Chapter One

Once again, Jane made her way home from work. She almost scoffed at the idea of calling what she did "work." It almost made it seem legitimate to sling brown sludge into bent and broken shells at the local Taco Shack. As on most days, she had scored some of the leftovers and had salivated at the thought of it. And between the doors of her place of business and what constituted her home, she had found someone worse off than herself who needed the nourishment more. This time, it was Old Ben, a homeless man she had encountered before. He had thanked her, she had smiled while her stomach rebelled, and she had been on her way home.

She arrived at her dingy, twelve-by-thirteen studio apartment in the worst part of Springfield. There was a twin bed, a two-burner stove, a mini-fridge, and a tiny shower stall next to the toilet. Once inside, she secured the three chain locks and two deadbolts and finally took a moment to relax. She took off her hair net and let her raven-black hair fall, and that took quite a while. Jane's hair reached all the way past her butt. She was only about five feet, five inches tall, and was petite on top of that. She wasn't emaciated, but she wasn't particularly muscled either. She had narrow hips and a flat stomach and breasts that, while not huge, seemed a little bit too large for her frame. She was pretty, though she never wore makeup and rarely looked anyone directly in the eye. She was afraid they might look through her eyes and see the weakness that dwelled in her soul.

When Jane had turned seventeen she had grabbed an old suitcase, everything she could carry, and had run away to Hollywood to seek fame and fortune . . . anything to get away from her small-town world, her stepfather with the drunken breath and wandering hands . . . the black eyes and the crying while curled up in the dark corners of her closet.

She thought things would be better under the bright lights of Los Angeles. Then that city chewed her up and spit her out. She had found herself lying on her back on a number of "casting couches" while looking for acting jobs, none of which she had gotten. One such encounter had left her pregnant, but she had lost the baby and been left barren forevermore.

Jane had worked at a number of crap jobs, trying to make ends meet. She had even broken down once and done a porno movie, but the director had considered her a "dead fish" when she just lay there and let the guy fuck her. So he had handed her some money and told her to find another line of work. She hadn't felt ashamed at the time, but rather . . . she had felt empty. Just like with the casting-call guys. Sometimes, she tried to pretend it was love, but she never quite fooled herself.

Then she had hooked up with a guy named James, a used-car salesman who picked her up at a restaurant where she was a waitress and brought her to Springfield with promises of a better life. That promise had lasted about a month before his wife found out.

Each excruciating, dragging, harsh moment of her existence was like another hammer blow to the nails of her coffin. She had walked the Earth for only twenty-one years, yet she felt . . . old. She had barely had a childhood, and now it seemed that even Death had passed her by. It was as if the Grim Reaper didn't think enough of her to even bother killing her. So she kept walking through the world between her two jobs and one apartment; the shadow of an insect in a jungle of steel, concrete, and glass.

Jane sat down on her bed, grabbing a hairbrush and pulling it through her locks, feeling the silky smoothness of her hair sliding through her fingers. It was so relaxing to her, and it was her tradition when she got home. She knew she didn't have long to rest, as her second job was awaiting her.

Then, she heard a pounding on the front door of her apartment. Her hands trembled and her face recoiled when she heard that raspy voice on the other side.

"Oh . . . Ja-ane!" Victor said. Victor was her landlord and was the type of man that other slumlords were ashamed to associate themselves with. "You know rent is due tomorrow. Open up. I think you need to consider my offer."

Jane almost spits at the door. He knew how desperate she was for money most of the time, and he had offered to lower her rent on any given month in exchange for certain "liberties." Once, she had given him a hand job because she had gotten sick and missed some work that month. She had done a lot of things in her life that she regretted, but reaching her hand underneath that beer gut and grabbing that disgusting creature's member still burned through her eyelids when she slept sometimes. She had washed that hand for twenty minutes, trying to get his stain off of her pale skin and out of her soul.

She stood up and went to the door, undoing the bolt-locks but leaving the chains in place. "I . . . I'll have your money," she whispered at the contemptuous forty-year-old on the other side, who was leering at her with unabashed lust. She had picked up quite a bit of overtime, and wouldn't have to resort to . . . doing favors. One of her few pleasures in life was seeing his face when he realized he wasn't going to get anything extra from her. As soon as his mouth started to scowl and his eyes darkened, she flashed him a little smile and then closed the door. As they said in The Princess Bride, Jane Collier was only "mostly dead." There was still a spark in her, fighting and flickering against the encompassing blackness.

She sat down for a few minutes, staring at the wall and waiting for Victor's clumsy footsteps to signal his departure. She changed into her Big Al's Fried Chicken uniform and walked out the door and into the darkened streets.