you like you are, but they’re wrong.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Because I can. Because I want to.”
“If it’s sex, I mean, I’ve done other girls, that’s cool, you just have to ask — ”
The woman shook her head, the curls dancing around her face. “I run a house in town here for people like you. You’ve got a clean bed, clean sheets, food and a clean life if you want it. We’ll get you a job, too. I hope you like animals. I take them in, too.”
“Strays of all kinds, huh? It sounds good,” and it did beat sleeping on some piss-and-cum-stained mattress to get a high to make the pain go away. “You sure you want me?”
The woman put a finger to Gail’s lips. “Can I tell you something?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“I know just how you feel. The house is close to here. Let’s get you cleaned up, some decent clothes, maybe see about those pills. Legal ones. I know a doctor in town who helps out with my boarders.”
“Why?”
“So we can both feel a little more human.”
About the Author
Sam Kepfield was born in 1963, and raised in western Kansas. He graduated from Kansas State University in 1986, and received his law degree from the University of Nebraska in 1989. He later completed post-graduate work in history at the University of Nebraska and the University of Oklahoma.
He practices law full-time in Hutchinson, Kansas, in order to support his writing habit. His work has appeared in
Science Fiction Trails
,
Aiofe’s Kiss
,
Electric Spec
,
Jupiter SF
, as well as a number of anthologies. In 2009, his story “Salvage Sputnik” was a winner in the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial Short Story Contest.
Table of Contents