*** I'm not sure about the degree of inspiration, but I wrote this not long after seeing 'Constantine', so at least you know how old it is.
This isn't anything like that.
Well, as far as I can tell, anyway. Actually, now that I think about it, it really isn't like that at all.
I just wanted to write something that felt a little nice to me.
0_o
*********
-----------------------
She walked along the shore of the lake in a dark mood, keeping an eye open for soda cans, beer cans, and the occasional soda bottle; preferably glass and unbroken, but it didn't matter much and the plastic ones would do.
Anything that she could turn in for the deposit money.
She was scavenging here while she waited for the school to let out so that she could collect her kids and go on home with them in about four hours.
Who knew what they'd eat for dinner that night?
She had about a buck and a half, so that would get them some mac and cheese if all else failed. Oh, and if she lucked out and found a few more cans, she might be able to get a loaf of bread to go with that -- half for their baloney sandwich lunches tomorrow and half with dinner.
You know, wholesome eating.
And it was her day off.
Delia rolled her eyes and wanted to spit, just to be rid of the dust and grit coating her tongue from spending her fucking day off scavenging.
And from needing to.
Just twenty-one, born poorer than dirt and a half-breed at that -- and here she was, doing her best to raise two kids who weren't even her own.
No sir, life to this point sure hadn't been good to Delia very much at all.
She half-assed swung at a horsefly, thinking that if it was going to be much more of a bitch about things, she'd put her whole ass into it and mash the annoying little fuck.
When she'd managed to bait the pest into landing on her arm, she nailed it with a slap far faster than most people could swing. It landed struggling in the water on its back and as she fought to keep her balance, she saw a smallmouth bass come up and take it.
She lost the struggle and fell in with a quiet curse.
That was how she ended up standing in cold, hip-deep water and feeling furious enough to make it boil.
As she wiped the water and her long black hair out of her eyes, she caught the gleam and waited for the ripples in the surface to settle out.
She was standing right next to a spot where she guessed that a bunch of high school kids must have spent an afternoon or evening guzzling beer.
Either that or they were just the usual camo-covered goons and assorted other layabout hicks.
It didn't matter. There were well over a dozen cans here. She bent down to get a few of them, re-wetting her hair in the process, but that couldn't be helped. One after another, she dragged the cans out of the mud and silt and tossed them onto the bank.
After draining the water out of them, she laid them aside and walked back for her knapsack with a small smile. She'd found two full and unopened cans among the others. The law must have shown up and whoever it had been had ditched the unopened ones.
By the 'best before' dates on them, they were still good.
It didn't matter. Delia would nurse her way through those cans as though they contained ambrosia. She didn't drink -- not being able to afford even a six pack most times. She didn't even know if she'd like the stuff, but it was free, so that was something pretty rare for her.
Well, Delia supposed, there had been a cost. Now she was squishing along in flooded sneakers, soaking wet with her clothes sticking to her.
Deciding to go on, she walked slowly for a time, but then stopped.
She could hear breathing; odd-sounding breathing, like ... like somebody who was struggling or working at something while gasping every so often. She turned her head slowly, trying to get a bead on the direction.
It was coming from a cabin set back a ways.
The way that the stupid township had laid out the dirt road around the lake meant that there was lakefront and behind that and the road's right of way, lay the road. Behind that were the cabins; vacation properties, mostly.
From what she could see, the place had been built on a lot which sloped, and so the whole thing was set on concrete pilings. There was a porch at the front of it and that porch was on the highest pilings so that overall, the floor and the porch were at the same level. From where Delia stood, the rear of the place was almost on the ground, but the front edge of the porch was a good ten feet up and was surrounded by a railing.
She was curious, so she headed that way.
After a minute, she was standing under the front of the porch, still listening to the strange breathing. Then she heard a very quiet grunt before who or whatever this was carried on, the breathing gradually getting a bit faster.
Really curious now, she laid her pack down carefully. As she did, she heard and felt a couple of the cans slide against each other and with a gentle wave of her hand, they were suspended along with the rest of her treasures inside of the pack and not able to rattle at all.
She listened and sensed for a moment more and decided that the sounds related to something very likely sexual in nature and that made up her mind.
She looked around and tried to sense for anyone else out here at ground level. With nothing coming to her, she let her skin change from it's regular, run of the mill for around here to what she was inside.
Her clothing faded from view and she stood naked for a second as her dark-skinned body vanished from sight as well right afterwards. Testing the solidness of the porch construction by feel for a moment, she began to climb up silently in the manner of her father's kind.
She'd never met him and only knew what her mother had said of it all before she'd died when Delia was sixteen.
Delia didn't have very much of anything at all to her name, but she'd been given a few questionable gifts in her DNA.
When she got to a point where she could see over the edge, Delia almost gasped herself. In fact, she almost fell clean off.
