#20 FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

A drop of the miraculous liquid of life lands on the tip of my nose. It’s warm. As it rolls over my upper lip, I can taste its sour saltiness.

For the first since I crashed on Titan, I had gathered enough courage to chase a mouse out of my overfilled sewer.

What a mistake.

The Babel gang had fallen upon me. Lying in the mud, agonizing and with my paw stuck under a concrete block, I have no escape. In the shadow of a giant dish elevated pole, these toothless punks take great pleasure in torturing the small and malnourished kitten I am.

“Eat another one, filthy vermin!” the child whose face is devoured away by smallpox scars shouts. Accompanying his swearing, he gives me a blow with a stick as his friends laugh.

“Sid? Do you think there’s som’thing to eat on these lil’ bones?” the fattest of them asks, with his partially unstitched colonial overall.

“Are you stupid? This is a rat lab! Can’t you see the scars behind its ears?” my executioner replies. “Let’s open his skull, and fence the microchips!”

“You do it…” intervenes the third one while readjusting his umbrella hat. The acid rain from the terraforming residues could eat away his spotty skin and greasy locks, and the drizzle had given way to heavier and more dangerous drops.

“Don’t want to get blood on your hands, faggy? No time to waste with the storm coming, then!” Sid snorts before holding my tiny head in a corrosive puddle, nose down in the soiled water. The leader of the gang is ready to satisfy his murderous impulses proper to sapiens.

Fortunately, a small voice almost covered by the windy flood interrupts him: “Stop that!” Heaving a sigh, Sid turns around to confront the impudent.

Although still held by the paw, the grip on my throat is loosened. I can catch a glimpse of the young child who came to my rescue.

Her well-rounded and freckled face is partially hidden by her tuft of blond hair. Her pink and black plastic dress clash terribly with her yellow rubber boots covered with gray mud. I know her by sight. She is the girl who never smiles. She lives with the old bounty hunter in the block behind the graveyard. The one who, sometimes, feeds me through the gutter grate near the A&P.

“Stop it! And right away or else…” the girl insists with a more resolute yet quavering voice.

Curiously, Sid obeys. By straightening, this one completely clears my sight. I can realize my rescuer isn’t alone. The other child is slightly taller and her exact opposite: caramel skin and straight black hair. I don’t know her.

“What the fuck did you say?” laughs the leader of the gang as he trudges in their direction. The nose stuck to the little girl, he spits on her face without any warning. The girl with the pink dress doesn’t flinch. The defilement is immediately washed away by the rain which stops as quickly as it started, forecasting a Cronian hurricane. “You think I’m scared of you? Or your daddy?” The kid laughs. Turning to enjoy the encouragement of his peers, Sid pulls a switchblade from his jeans’ back pocket before resuming: “Shoulda cut you a smile outta your worm-slurping face?”

But the golden-haired sapiens doesn’t intend to let it go. In one swift movement, she grabs the weapon by the sharp edge. Before the leader of the children’s gang could understand anything, the knife is already deeply planted in his shoulder as his two companions take a step backwards.

“Fucking bitch!” Sid curses. He wants to pull out the blade but the little girl had previously seized his forearm, tearing him another cry of pain as he collapses in the mud.

“Cut it out, Bambi! Pronto!” intervenes a teenager with a very young Asian boy on her shoulders. Behind them, under a squared-shaped umbrella, follows a six-year-old child with a respirator, holding a small Dingbot.

‘Bambi’ releases her prey, but not without twisting its wrist, which makes a cracking sound. The brigand in short pants lets out a groan and dusts off with his companions on his heels.

Good riddance…

My rescuer crouches beside me and turns over the concrete block holding my paw. Gently stroking my soaked hackles, she inquires: “Are you okay?”

I don’t answer. Pulling myself up from the muddy ground, I’m already on my way to the sewer.

“See you around, kitty!” she resumes, before smiling at me.