Jennifer Brooks, who would later take the name of Alexia Trevesta, woke up that morning and finally accepted the fact that she wasn’t going to make it.

It had been two months since the money had run out, and nearly two weeks since the last of the food had run out too. She had tried to make it last longer, but nothing had worked out like she planned. In the dead of night when the cold had worked its way through the old rotting walls of the abandoned apartment building she was squatting in, and made a good start working its way through her ratty blankets, her self control inevitably gave out.

It was the hopelessness that got to her. Laying alone and shivering, even a small bite of stale bread gave her the faint sense that there was some sliver of hope left, even if she knew it wasn’t true. She assumed it was just a slight bump in blood glucose, but it made her feel better. Hope was what she needed– or had thought she needed– and so the food hadn’t lasted as long as it should have.

She slept to save energy, but her stomach hadn’t stuck to the plan and kept waking her up with its pangs. She had the image in her head that it was twisting itself into knots, one side grating against the other like sandpaper on sandpaper, trying to digest itself. She decided that she had to do something while she still had the energy to move.

The morning sun poured in through the window of her little room, making the floating dust dance and sparkle. She had chosen this room because it was the first one she had found with unbroken windows, and because it was on the second floor, making it less likely that someone might wander in during the night.

Jennifer got up and tucked her blankets away in a net she had hung from the ceiling– her way of making sure the rats didn’t nest in them– and went to look at herself in the mirror over the sink. Her face was gaunt, her sunken cheeks and eyes causing her cheekbones to poke out, making a face that was all angles, completely different from the soft oval it had once been. Her blonde hair reached to her shoulders and told the story of her life in the slums. It was thick and healthy at the ends, then by degrees grew thinner and paler as it ran up to her head. The roots looked horrible, like what might grow from the head of an ancient old crone. It wasn’t the hair or the face or anything that should belong to a girl of 18 years.

Clothes were OK. Dirty old rags, but they still covered everything, thanks to the sewing kit she had stolen from her parents’ home before escaping into the slums.

She removed her make-shift barricade from the door and went through the hall and down the stairs, shattered glass crunching beneath her feet. She laid her shoulder into the emergency exit door, the squeal of its creaking hinges announcing her emergence to the outside world. The fresh, crisp air hit her face, reminding her how dank and musty it was in her room.

She ducked through a half-collapsed wire fence with an old sign hanging on it. It was actually two signs, one pasted on top of the other. One read ‘CONDEMNED BY ORDER OF THE STATE’ in bold red letters, and the older one under it said ‘Proposed land use’ with faded out letters telling who to contact if you wanted to complain about it.

She headed the only direction she knew, which was deeper into the slums. You could buy food there if you had money, and could catch a beating if you had the audacity to beg. Much worse if you got caught stealing. But that’s where the food was, so it was the only place to go.

The place she had chosen to live was on the outskirts of the slums, so there weren’t many people out here. The tumble-down red brick buildings she passed as she made her way were gutted by fire and stank with decay. Rusted bars covered many of the shattered windows and rusted external fire escape stairs lined up against the apartments, protruding from their buildings like bones from the carcasses of rotting fish. The bottom levels of most of these had collapsed, having been completely eaten through by the rust or pulled down by vandals. If the stairs were the fish bones, the brickwork flaked off like scales and the blackened paneless windows stared out at the world like dead sunken eye sockets.

She suspected the fires had been started on purpose too. Probably by young people, fueled by that volatile cocktail of boredom and a seething rage against a world that had no place for them. Or maybe she was just projecting.

Weeds broke through the sidewalk and grew brown-green as high as her knees and the old asphalt road was riddled with weather worn potholes. A faded sign announced it as Cooper Street. She knew from her history books that the road hadn’t felt the wheels of a car for a very long time. The country’s roads systems had been given over to decay since before she was born.

She followed Cooper down to Main and down that one for a long way. Past the big building that looked like it might have once been a courthouse, but was now a bulletin board for graffiti. “Fuck the police” it proclaimed, and told who to call for a good time. She knew she was getting closer to the heart of the slums when she started to see boarded up windows with boards that weren’t rotting.

She was planning to make the rounds starting from where she had bought from before. Old Mac knew her and maybe that might be enough to get him to throw her some scraps. Probably not, but just maybe. She didn’t make it that far.

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Out of nowhere her ears were assaulted by the heavenly sweet sound of a juicy wet crunch. Her brain registered it as the sound of an apple being bitten into. She saw the apple across the empty intersection, red, ripe and delicious. Attached to the apple was the hand of a man. She saw him, and now, he saw her too.

Danger. Break eye contact and keep walking. It was the voice of reason in her mind, trying to keep her safe. He had on a shiny purple vest, white dress shirt and a flowing red feather in a felt hat. Standard issue uniform for a street pimp. But fuck you reason, it was an apple. She shouldn’t stare, but she had to, and so she did. He stared back.

The apple moved to the left, and then back to the right. Then up, and now down. Her eyes followed it. He smiled at her with a mouth that combined dirty yellow teeth with shiny gold ones.

“Are you hungry, kitten?”

She tensed up and felt her eyes go wide, but she dared not answer. The fact that she continued to stand and stare seemed to be answer enough for him.

“Come here now, don’t be scared. Do you… want a bite?”

He held out the apple and wiggled it at her. Despite all the alarm bells ringing in her head, she stepped into the road and began to cross the street. He held very still and just continued smiling at her, as if he were trying to feed some wild animal that might run away at the slightest movement. She walked very slowly, unable to stop but still unwilling to abandon caution. She was almost within arm’s reach– almost close enough to reach out and grab the apple– when his smile turned up the corners, just enough so that it wasn’t quite a smile anymore.

“You know how to suck dick, kitten?”

Startled, she stepped back and heard something crunch under her shoe. She looked down and saw the shattered hull of a hypodermic syringe under her foot. Her weight had worked as a lever and the rusty needle pointed up at her like a threat. A sudden, unwelcome vision filled her mind; she was dressed in nothing but her underwear, still just as gaunt and feeble, but now strung out as a drug-shackled slave, begging this man not for food but just for another hit, willing to do anything to get it. She saw him standing over her, a black leather belt missing the buckle wrapped around his hand. It had ceased to be a belt and was a weapon of discipline. She heard the harsh crack of leather on raw skin. “Learn you a lesson” she heard, “teach a bitch to cross me”, and her pathetic skeleton of a body covered in red lashes and welts.

She ran– ran as fast as she could, which wasn’t very fast. She wouldn’t be able to escape him, he would chase her, catch her, beat her and then–

But he didn’t chase. He only laughed. She huffed and pumped her legs as best she could and finally rounded the corner where she collapsed, her legs seizing up and cramping painfully. Here at least, she was out of sight. He cackled on and called out to her:

“You’ll be back kitten, oh you’ll be back! I’ve got plenty of good things to put in that mouth of yours! Apples and bread and milk, and a nice thick-”

She clapped her hands over her ears and crumpled over until her forehead touched the sidewalk. I won’t, she thought. I’d rather die! I’d rather starve to death! But would she, really? She understood from the core of her being that starvation was a pretty bad way to go. The double charley horse in both her shins and calves was driving that visceral reality home. Which fate would actually be worse?

She thought about where that vision had come from. She didn’t have any real knowledge about pimps and prostitutes. Back when her parents were still alive, had she seen it on TV or read a scene like that in a book? It must be a book, she decided. Her parents wouldn’t have allowed her to watch that on TV. They were protective like that. Had been protective. A protection she dearly missed.

She forced herself to stand up again. If she kept thinking like that, she was going to cry, and she didn’t have the energy for that right now. Her hands shook and her heart thumped and hiccuped irregularly. Tachycardia? No, arrhythmia, that was the word. She had read about that one too. A heart attack. Now that was the way to go. Quick and painless. If she was serious about avoiding prostitution, she would have to give it some thought. Maybe if she sprinted as hard as she could her heart would give out and she would just drop dead.

She tried to make a wry smile and sardonic laugh. That’s what you were supposed to do in this kind of situation. She had lived in the slums for a year; she was supposed to be hard by now. But instead she heard her own weak and scared voice whisper:

“I don’t want to die.”

She gave up on going into the slums. The plan had been to beg, but that wasn’t going to work. The premise of begging is that you have nothing to offer, but that wasn’t true, was it? She had meat– the meat of her own body. Any begging would turn into negotiation. They would offer food, but in exchange for–

She didn’t want to sell.

She wandered aimlessly for a while, unaware of her surroundings. The cramps in her legs hadn’t loosened with time. Instead the muscles had seized up completely. She hobbled on as if walking on two peg legs. She wasn’t sure if the pain was growing duller, or if she was just getting used to it, but those cramped muscles refused to let go.

The sun rose higher and began to beat down and bake the concrete. She tried to stick to the shade, but the shadows turned thin as noon approached.

As she walked, she dreamed of her life before the slums.