Love Street
The city sure knew how to hate. She knew that now, walking naked except for a pair of bloody panties that clung modesty to her left ankle. She spread her broken arms as a car rumbled on, headlights on bright. The light hurt her eyes--amazing she could feel them at all, with shards of bone jutting out from her forearm, and with the lining of her vagina hanging out six inches between her thighs. The wall between her vagina and anus had gone the way of Berlin. Yet the car never stopped, except in her dreams. The light vanished, and all was dark again.
She fell down again, twisting her ankle and cracking her skull against the curb. It was just another broken bone. Deprived of her legs, she crawled, digging her fingernails into the wet cement. The street lamp a dozen yards ahead flicked on and off; it had been shot up earlier that evening. Broken syringes and used condoms flowed into her face, going with the motion in the gutter. And to think that just three hours ago she'd been a virgin.
The skin flapped from the backs of her hands where he'd cut her. She broke a fingernail off in a metal grating where the water liked to go. Then she stopped crawling, and just concentrated on breathing.
The feel of the knife in her womb was preferable to the sound of that water dripping down into nothing.
Nearby, the sign read 'Love Street--it had once read Lovendale Street,' but someone had spray-painted a penis on the third syllable in that name. She raised her head one last time, and read the sign, and her lower jaw trembled. Rain gushed through her bangs, cleaning the four inch cut in her forehead down to the naked skull.
She cursed the sign, until she couldn't hold her head up anymore. Then she closed her eyes and never opened them again.
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