Free Easter City by iancrooks

CHAPTER 1

    The wealthy made and lost all their money on
Main Street.
    I always watched them from the gutter. Men
had sideburns with bald heads or baby faces and slicked back hair,
black and greasy like pitch. Women had candy hair and tight butts
and wore tight dresses and fur collars.
    The wealthy came down from the Hills to
escape their picket-fence-lives. They frequented casinos and blew
their winnings on one of the hundred fancy restaurants and a few
more escorts. I saw one come out of a casino one time, drunk out of
his skull—his entourage cheering his big win—and march up to Avaris
Airstrip. He came back, chest stuck out past his flopping belly,
waving a fistful of paper and a few keys; the bastard had bought a
jet in cash.
    You’d think all that money would make me
crave wealth. But I’d seen what money does to men. It turns them
bad so they’re not men anymore. They become devils. Laughing devils
won craps and bought jets and carried escorts on their arms like
accessories. Angry, dead-eyed devils lost their fortune at
roulette. They lost their cars and throttled their friends in
alleyways, stripped the valuables and left the bodies naked in the
sleet.
    In the jungle of casinos and fancy hotels and
plump-bowtie wearing devils, there’s no room for people like me—no
room for starved, smelly twelve year old brats.
    I’d seen how Wealthy Devils dealt with beggar
kids. For starts, we were called Cochon. If a Cochon crossed the
street, chances were, a car would speed up and mow it down. If a
Cochon was spotted on a sidewalk, it’d be beaten for fun by wealthy
men, and even the escorts jabbed the heels of their stilettos into
eye or ear to see which bled better.
    My earliest memory is learning to avoid the
wealthy. Some years back I ran into a Wealthy Devil after stealing
takeout. The guy who caught me sent his buddy to get some pliers. I
don’t like to think about it, so I’ll say this: thank God baby
teeth are supposed to go.
    Don’t think Wealthy Devils are above
torturing little girls either. Last week they bludgeoned one for
walking on the sidewalk. No matter how often I see that type of
sick shit, my stomach turns.
    “Got it started!” a Wealthy Devil cried,
smacking the brat’s knees with a cane until she fell, sobbing.
    “Me next!” a man grabbed the kid by the neck
and bashed her head against a wall.
    “Here!” shrieked a harpy escort, and rammed a
heel the kid’s eye. Squelch.
    Whoever evoked the most screams and blood
from the kid won ‘the game’ and they all went on drinking and
walked over the body and joined their friends for good times at a
Big Win Casino.
    A car crunched around the corner. I blinked.
My feet were numb; I’d been daydreaming again.
    I shivered and swept my tangled hair out of
my eyes. My curses frosted in the air. Cars continued to crunch by
and, occasionally, a pair of well booted feet and stilettos clapped
past on the frozen asphalt.
    Main Street was a perpetual ice storm. It was
hard for a pile of bones in a wife beater and shredded boots to
maintain its heat. But I steeled myself. My belly was empty. It was
time to eat.
    Just above the gutter, on the sidewalk, there
were hoots of delight.
    “What do we have here, eh?”
    “Cochon, seems like. A Cochon, mucking the
sidewalk.”
    “Let’s kill it!”
    “It’d get our blood pumping in this
cold.”
    “Yes… would do just that. But Julia’s waiting
for me back at La Rouge… I’m her carnal fascination.”
    There was a murmur of praise and scattered
sniggering.
    Now. It was now or not at all for the rest of
that day. I gritted my teeth and gripped the already-loose grate.
The freezing iron caught me through the threadbare mitts. I bit my
lip and pushed. The grate clanged onto the street. I kicked off,
out of the waste deep gutter water, tumbled onto the street, and
hopped back on the sidewalk, barely dodging unforgiving black
wheels.
    Even in the day, Main Street was a hub.
Across the street Big Win Casino