The parts pirate had been careless enough to leave various farm tools within her reach, but none of them were of the type to cut a steel cable. After an hour of struggling, Risa realized there was nothing to do but wait—and envy wild animals who had the good sense to gnaw off their own limbs to escape from traps.
That was last night. Now as morning comes, Risa, having not slept at all, must face a fresh hell. The parts pirate comes an hour after sunrise. He’s a middle-aged man with a bad scalp job. His mop of boyish blond hair doesn’t make him look boyish, just creepy. He practically dances a jig when he sees that his trap has done the job.
“Been there for months and nothing,” he tells Risa. “I was ready to give up—but good things come to those who wait.”
Risa seethes and thinks of Connor. She wishes she could have been more like him last night. Connor would never be so foolish as to allow himself to be captured by an imbecile.
Clearly this guy’s an amateur, but as long as he’s got the goods, the black-market harvesters won’t turn him away. He doesn’t recognize her. That’s good. The black market pays more for the infamous—and she doesn’t want this man to get paid what she’s worth. Of course that assumes he gets that far. Risa has had all night to come up with a plan of action.
“Selling you might just get the banks off my back,” he tells her jovially. “Or at least get me a decent car.”
“You have to cut me loose first before you can sell me.”
“Indeed I do!”
He looks at her a little too long, his grin a little too wide, and it occurs to Risa that selling her to a black-market harvester is only at the end of his list of planned activities. But whatever his plans, he’s the type who has to have everything just right. He goes around the stall and begins cleaning up the mess Risa made in her frustrated attempts to escape.
“You sure were busy last night,” he says. “Hope you got it out of your system.”
Now Risa begins to taunt him. She knows what sorts of things will push this man’s buttons—but she begins with some easy, glancing blows. She begins with slights against his intelligence.
“I hate to kill the dream,” she says, “but the black market won’t deal with morons. I mean, you have to know how to read if you’re going to sign a contract.”
“Very funny.”
“Seriously, maybe you should have gotten some brains to go along with that hair.”
It only makes him chuckle. “Bad-mouth me all you want, girlie. It’s not gonna change a thing.”
Risa thought there was no way she could possibly hate this man more . . . but calling her “girlie” opens up a whole new level of loathing. She begins her next round of attacks—this time against his family. His gene pool. His mother.
“So did they slaughter the cow that gave birth to you, or did it die of natural causes?”
He continues his stall tidying, but his focus is gone. Risa can tell he’s getting rankled. “You shut up. I don’t gotta take crap like that from a dirty Unwind bitch!”
Good. Let him curse at her. Because the angrier he gets, the more it plays in Risa’s favor. Now she delivers her final salvo. A series of cruel assertions about the man’s anatomy. Assertions of severe inadequacy. At least some of them must be true, because he loses it, getting red in the face.
“When I’m done with you,” he growls, “you ain’t gonna be worth what you are now—that’s for sure!”
He lunges for her, his big hands out in front of him—and as he throws himself forward, Risa raises the pitchfork that she’s concealed in the hay. She doesn’t have to do any more than that: just hold the thing up. His weight and momentum do all the work.
The amateur parts pirate thoroughly impales himself and pulls back, taking the pitchfork with him.
“Whad’ya do to me! Whad’ya do!”
The pitchfork flails back and forth like an appendage in his chest as he curses and screams. Risa knows it’s hit some vital organ because of all the blood and the speed at which he goes down. In less than ten seconds, he collapses against the far wall of the stall and dies with his eyes open and staring not quite at her, but off to her left, as if maybe in his last moments he saw an angel over her shoulder, or Satan, or whatever a man like him sees when he dies.
Risa considers herself a compassionate human being, but she feels no remorse for this man. She does, however, begin to feel a deepening sense of regret. Because her hand is still caught in the cable. And the only human being who knows she’s here is now lying across the stall, dead.
And Risa cannot believe the situation she’s put herself in. Again.
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The parts pirate, who had no intention of dying, had left the barn door open. A coyote comes to visit that night. When Risa first sees it, she yells at it, throws hay, and heaves a garden hoe. The hoe hits it on the nose hard enough to make it yelp and leave in a hurry. Risa knows nothing of wild animals, their natures, or habits. She does know that coyotes are carnivorous but she’s not sure if they hunt alone or in packs. If it returns with its mangy brethren, she’s done for.
It comes back an hour later, alone. It takes little interest in her, other than to note whether or not she’s still in a throwing mood. The point is moot, since there’s nothing left in her reach to throw. She yells at it, but it ignores her, focusing all of its attention on the parts pirate, who isn’t putting up any resistance.
The coyote dines on the man, who is already beginning to grow rancid in the summer heat. Risa knows the stench will only get worse until, in a day’s time, maybe two, the stench of her own flesh will join his. Perhaps the coyote is smart enough to know that she will eventually die as well and is prioritizing. As far as the coyote is concerned, her continued life is better than refrigeration. It can make several meals of the parts pirate, knowing that, when all is said and done, fresh meat will be waiting.
Watching the coyote eat eventually desensitizes her to the horror of it. She finds herself objective, almost as if watching from a safe distance. She idly wonders which is crueler, man or nature. She determines it must be man. Nature has no remorse, but neither does it have malice. Plants take in the light of the sun and give off oxygen with the same life-affirming need that a tiger tears into a toddler. Or a scavenger devours a lowlife.
The coyote leaves. Dawn breaks. Dehydration begins to take its toll on Risa, and she hopes the thirst will kill her before the coyote finds her alive but too weak to fend off its advances. She slips in and out of consciousness, and her life begins to scroll before her eyes.
The flashing of one’s life, Risa finds, is by no means complete; nor does it take into account the value of memories. It is as random as the stuff of dreams, just a little more connected to what once was.
The Cafeteria Fight
She’s seven years old and fighting another girl who insists that Risa stole her clothes. It’s a ridiculous assertion, because everyone in the state home wears the same basic utilitarian uniforms. Risa’s too young at the time to know that it’s not about clothes but about dominance. Social position. The girl is larger than her, meaner than her—but when the girl pins her to the ground, Risa gouges the girl’s eyes, flips her, and spits in her face—which is what the girl was trying to do when she pinned Risa. The girl cries foul when the teachers pull them apart, claiming Risa started it and that she fights dirty. But no adult really cares who started it as long as it ends, and as far as they’re concerned, all fights among state home orphans are dirty. The interpretation among the kids, however, is much different. What matters to them is that Risa won. Few people pick fights with her after that. But the other girl gets no peace from her peers.