MAISEY CROSSED the factory floor and exited out the back. She passed by the dumpster she had found the kid in. A yell flew at her from her side and made her jump. Turning around, she was met with the sight of a bone thin woman with wild and dirty hair rushing towards her.
‘Get away from my kid!’ Her black/yellow, misshapen teeth betrayed her crack and meth addiction.
‘He’s your son?’ Maisey asked, though her real question was still to follow, ‘How can you leave your son alone in this hell-hole? What kind of mother are you?!’
‘Oh shut the fuck up, bitch!’ The crackhead closed the distance between them, dirt and dust fell from her tattered white garments as she moved. Her skin was covered in a gel of grime. ‘Let go of my kid’s hand! Get over here Tommy!’
‘No, you stay away from that crazy lady.’ Maisey spoke down at the tiny terrified child. Tommy was silent, his collar pulled up over his mouth and his eyes unblinking. The crackhead was one addict who wasn’t going to let an apocalypse stop her from getting her fix. She had left the kid alone for two days to track down a drug source, of which there were still a couple in business and whose prices had raised ten-fold; truly an industry unfettered by the fall of polite. She didn’t feel an ounce badly about leaving Tommy behind. It was what was best for him, she had told both him and herself.
‘Get away from him, you fucking bitch!’ The crackhead snarled. Yellowed spit flew through the air as she slashed Maisey’s face with a razor blade held between her thumb and three bony fingers.
A curled diagonal line carved through Maisey’s face, splitting her right eyeball vertically in two. The slash continued all the way down through her top lip and gum and halfway through her bottom lip before slipping out of her flesh and back out into the open sunlight. The scream echoed around the factory as Maisey fell to the gravelly snow, clutching at her eye as if pressure would alleviate the unimaginable pain. She blinked involuntarily; the split eyelid peeled apart each time it opened and closed. Her tear ducts pumped and her eyelashes thrashed like a seizure patient.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ The crackhead yelled down at Maisey, rolling and screaming on the ground. ‘Shut up! Shut the fuck up!’ The crackhead picked up an icy orange brick from a pile beside the factory wall and clobbered Maisey over the head. The screaming terminated, followed shortly by the end of its distorted echo.
A chipped and bloodied brick hit the ground and the crackhead took off, dragging Tommy along behind her. He was yanked straight off his feet, his shoes almost coming off as they dragged along the slush-covered gravel. He hung from his wrist clenched tightly in his mother’s hand like a stuffed animal hung from a claw machine, her discolored fingernails digging into his skin. He stared at Maisey as he was pulled backward, her motionless body getting smaller and smaller.
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