"mmhhph." caroused in the weight of dreamclouds and drug haze, the goddess of filth twitched a foot, a cascade of cheap aluminum falling free.

shep's girl-ferret had squeezed her ratty length underneath the door, watching the ordeal with twitchy nose and frightful feet, forever spooked by her own shadow. the beast pattered over to the human waste of space, picking a foot, the shoe still on it, laceless converse all-stars with threaded fringe around the holes in the canvas. when she attacked it was all claws and teeth, tiny growls that came buried from the inside of her stomach, squeals and honks that excited the rest of the mammals in the place. shiva came hollering awake, the excess in choice cans of beer (those must've been nick's, because shep would suck 'em dry) dripping over her arms, legs, face and hair.

"go 'way! go 'way! you fucking disgusting little shit!" she kicked at the ferret, catching her in the side and pushing her into the doorless closet, the weasel bouncing from a pile of semi-clean clothes and squeezing back under the door. "you pest! go shit in the corner of the kitchen or something!"

"her name is kakia! you hurt her feelings..." shep's voice came cackling from the living room, no doubt his mouth a maw of teeth, laughing at her.

"you're crazy." shiva threw the last pabst can off of her and sat upright on her mattress on the floor, pushing both palms behind her as she creaked to her feet. without too much stumbling she made it to her door, opening it up and emerging from the cave into the open world of bad lighting and living room ruckus. "why'd you guys pile beers on me? that fucking sucks. your ferret shits everywhere!" she waved a wild arm at the corner by her bedroom door and the start of the adjacent room, eyes bugging out of her skull as she glared towards her roomate. "..it's gross man, unsanitary. i'm calling the fucking health department on you. i'm sure they'd like to see mounds of ferret shit on the ground, like an episode of one of those goddamned animal rescue shows."

"oh, yeah? i'll tell 'em about your rattlesnake. that's a ten thousand dol --"

but shiva came screeching at him tooth and nail, knees into his lap and fists at his chest, hitting his shoulders and arms with a frenzy of red hair and fierce brown eyes, knobby elbows waving like chickenbone.

"you take my snake and i'll kill you! i'll string your little neck up with the tv cable and shove you out the window!" there was a slam above their heads from next door, bouncing the flaking drywall onto the nest of shep's hair, blackblue and greased with scalp oil.

"okay okay!" he whimpered and pawed her away, milquetoast eyes wide as he shifted uncomfortably on the couch, opening up the bottle of raspberry boone's farm he was clutching in one whitewalled fist. "jeez. you don't hafta get so freaked, i was just fuckin' with you. whatever. i'll clean it."

"you need me!" he bawled in the collapse of the doorway, bleeding finger hooked into the splintering hole where the knob should be, slumped with his cornflower blue eyes glazed and rank.

"no i don't need you -- i don't need you, i don't need anything, i don't need this fucking apartment or this fucking food, i don't need this fucking toaster, this fucking micro!" she went flinging around the kitchen, barrelling down each item cursed with a set of pale-palmed hands, slipping along the cracking linoleum in her own frenzy.

shep came screaming to his feet, a mechanized piece of flesh with grappling hooks and a bansaw sneer, fingers grabbing onto the sides of her hair as he pushed the back of her head into the front of the refrigerator, spilling snot and tears over her face and t-shirt as he lurched forward, smothering himself against her. "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i'll stop, i promise, j-just trust me..."

his staggering breath came in asthmatic wheezes, drilling to the core of his lungs and closing his throat. as he fell to hug her ankles, she stared blindly at the gouges in his wrists, red paste smeared like a dying animal dragged itself down the length of her jeans. "...always." she whispered and sank down to the floor, fingers touching the hunch of his rattling spine, comforting the depression in a pool of his own dwindling life.

"i know a cop!" shiva hollered through the food tray slot in the holding cell, squirming her fingers through to hook around the painted metal. "lemme out, lemme call her!"

"shut uuuuuuup," groaned the lingerie girl on the bench, clawing both hands at the methsores on her face before shoving greasy fistfuls of blonde hair aside, skewered bits sticking up by the sides of her head. "you think they give a shit? they're never gonna fuckin' let you out if you keep screaming that way, so shut the fuck up."

"okay." was a whisper, translating sewer rat trashtalk into words, her spine cracking straight as she stood upright. the nuthouse florescent's above sent a sick light onto her, curving in the hollows of her cheeks and turning the skin pale, spotlighting junkie eyes. "this fuckin' sucks. if i have to drink one more glass of powdered milk i'm gonna spew all over this shit, on the fuckin' walls." shiva scowled fierce, knotting spindly arms across a near titless chest, walking the few feet over to the blonde girl, the tongues of her shoes lapping at the front of her feet like an exhausted dog.

"so what'd you do, huh?" leering over her, the halfbreed tore at the remaining bit of a thumbnail.

"fuckin' wrecked my car, then ditched it on the side of the road."

"what the fuck? how come you're dressed like that?"

"my boyfriend and i were coming back from a party, a lingerie party. see?" she squeezed her eyes shut and started laughing, her tongue white and cracked. she flipped out a card from her left breast, handing it to shiva. "they didn't find it when they searched me, i was like, what the fuck do you think i have...? look at me, bitch! i'm wearin' fuckin' nuthin'!"

the card was obscenely yellow, torn around the edges with a drawing of a zophtic woman riding her mate reverse cowgirl. at the bottom, the card read "pushin' from the back." shiva curled her upper lip in a sneer, gummy eyes casting back to miss fuck.

"it's like, that was my position for the night." she shifted against the cement brick wall, taking the card back as shiva handed it to her, shoving it back next to her boob. "but i didn't even get to get laid, just went to fuckin' jail instead. i don't know how the cops even found me, shit!" she wailed, knocking her head backwards.

"whaddayah mean you dunno how they found yah! you're wearin' fuckin' pink and black lingerie! i saw you when you came in, your ass was hangin' outta your fuckin' panties." the clumsy junkie was suddenly chastising, throwing a hand up in the air at her, palm open. "lookit you!"

"yeah, no shit. it's gonna be humiliating when they release me." the dirty blonde stared at the floor, raising a hand to fiddle with a lone teddy strap hanging from her top. "i'm so fucked."

"at least they gave you sweatpants to wear, even if it does make you look like some crackhead ballerina," shiva offered. "with your six-inch skirt all over everything." she shrugged as she sat down in the opposite corner, head against the cell's glass with legs in an open, unladylike sprawl. "my fuckin' titties are all fuckin' showing through this shit, they took my fuckin' safety pins." her fingers clutched at the front of a black shirt with che guevara's face on it, titled with "let's party, compadres!" underneath, trying to move the slashed fabric across her skin.

"naah it's not so bad, i can't see 'em. you're fine. they'll give you your shit back anyhow."

"fuck yeah, they better. i've got almost five bucks in my wallet, i gotta find a way home, yah know? fuck this shit, i'm sick of being in here." she twitched quick, eyes rolling as the lids fell over her eyes, the sick collapse of her veins heaving with every faint beat her heart forced through. "fuck this, i'll just fuckin' sleep, wait here until they o.r. me..." she crossed her arms across her body, bones settling into her sack of skin while twin sets of long eyelashes met to kiss each other to bed.

"who cares?" the halfbreed shot back to her cousin, stooping down to pick up her stumbling kitten, a palm patting the bum front paw before shoving the creature into the crook of an elbow. "what're you doin', huh?" the pathetic thing mewled weakly in her clutches as she kicked through a field of tumbleweed animal hair and skittering kibble, standing behind the chair shep sat hunched in.

"just fuckin' around, drawing my next tattoo. you like?" he held up his fraying sketchpad, displaying a birthed newborn baby sliming from the muscled clutches of his mother's stretched cunt, shoving bits of placenta into his toothless, grinning mouth.

"oh yah, beautiful." she peered at his artwork before looping around the chair, dropping onto the couch. "yah like my new shoes? the best part is, yah don't hafta lace 'em!" she flung both feet up, showing off a pair of clean ones with a warped black-and-white checkered pattern warbling across canvas fabric, enough motion to make a sensitive stomach puke up it's belongings. the kitten cried as it squirmed in her arms, no doubt smelling renton on her and having flashbacks of his near-death experience, wishing he had just gotten picked up by a bratty kid screaming to her mom that she wanted a kitty. getting dressed up in doll's clothes was better than this hellhole. "fine! get away from me, then, little shit." shiva scowled as she shoved him away.

"you steal 'em with your new boyfriend?" shep pretended to watch the lines of his drawings, knowing better than to make eye contact... fingers so tight around his pen that the filthy bandages around his wrists looked like they were going to split like the open wounds beneath them.

"he's not my boyfriend," the shitstain glared, suddenly snooty. "and no, he wasn't with me when i did it."

"that's surprising," shep mused, his old lip-turned sneer creasing his face, blue eyes running black like the rest of the disdain running through his veins. "'cause you pretty much can't do anything without something to fuck at your side."

"what's your fuckin' deal?!" she shrilled out, standing with a stamp of a foot before shooting her head to the trainwreck of trash on the coffee table, the boy ferret nosing through a tower of empty beer can. eyes narrowing down to slits of sewer brown, a growl smeared from the base of her throat and she snapped for the ferret, grabbing the smelly little worm by the middle of it's sausage belly, suddenly furious that it ate better than she did. "I'M FUCKING FEEDING THIS SHIT TO THE SNAKE, YOU BASTARD!" lids squeezing out tears from her tantrum, dashing into her bedroom and locking the door shut.

"noooo!" shep yelped like a beaten puppy and leapt from the chair, pen and papers going awry everywhere while the kitten began howling with mews, all three parakeets joining in on the chorus with catcalls and flapping wings. nearby, the boy ferret's mate bounced along the dustbowl floor in panic, black and shiny like a trick seal, twitching in anxiety. he balled both fists and pounded both of them against her door, shaking the entire framework of the slumlord apartment. "open the fuckin' door you bitch, you fucking cunt!"

drips of bright red spattered to the floor, shep's gummy eyes going wide with shock, extending his hands in front of him to stare at both bloodied bandages, sick and mushy mixing with dirt and rust. "oh christ shiva, i'm... i'm... bleeding! look what you did! y-you need to take me back to the HOSPITAL!" he paused, waiting to hear the click of the lock.

there was deadpan silence inside her room, then the flick of a lighter, followed by her pouting voice.

"open the fucking door, we can't be late," she grunted. she had forgotten for a moment, why she was doing this for someone she barely knew, but when she looked up and down the hall she knew. she was as crooked as could be, but she wasn't necessarily a bad person. people needed help, she was here to do that. she eyed her watch, leather old and worn, clinging to her like a second skin.

she shifted the hanger with the pants and dress shirt to her shoulder, so jaundiced fingers could pluck the cigarette from her lips. smoke spewed from nostrils, while unpolluted (atleast, less polluted than what she dragged from the cigarette) air was sucked in.

"shi-shi!" her cousin came hollering from the living room, a fart of creaking leather chair as he pushed himself up, coming around the corner with a trail of joint smoke following after. "how was court, huh? how'd it go?"

"fuckin' alright, i guess," she snapped with a fling of her head, slamming the door shut and dropping into the cushions on the couch, curling her knees up to her chest.

"awww c'mon, doesn't look that way, looks like it sucked. did that fuckin' cop fuck you over?" his eyes sliced down over themselves as he took the spot next to her, an arm riddled with stupidshit tattoos stretching over her razorblade shoulders.

"naw that was fine, s'just i gotta do fuckin' community service, like cleanin' trash offa the fuckin' freeway," she mourned at him, reaching to snatch the joint from his fingers, rolling sticky brown paper around before sucking in a hit. "and i gotta like do drug rehab with tests and everything."

"oh yah? that fuckin' sucks. looks like it's sober-time." shep snickered meanly, shoving his grimy hand inward to steal the contraband back. "how're things goin' with ehhh whosit?"

"renton? i dunno, he like.. he said he was crazy about me?.. and.." her mouth moved mechanically, pausing in a gaping O of frozen progress, the blood draining from her face. "i dunno, i'm scared, maybe."

"no fuckin' shit shiva, you should be scared." shep stared at her, the jut of his lip breaking up the upward line of smoke coming from his hand. "fuckin' junkie ain't gonna give you shit, man. he's gonna fuck anything he can stick his cock in and forget about you, he doesn't care. then you'll get pregnant or some fuckin' shitty disease, and i ain't payin' for treatment, goddamit." he shook his head, eyes lowering in disgust as flops of blueblack hair fell over his forehead. "why can't you just fuckin' get a normal guy, huh? why d'yah pick these fuckin' assholes?"

"just shut up." she whispered and stared at the tops of her knees, groaning before melting down into a body of tired skin and rumbling bones, head falling down into his lap. "just shut the fuck up and lemme sleep."

her cousin sighed, a hand ruffling down onto her head, fingers digging through strands of hair that looked brushed-out for once, devoid of split ends and dyed brighter for the lawful occasion.

a mangled snarl in smile's clothing came stitching across her lips, stalking away in search for a victim, for something fleshly to press her fingers into, to rip and claw and tear and shred into a fucking giant hellish mess, her feet eating up the disgusting cracked asphalt.

this was her love, this was the closest she could get, continually robbing herself of anything good and pure on god's forgotten earth.

unless, of course of course, she was tongue-deep in the mouth of a greasehaired junkie, nails riddling over washboard ribs and the hollows inbetween, forgetting what made her this way, focusing on him and his slowly breaking backbone, the perception of herself dying in the recesses of her mind.

"i hate it," she would whisper to herself in the dark of her room, blinds tweaked shut to shy away the city's lamplights. somewhere, her fingers fumbled with a lighter and a glass dick, sucking herself away in a cloud of beautiful white smoke that would crystallize lungs if it was held in for too long.

sometime afterward she would lay for hours, chainsmoking and naked on her back with a halo of firestruck hair floating around her head, the fingers on one hand drumming the concave of her stomach.

she had her eyes closed but she wouldn't sleep, not for days, not for years.

she went from midnight to midnight in a complete 24-hour stretch, only waking up once to stumble bleary-eyed to the bathroom for a two-minute long piss, groaning out her contentment while shep lay laughing on the couch, flipping through channels on the television.

in her dreams she could rollerskate better, and so could renton, except he was slipping across a glasspane of ice, cracks chasing his heels as he pumped on, the wheels turning hot as sunbeam and melting the surface below him.

in her dreams, shiva couldn't move, just watch herself and others with no control. when she woke up, her jaw hurt a lot more than the day before, stiff and creaking as she struggled to speak to the ugly black and grey cat that lay purring at her side.

"are you sober?"

"when are you sending money to your mother?"

"when do you think shep is going to try and kill himself next?"

"have you gone to the dentist lately?"

"why would you trust a junkie?"

"it'd be stupid of me to think otherwise, i ain't dumb, i know what i got m'self into," she murmured over a cigarette as she spoke to the piss-stained bottom of a lamppost, sprawled backdown on the sidewalk with her feet in the gutter, lids swamped down over brown eyes, sagging horrifically. "who cares, who cares if he does huh? s'like alright, i know i'll give 'em my share of fuckups. yah know it's not even that, not even that that bothers me.. it's.. what bothers me is.. it's.."

the destroyer opened her mouth for a laugh, spilling from behind methragged tonsils, spitting out bits of glass and heated chemical. "..that i'm even thinkin' 'bout 'em in the fuckin' first place!"

above her, the bulb flickered in it's glasscracked home, raining down a jaundiced yellow onto the hollows of her grinning cheeks as a sewerslick arm stretched upwards and out, a topple of ash falling to her neck.

"better." shiva snorted, snapping the joint from her cousin with a roll of desertburned eyes. "andy was a fuckin' freak. what kinda guy sets out a sex outfit for his girlfriend and then watches the discovery channel for half a fuckin' hour?"

"one with a sense of humour!" shep howled his laughter through plumes of smoke.

"you dumbass, i'm glad i'm movin' out." but the halfbreed sliced a filthy grin his way, toothy and all-knowing, sucking ashy remains into the double barrel of her lungs.

"hey raja." her heart beat wildly for the moment after a 'alo?' on the other end, hoping he didn't hear her suck in a pained breath. "it's you, right?"

"yeah, who is this?" his accent had smoothed over more to make him sound like an intellectual professor, but the street trash still bet his dark eyebrows were diving to his forehead as he racked his brain for recognition to this gravelling, pathetic girl's voice on the other end of the world.

"it's shiva, raj," she croaked out, sucking nervous smoke from the end of her cigarette.

"shiva! shiva!" he sang, nearly screaming, the redhaired goddess shying away from the phone, a weak smile ticking to her face.

"raj! raj!" her mouth flapped open and closed to yap his name like she had done it for a mindless eternity, rambling on. "i mean god how the fuck're yah, boy?"

"oh, good! just.. just lots of changes is all."

"how's --" def leppard came flying from the swinging door of the bar, a couple smothering each other with laughter, grabbing hands as they stumbled along into an alleyway, the shadows swallowing their echoes and ebbing footsteps, reminding her of renton, her voice quivering for a moment. "..sorry, i'm somewhere.. loud.. i mean, how's your mom, your dad?" the doses that shep had given her were beginning to wane, so she continued to talk to avoid her mind running itself in lunatic circles. "i'm really sorry i haven't been in touch for so long, but s'like i've been busy and all, yah know how it is."

"shiva, my mom's dead. she's been dead for a year now. it happened before you were sent away."

the silence on the phone was deafening, a brickton of shit weighing down the electric airwave space between thousands of miles. "raja, m'sorry, really i am. yah know that before i was sent for good i was.. immobile, locked up, couldn't even talk to yah and i wanted to so badly, oh fuck raj, i missed yah so much." she cowered in the dripping space of the city, keeping close to the wall of the bar, watching the streets with browneyed suspicions.

"yeah alright, you still miss me?"

shiva took a worried huff from her pall mall, exhaling out a corner of her mouth. "of course i still do, why d'yah think i'm callin' yah?"

"maybe to call it off, i don't know." raja's voice was quiet, thin-lipped, a calm honesty that still made shiva's heart thump a little harder.

"raj, yah know i'm not the one to make and break that decision."

"you know it was today, right? today was the day we were supposed to be married."

"yeah, according to m'mother!" shiva shrieked suddenly, a mad drag from her cigarette as both eyebrows cut clean to an angry V, a stomp of a foot that sent rattling vibrations through to the hollows of her bones. "sorry, sorry, yah know s'got nuthin' to do with yah, just bitter about how i can just be pawned off."

"well shivash, you know that we were lucky. you could've gotten paired with dipen, or i with amit, that snooty uptight bitch." he had a lilt of humor to his voice, trying to cheer her up. "this is one of the more copasetic arranged marraiges made, you've got to admit."

"of course." shiva leaned the side of her head against the metal cage of the phone, watching as scattered drops of rain suicide jumped to their sidewalk deaths. "if i was gonna be forced into marrying anyone, yah'd be my first choice, raj."

"you too shiva, you too." there was a long pause, she could hear him breathing. "hey now, i've got to go to the store and get some medicines for my father. you call me more often, okay? we need to catch up more. i miss you."

"i will, i promise." but through her words she bit back a sting of tears, knowing that she wouldn't hear his voice again for weeks, maybe months, if she persisted the way that she did. "take care, say hello to everyone, tell 'em i haven't forgotten, okay?"

"i'll do that. have a nice afternoon, or whatever it is there. and take care of yourself, okay? take care of yourself.. g'bye."

"..bye." she spoke to a dial tone, placing the cradle back on the hook while she gnawed at her lower lip, staring at the bouncing door of the bar, honing in on the noise inside. shiva sighed and flicked her cigarette away, shoving both hands in her pockets as ragged-shoe feet crossed themselves and carried her off in half-stumbling fashion, heading down the boulevard.

the sway of the ocean in front of her, sun sending sparks of light dancing across each salt-heavy flush of water, the pull of seaweed around her ankles as it beckoned her to an underwater life of seahorses and orange starfish, merpeople with lavarock staffs and barnacle-tough mouths, chattering their faiths of an ancient oceanic language. shiva didn't struggle, just put her arms up and allowed herself to be dragged cooing from her mouth before it was flooded by water, the grip of her fingertips light against the sand as her eyelids slid shut.

to find herself standing sopping wet in a liquor store, the faint buzz from a black and white television behind the counter the loudest sound of all, the cashier's eyes intent on the game, spitting cuban from thick flapping lips. words came from the far right, distant and wailing like the wind had brought them, high pitched and frantic.

"go go go!"

she knew who it was without needing to look, and swept a chickenbone arm to the side to gobble up bottles of dimestore brand vodka, one slipping and bursting open on the floor by her feet, the surviving two hugged to her chest, snugged by a pair of barely there tits. her feet found their achilles heels faster than they ever had before, true spitfire halfbreed singing a familiar song while red streamers licked the doorjamb as she sprang out onto the sidewalk.

"renton! haaaaay wait up!"

he ducked into an alleyway and she soon followed suit, shoelaces lapping at her feet like a pack of hungry wolves, drunk with broken-bottle alcohol. "oh man, what was that, what the fuck just happened right there?" she heaved heavy for a moment, staring in the corner of an alleyway where she was sure she saw the sickled shadow of someone bent over someone else, pulling hair and ripping with claws, her dreamscape gone sour with just a snap of the sprinting ankle.

"wot? wot d'yah mean?" renton stared at her with black eyes, his hair tangled and greaseslick, longer than it had been before with it's splitends reaching his sputtering breath ribcage.

"the ocean! there were seagulls and sand, a kite.." she frowned, the city behind her staggering it's lights in succession until they were completely off, complimenting the wash of clouds across an already waning sun, engulfing the sky with a sick hurricane green-grey, like god himself was about to be sick. "nevermind." her voice didn't feel like it belonged to her, tendons by the jaw tight and coiled like a springing rattlesnake, hissing from the depths of her throat. she juggled the bottles in her arms as she freed a hand and shoved it into a pocket, twisting up a cigarette to stick it between her lips, lifting her eyes to renton as she patted herself down for a lighter.

he was a void as black as the alleyways he sulked through, no more swamping green like the hang of moss in a floridian bayou, just huge impossible unnerving pupils, spanning over the whites. "here." and he struck a match and handed it across to her, touching the fire to the end of the cigarette in her mouth before his fingers cramped, his lips twisting their flatline away in pain, the match backspinning beautifully to shiva's feet, alighting her on fire, blowing upwards to burn her alive.

the sun tore back her eyelids as she awoke to a shuddering morning, sick with a quick fall chill resonating through each rattling bone. the sewer rat moved in jerks and mindless flails of limb, clawing ragged fingernails to an overwhelming sky of dingy blue and stretching monochrome cloud. the power plant choked steady streams of noxious black smoke from each ancient stack, crumbling at the top and screaming repair, rebuild, anything but to keep working.

shiva could relate, still somewhat disoriented as her palms drove down to the top of the rusted-out traincar, a caboose sleeping stagnantly in a graveyard of it's brothers and sisters. she pushed herself up, stretching legs, arm, and spine, a yawn owning the stretch of her lips before she smothered it with a morning joint, pre-rolled by her gracious cousin.

shiva sat crosslegged on the couch with the television volume on low, not paying attention to it as she kept both eyes transfixed in her lap and the box caught by the wedge of jeaned legs. "sure he loves me, uh huh, i love 'em, right? but do i have t'trust him, naah."

she shook her head, overgrown bangs sweeping sideways across half of her face, dipping her head at a more severe angle, still able to look down. thumb and forefinger held the small bag open at either end of the ziploc path, using her other hand to dip a straw into it, cut to make a miniature spoon at one end, scooping up a bowlsized heap of shards that looked like elongated seasalt, shaves of rock candy you got from wild west giftstores. "i trust 'em more than he thinks, though, it's alright, he doesn't have to believe me if he doesn't wanna."

grimy fingertips caught the glass curves of the pipe with a tenderness she refused to recognize, holding it up while the other hand smoothed through the movements of carefully dropping the shit from straw to bowl through a hole in the top, eyes squinting carefully as she made sure it was all down, all in one even pile. "shep's on his way out, too. fuckin' christ."

the gutter princess zipped the baggie up and dropped it into the box, closing it shut before putting it to the coffee table, leaning back in the corner of the cushions with pipe and lighter. she fired it up and held the flame underneath the bowl, not close enough to burn but hot enough to melt the substance inside, twisting the pipe slightly so it slid like a rush of water across a frozen lake, leaving bits of itself as a preliminary coating before she took the flame away, watching it cool into one even strip of clear emotion-killing devil's stew. "after this one, i swear, i'm getting sober again."

before the words were barely out of her mouth, before her mind had time to decide whether or not it was a good idea, the end of the pipe was at her lips and fingers were rolling it fast back and forth, flame held underneath while she sucked slow then fast, eyes hypnotized by the curling white clouds spinning from the bowl to her body, her brain screaming MORE MORE MORE before she pushed the sweet chemical exhaust from the tearing hollows of her mouth.

while she waited for it to cool to take another, her heart pounded in frantic anticipation, her body still crying for the whole-body tingle of the first few times, urging her to chase after something she could never have again.

"renny.." she whispered loud to herself, to this lamppost and to the streets. "where've you been, where'm i."

snow fell in sickled memories of reflecting limelight, this thought and these times, digging deep into a cranium that welcomed nothing but fear and contempt, an apathy that wouldn't lay to rest and sleep in it's own bed.

she found herself at windows that whined against the wind and wished for cracks, something to repair against the whirling junkielove that delved inside -- bulletholes ripping across the front door and vinyl siding.

in her finest moment shiva found herself nails deep in the side, methaddled brain fighting for pure consciousness as both bodies (inside and out, not to be confused with ethereal or terrestrial matters) rode themselves up to a window she had only seen once out of, a grimy fist stretching desertborne skin taut as it rapped keen against a cold sheen of wintered glass.

"renton, renton."

and although she knew that he would chide her and bite for the horrors of what juels could bestow onto both of them, the street princess crowed loud to him, wailing out her utter demise and the implications that came with it.

"sure, got it."

"and don't tell my mom, or anyone else, okay?"

"yeah isn't he fuckin' cool?" desertlong lashes dipped low over muddied browns as she leaned towards the fish tank to watch her new pet eat, poking a jagged fingernail at the glass. "awww yer so cuuuute," cooing openly towards the thing like it could hear her, or care.

"cute? are you crazy?" shep dipped his head forward, redrimmed eyes staring at the piranha from his seat on shiva's bed, raising a delayed fist to spark the lucky strike with the lighter he clutched. "yah know how much fucking money they could fine you for that, and the goddamned rattlesnake?"

"no, who gives a shit? they'll just deport me," the girl grinned gleefully before dropping down next to her cousin who was wearing the same shit the last time she saw him, dirt-kneed blue jeans and a black twill jacket, zipped up to cover whatever socially embarrassing t-shirt he had managed to steal last. "and no one's gonna come raid our fuckin' place."

"yeah, sure," he rocked uneasily for a moment, bringing a finger to his mouth to tear at a patch of dead skin with his teeth. "where the fuck'd you get that thing from? raja?"

"yep." she smirked and clawed to the floor for her own smokes, finding them in the light blue pocket of her work jacket. "overnighted it to me from the amazons."

"the fuck is ol' raj doin' in the fuckin' amazons?" shep muttered around his cigarette, frowning at his cousin.

"getting malaria, i dunno." birdwing shoulders jerked in a sharp shrug, a yawn tearing her face apart before she went to light her cigarette. "c'mon, i got the day off, wanna go do something?"

"fuck yeah, where do you wanna go?" he grinned as he reached up and shoved shoulderlength hair from the sides of his face, a gnarled mass by the hairline looking like the start of dreadlocks.

"who gives a shit, roll us a joint and we'll be on our way."

her mother remained hunched over a dirt floor, sweeping with a broom that bled it's bristles in a pattern that left trails of struggle and the unending despair. when her one and only girl came home from the prowl, mud caking hair so beautiful and black it was as if the gods themselves had spun it from the deepest roots of the earth, vrushali would grab the edge of her salwar kameez and wave it hotly about her legs to try and leech the anxiety and madness from her skin. she screamed in a language shiva still couldn't understand, refused to when the only time it was expelled towards her was when she had done something wrong. the skinny halfbreed would open her mouth and yap, show rows of teeth smeared with foraged banana in the best sign of defiance she knew, and then a pair of calloused brown hands were shooting for her spindly kicking limbs, grabbing and pulling among a chattering of hindu nonsense each tingling bone in her body rejected.

nearly ten years later and wholly americanized by a business-driven father and white-skinned uncles and aunts, shiva was slumping her shoulders in the miserable overhead fluorescents of a k-mart department store, reluctantly trailing her mother who stuck out like a sore thumb with her covered head and shuffling elderly walk, the way her wrinkled lips flapped even though nothing would come out of her mouth. vrushali roamed her palms over fabric encased with plastic on racks that weren't accompanied by the vendors of the trade, fingers pressing as she searched for an opening.

"ma, don't." the girl still had nails filled with dirt and unwashed hair, except it was blasphemised a clown color blue with thick black roots showing from the scalp. piercings dotted her face in places vrushali insisted they weren't supposed to be, chiding her for not being satisfied with the one in her nose done by the healing man in the village she was birthed in. "jus' leave it, i don't wanna go shopping anyhow, i hate this place." glazed eyes peeled sideways from the slant of the overhead lights, fingers stretching like thin knobby sticks to her eyes, rubbing hard.

"kya yeh galat'hai?" the watering aging eyes of the deviant's mother turned on her, flooded with sadness at what her daughter had become in this place, how she had no respect for herself or her elders.

"maj, please," shiva pleaded quietly, flinching quiet as a cartfull of wild kids and their mother bustled behind her in the aisle. "...use your english, i can understand, even if it isn't so good."

"i must be done wrongful.. thing, here." the words were throatier than how shiva's father said them, or the girls at school and their mothers that came to pick them up when the bluehaired was busy slipping bumps of coke into her nose, behind the gym and in an old bathroom, all inbetween selling lines to the cheerleaders.

"no no, you're not doin' anything wrong." shiva went from the king-sized blanket her mother had her hand on, knowing that it would fit on the woman's bed if it was folded three times. "do yah like that..? i'll buy it for yah, i have some cash.."

"oh! shiva, no." vrushali was horrified, snapping her hand from the blanket like a snake had bit at her fingertips.

"listen, just 'cause it's my birthday doesn't mean that yah have to spend money on me and buy me things, 'specially when yah can't afford it." the strain in the back of her brain bled down to the base of her spine, tugging at the start of a headache. shiva reached with both hands and took the blanket, plastic crinkling as she pressed it to her chest. "fifteen isn't even anything special, nothing happens. c'mon, let's go and yah can.." she hesitated, watching her mother who stood there hunched like a sculptor's honest rendition of age and poverty, stepping forward to slip an arm through to vrushali's, juggling the party favor in the other. "..yah can make me somethin' good to eat for my birthday. curry, and stuffed zucchini? i would love it."

the woman smiled and moved her jaw like a cow chewing it's cud, roaming her eyes from her daughter's face down to the sweet junction where the skin of their arms met and how their hands had disappeared somewhere in the multiple folds of mildly colorful dress. she murmured praises in an ancient language forgotten by more than just her daughter, something different than hindu but lay it's inking lines as a permanent blessing above shiva's jutting hip bones.

ten hours from checking out at a register serviced by pimply hormone-ridden teenage boys and sucking dollar soda from a straw, shiva and vrushali would be flying high across land and sea, back in time to the small rough village she spent her first few years in. she would skip back and forth from america to pakistan, america to india, america to afghanistan, and wherever else her cousins took turns taking care of the ailing woman.