Beginnings - And Her Blood Ran Cold……

Maggie placed the small cloth purse on her lap and held it in a clutch like a child would a rag doll. She wasn’t truly far from being a child herself. The metal bench was cold against the back of her bare legs, which protruded from a tattered black miniskirt like carrot sticks, thin and shapeless. She had always thought that her legs were her worse feature. This had been confirmed time and again by countless “johns” who cared less about her feelings then about getting their eighty bucks worth.

It was too cool for a late May evening and Maggie shivered involuntarily. She had been sick, a cold, maybe a slight fever, who knew for sure. There was no one to check her temperature and she had no where to go so she stayed on the street, huddling against the chill, sneezing and sniffing.

The thin cotton jacket was more for show then for warmth and barely kept out the wind. Underneath, a tiny sleeveless thing, designed to emphasize cleavage, gave no insulation to her narrow ribbed frame.

She waited at the bench for no one in particular, simply to give her feet a rest from the pinch of the cheap plastic high heels. Traffic was slow tonight. There was very little movement on the streets, just a few girls like herself, standing in little groups, waiting and wondering.

The night seemed heavy, as if pressing in around her. It whispered a message of foreboding as if the darkness was trying to warn the frail little girl of danger.

During the final years before Maggie ran away from home, her mother would often slouch on the edge of Maggie’s bed, late into the night, spewing forth philosophy on men and the world. Thinking back, Maggie had never given much credence to her mother’s bitter blusterings. Frankly, it had been difficult to even understand her mother through the thick slur of the alcohol induced stupor. One thing her mother said, though, had stuck with Maggie, something that her mother had firmly believed and repeated time and again.

She would suddenly become still, drunkenly lean toward her and then hiss in a hushed and determined whisper.
“Maggie, listen well to the night. It will talk to those who want to know. It will tell you the good and the bad. It knows.”

It might have come from her mother’s own mystic upbringing. The daughter of a backwoods bible thumper father who fancied himself “touched” by the spirit and a mother who claimed to read fortunes, good and bad alike, in the scattering of chicken bones, kept in a small dirty sack, which would be spread across the end an upturned whiskey barrel like rolled dice.

To Maggie, it didn’t make much sense but she still remembered. She strained to listen now, to feel the night’s warning and she thought of her mother.

The doctor stepped down from the van and adjusted the heavy coat. He wasn’t accustomed to such coats, thick and bulky, preferring the starched white clean lab coats that befitted professionals of his caliber. This subterfuge was beneath him.

The doctor walked quickly to the side door, slid it open and leaned inside. Everything was prepared and ready. He placed the bottle and the rag in the coat pocket and slid the door closed quietly, leaving it unlocked. This shouldn’t take too long. He had seen one sitting alone on the city bench, just around the corner.

He approached the specimen from behind, shuffling silently in hospital slippers hidden under the low cuff of the wool knit pants. All part of this “common person” disguise that he despised so. She heard his final foot falls as he reached for her throat. She grabbed instinctively for his hands. Too late, a wet, sour tasting cloth rag was pressed over her nose and mouth, cutting off the chirp that was to become a scream for help. Methodically now, he held her close from behind, fending of the weakening attempts to scratch at his gloved hands. Foolish girl, he thought with contempt, I will take you like the others before you. These vain and feeble attempts to struggle will afford you nothing but a more painful death.

Glancing from side to side for possible observers, he pulled her head against his chest and stepped backwards toward the shelter of a grove of pine trees. The movement lifted Maggie’s frail, barely clothed body up and over the back of the bench. Her purse fell from her lap and flopped into a muddy puddle of water. She became frantic. As the doctor continued to pull her backward, she began kicking and swinging like a grasshopper stuck to board of foam with a needle.

The doctor was tired of playing with this insolent girl. He had tasks to accomplish of which she was but one. Much more important tasks yet awaited him. As they disappeared from view between branches, the doctor lowered his chin towards the struggling girl’s ear and whispered.
“Do you know fear? Your blood will run cold before the night has ended!”

Maggie’s eyes widened for a fraction of an instant before rolling back into her skull. She became limp in his arms. A rush of accomplishment filled the doctor. But only momentarily, a doctor must remain calm, collected and in control at all times. He removed the cloth and lifted the body, cradling the girl in his arms. Walking through the trees, following the street, the doctor returned to the safety of the van. He opening the side door with two fingers and, unceremoniously, dropped the lifeless form onto a mattress lying on the floor. She landed with a muted thump, her thin carrot stick legs sprawling into very unladylike positions. The doctor huffed in disgust.
“Dirty Whores!”

Now, less concerned with discretion, he slammed the door closed and rushed around to the driver’s side, pulling off the coat and gloves as he went. Once behind the wheel, the doctor reached under the front seat and pulled from it a syringe filled with amber liquid. He turned in his seat, pulled off the needle guard and plunged the narrow shaft of steel into the pale white skin of the girl’s exposed upper thigh.

“Sleep, glorious sleep…..” The doctor rolled into high pitched falsetto song as the van pulled from the curb.