The night air was clear and interrupted by the smoke lifting from the barrels along the sidewalk. Flames warmed the homeless people who gathered around them. The street was cluttered with trash and little to no cars passed by. If they did, they were speeding and had the windows rolled up. I didn't blame them. This part of town had everyone's skin crawling. Even the drug dealers were on edge.
Being one of the poor souls living in a neighborhood such as this one had it hard the most. Gunshots were always firing in the distance and sirens were wailing as if they were coming to the rescue. Yet, I hadn't seen any police or fire trucks enter this street. The people who lived here took advantage of how little the government interfered with this part of the city. Prostitutes stood on street corners, hobos drank themselves into a coma in the alleyways, and if you listened closely, you could hear someone getting mugged at any time of night.
Some teenagers were constantly using the old abandoned buildings as canvases for their graffiti. And not the good kind of graffiti that could be considered art. The type that just looked sloppy. It made the night twice as frightening and wasn't much better during the day. Sometimes it felt like it would rain trash from all of the pieces that flew through the air. I knew that it was just from the highway that bridged over us as if this part of town was just a trash can to throw the higher class's litter. Still, it felt like the heavens were telling us that garbage was the only thing we deserved to rain from the sky.
The people here were a bunch of filthy souls and I was trapped among them. The people here had adapted to the harsh environment, developing ten extra layers of skin so they could survive. People were mean and trusted no one. Friends and family didn't exist here, and love wasn't even in the equation. I wasn't so lucky. I had lived in crappy neighborhoods like this one my entire life and my skin was still as soft as whipped cream.
I couldn't be mean to save my life and intimidation was impossible for me to do. A thin woman who stood at only five feet and three inches tall didn't have a chance in this town. I wouldn't have survived for so long if I didn't have a system in place. I found that the best way to not be bothered would be to make my gender less obvious. Since I was thin, my breasts were already barely there so it was easier to hide them.
I would wear constricting workout bras to make sure there wasn't any evidence of them being there at all. I also wore a thick winter coat with a hood to hide my body. Even in the summer, I would continue to wear that coat everywhere I went. I didn't have to worry about hiding my legs since they looked like a couple of pencils. All I had to do was put on some jeans and they looked like they belonged on anything but a woman. The only part of me that was slightly curvy was my butt, and it was annoying to have to hide it all the time. It wasn't big or anything, it was just the only part of me that was clearly feminine. That, as well as my face.
I was forced to cut my dark brown hair so that it wouldn't bring attention to my face. Back when it used to be long, every man who saw me carried lingering stares. My hair used to be thick and wavy and now it was in a pixie cut, trying to go unnoticed. I hated that my face was my best feature. Why did it have to be my face? The most difficult thing to hide. At some angles, I looked like I could pose on the cover of a prestige magazine, modeling the next fashion trend. I fit the whole dark hair, blue eyes persona that the world found oh so attractive. Hell, I was unhealthily skinny enough to be a model.
My family couldn't afford much food when I was young and my mother was anemic when she was pregnant with me. Before she died of hunger and alcohol poisoning she passed on her anemia to me. I had gotten into the habit of skipping meals as a kid, and now I couldn't even tell whether I was hungry anymore. I never had an appetite, and every food I could think of made me want to throw up. Forget about eating in the morning. It was a guaranteed hurl.
One of my coworkers knew how difficult it was for me to eat and guilt-tripped me into eating a plate of fries at work. Now as I walked home I could feel the unsettlement of my stomach, begging me to regurgitate the hell I made it devour. I forced myself to keep it down, knowing that I might die if I threw up another meal. The place I worked at was a fifties-themed diner called The Moonlight Bar. We probably wouldn't have had any customers if we didn't sell alcohol. Most of our clientele consisted of alcoholics and druggies who were looking for a midnight meal of burgers and fries with a side of whiskey.
I honestly didn't mind working in a run-down place, but the hours were grueling. It was open twenty-four hours so my schedule was always changing. Sometimes I liked the variety, but my sleep schedule was all over the place. At least I didn't have trouble falling asleep after work because of how weak I was from going the whole shift without eating.
The crunch of the loose pebbles on the sidewalk echoed in my ears as I walked down the street to my apartment. I wore a mask to help cover my face and pulled the hood so far over my head that l looked like I couldn't see where I was going. The thing about wearing a bulky coat in the ghetto was that it was less likely that someone would mess with you. No one knew whether I was hiding a gun underneath here and it made a perfect invisibility cloak.
I looked like any other bum who wandered the sidewalks, yet I was still afraid. If a gang were to start picking on me, I'd be dead in an instant. Truth be told, I did have a gun. It was just a small pistol I kept in my pocket, but I wasn't confident in my ability to shoot someone. At least I had one so that I would hopefully bring up the courage to shoot someone in the foot when the time came.
I never went anywhere without my gun even though I was scared of it myself. I slept with it at my bedside and kept it in my locker at work. No one stopped me since everyone else who worked at the diner had a gun too. The small sense of security it provided me made me confident enough to walk everywhere I needed to. I couldn't afford to have a car as well as a lot of other things, but I was lucky to have a job in this city.