I was just at a club drinking & smoking (mostly smoking), and I wrote this story (in the club). Then I went to a different club; now it's 6 AM and I'm posting the story here. The story's called...

Punk Girl

Kristina had dyed her hair green the day she ran away from home. It wasn't that she hated her parents; they were an all right bunch. An office worker daddy and a stay at home mom – she'd been destined for a life too ordinary. So, she ran. She'd fit everything she needed into a single backpack, borrowed some survival money, and bought the first train ticket to Budapest.

She'd planned it well, of course. She'd made rules.

Rule 1. Do not trust.

There were cold nights and hard nights, and this one was an equal measure of both. She sat with her back to the wall on a thin blanket in the Astoria metro underpass, cold and uncomfortable. It had been her second week in the city, and she'd spent the last few nights with a group of punks, who'd lent her the blanket in the first place. They said they liked her hair.

"And I tell you I've got only two hundred," Grabber said. He and Bubba were supposed to have been covering the tourist areas during the day – they should've made five, six thousand forints from begging at the least, even on a Wednesday.

"It's the bums, Kris, it's the ****ing bums! They take everything!"

It wasn't the bums. Grabber smelled like a distillery. He and Bubba must have drank half a hundred shot bottles between them; she was impressed he could stand, not to mention talk.

"Where are the others?"

"Still out. Just go to sleep will, you."

"It's too damn cold to sleep."

"Well, I've got two hundred. We can get a couple of shot bottles. My treat."

"You'd do that for me?"

Grabber smiled. He missed three front teeth, but she was charmed nonetheless. "Okay. I'll wait for you here."

"Nah, you gotta come too."

"Why's that?"

"Come on, just come."

"Store's just a street away, Grabber."

"It'll be an adventure. Come on, Kris. Besides, I'm buying, right? Make me company."

"Fine, fine. Can't sleep anyway." She folded the blanket into her bag, and followed Grabber out.

The punks had treated her like one of them: vagina jokes aside, she preferred their company to that of the bums. Grabber even helped her sneak into a gym's shower cabin yesterday. She'd washed off layers of grime, and now felt like a rose flower. A frozen rose flower. Grabber had no such luck, but by now her nose filtered the stink on auto-pilot.

"Hey, didn't we pass our street?"

"Yeah, shop's closed. But Bubba told me of this other place, they can help us make some money."

"What money?"

"You'll see."

"Don't tell me you think my two hundred's enough for a wine-coke."

"I thought we were buying shot bottles."

"Nah, Bubba's got a plan. Trust me."

It was eight in the evening, and the street was full of party faces, people hurrying home from work, the well-dressed strangers giving them disapproving looks. Grabber turned into an alleyway.

"Where are we going?"

"It's a shortcut."

She'd followed him for a few meters until she'd realized that the lampposts along the sidewalk were broken, and the alleyway was dark and silent of life. She stopped. "Where are we going?"

"A shortcut, like I'd said. Come on, Bubba's waiting."

"So we're meeting Bubba?"

"What's the holdup, baby? Don't you trust me?"

"I think I'll just wait for you in the underpass."

"Come on, Kris, we gonna make some cash."

She took a step back. "Yeah, Bubba probably wants me to suck someone's cock again. I told you before, I'm no whore."

"Nothing like that!"

She took another step back.

Bubba stepped out of the shadows, blocking the exit from the alleyway. His friends, the three other punks she'd called brothers in drunken arguments more times that she could remember, stood behind him. "It's exactly like that," Bubba said, "Relax. This isn't going to hurt a bit."

Kristina couldn't believe this. She'd always felt Bubba was a *******, but she hadn't expected this from Grabber. "Grabber, you ****ing *******."

"Relax," he said, looking away, "It's gonna be all right. It's like a ritual. Everything's gonna be all right."

She pulled out a switchblade out of her jacket's pocket. She'd never showed it to the boys before, precisely because she was afraid of something like this. "Grabber, move out of the way."

"What's this, a knife?"

"That's what YOU want," Bubba shouted; she turned around – Bubba's casual walk turned to a sprint in a second. She had no time.

Rule 2. Do not fear.

She unfolded the switchblade and flicked it at Grabber's eyes. He raised his hands to protected himself, and she kicked him in the balls as hard as she could.

He'd bent over as she ran past him into the darkness. They came after her, shouting curses as she they ran, Bubba the loudest of them all. But she ran and ran, taking turns at random, street after street, until the curses and the screaming were far behind and she found herself back on the main street, close to Astoria. A university campus was nearby; she'd heard there was a pub there. A crowd was what she needed.

The club was in the basements of some administrative building at the rear of the campus. Drunken students sat on a bench outside, others smoked by the entrance. Disco music played loud enough for the windows to vibrate. She went in. It was full house.

Kristina took the backpack off and pushed through the crowd up to the stage. She wondered if she could hang out here 'till morning. Bubba's boys probably were looking for her nearby, but they'd return to the underpass to meet the morning if there were no police patrols tonight, and she could slip away, take the five AM tram in the general direction of away. Where exactly, she did not know; somewhere warm, she hoped.

The people around her headbanged to the electronic beat screaming from the speakers. Students. Her parents wanted her to be one of them one day – to graduate with honors, to bang her head to idiot music, to go work in an office, get a pension plan, get married to a reasonable young man, make lots of babies, make everyone happy. "Babies make everyone happy," her mom had told her once. She cringed at the disco music; some Rock & Roll would've done this place good.

What was her alternative? To live like a bum? She'd tried that, it wasn't pretty. She could handle herself, sure, but she'd been lucky so far. One day her luck would run out; and it wasn't about luck, anyway. The real reason she wanted out of her house was fear. Fear.

The realization hit her like a slap to the face. She'd been scared that if she followed the rules, she'd end up just like everyone else: miserable. She'd been afraid she'd fall into the money trap all adults seem to fall prey to sooner a later, when money – survival money – became more important than living out their dreams. Living for survival was for monkeys, not human beings, and the last time she'd checked, she didn't have a tail.

Kristina was afraid that maybe, she wasn't special at all.

Rule 3. Do not ask.

It was a chilly November afternoon when she'd knocked on her parent's house door. Kristina's mom opened it on the third knock. Her face went through a spectrum of emotions as she stood in the doorway, watching her runaway daughter bow her head in shame.

She hadn't asked Kristina where she'd been. She just hugged her.

-- THE END --