InsaneJournal

Week Five - Sunday morning - Greenhouses
WHO: Jack and an unknown drifter
WHERE: Out by the Lost Girls' greenhouses
WHY: Jack intends to frighten off a stranger stealing from the greenhouses but things go very wrong
RATING: PG-13 for violence

The futon in the back office of the Buffalo Bar wasn’t as comfortable place to spend the night as her own bedroom but every girl needed a place to think of as her own and Jack had kind of claimed the bar as her own. It wasn’t actually hers at all but it was nice to have a place away from the noise of the other girls. She didn’t crash all the time, but every so often it was a nice change.

It was still early in the morning and everything was quiet. Jack was on her way home for breakfast and a change of clothes - but she was taking the long way. It had taken a long time to scrounge up enough scrap to build even a small skate ramp but she did it and set it up out by the greenhouses where there was space for it. Before she went home, Jack thought she’d pull some tricks in the cool morning air with no one around to watch if she ate it.

Except there was someone around, a man, which instantly translated to trespasser. With so many strangers around they’d had a hell of a time keeping people off their property. Jack dropped her board at her feet.

“Hey!” she yelled. “Get out of here!”

The man had a rucksack filled to bulging from the contents of the greenhouse. Dressed in little more than threadbare rags and sporting a scruffy beard, the man looked for all the world like one of the sad drifters that came through town that hadn’t found a permanent place to call home since the bombs went off. There were still plenty of them, though their numbers weren’t as large these days as they had been.

The man turned toward her and growled. “Get lost kid and forget you ever saw me.”

Jack’s face went carefully blank and she raised her chin. Tough. She took a couple steps forward. “Leave what you took and I will. This isn’t yours.”

“Not gonna happen kid.” The man’s eyes narrowed and he shifted the bag onto his shoulder and moved toward her. “Now move out of my way or I’ll move you myself.”

It wasn't often that Jack had need of her pocketknife but she reached for it now and flicked it open with a comfortable snick. "No." Once the stranger saw she wasn't some scared little girl, Jack was sure he would give up. She wanted to be a little bit scary herself and she definitely didn't like the threat that he'd move her. Men always thought she'd do what she was told just because she was smaller and younger. Lost Girl property was her property and he wasn't welcome.

The man hesitated for a moment at the sight of the knife, but then continued moving forward. “Sorry but I can’t do that, now get out of the way.” He started running toward her, with Jack being between him and freedom there was little choice and he was not about to let some teenage kid stop him.

Jack planted her feet and raised her hands, grabbing at his arm. He reacted by grabbing her knife arm with one hand and trying to push her away with the other, working to get her to drop the knife and let him continue on his way to freedom.

The girl wrenched hard with her knife hand and swung at him at with her other, fighting to overcome an obvious height and weight advantage. Her opponent twisted her arm, but it was obvious he wasn’t in as good a shape as someone his size would normally be.

He tried to push the knife out of the way, but Jack’s sudden lunge caught him off guard. The arm holding the knife broke free of his grip only to surge forward uncontrolled into his chest, the blade slipping between his ribs all the way to the hilt.

Jack hadn’t expected him to suddenly let go and the sense of freedom was both unexpected and exhilarating in the way a skate trick was in the moment before she either nailed it or fell. It was too late to stop the way she was moving and Jack had the knife and then her grip was empty and it was in him.

“Hey...hey guy..are you okay? It’s okay, it’s okay.” Jack could taste copper in her mouth and she felt something similar to being underwater.

The stranger stared at her as he collapsed to the ground, blood bubbling up out of his mouth as he tried, and failed, to speak. The blade had done its job too well and it was only another few heartbeats before his lifeless eyes stared up at the ceiling of the greenhouse.

Jack wasn’t sure how she got on the ground next to him but she was. Jack touched his, thinking she could stop the bleeding but she didn’t know how when she was afraid of taking the knife out and the blood was coming out of his mouth. And then he wasn’t there anymore. It was like a painting of someone who had once been a person but wasn’t anymore.

Her hands were wet - and shaking - so she wiped them on her jeans. Everything was red and she was scared and she didn’t know what to do.

Jack left the stranger bleeding next to her skateboard with her knife sticking out of his chest and ran for home.