Every since he got home from work, her father only watched television. It was old reruns of classical western sitcoms, which made Ellen wanted to vomit. But it was better than actually being a cowboy, with all their chauvinistic values. All their girls being rescued from the hangman’s noose. She herself had largely given up watching the set, and had largely tuned herself out from the larger world. It was not just the educational channels that gave her a headache. But also the cartoon channels. Part of her still wanted to reclaim the lost joy of flickering lights. When she had went to the arcades, she had met Slephner for the first time. It was one of the few occasions she didn’t mind little Indians and cowboys shooting at each other to the death.

“Ellen! I’m trying to talk to you!” Her father said, slamming the door. Even though in reality, he had just gotten up. He forgot that he had locked her in the basement. He took the key from where he hid it, then opened the door. “ It wasn’t the same tone from when he spanked her, but it wasn’t any more of a relief. Just the sound of his voice, made her want to smash his head open with a lead pipe.

“I can explain about–” Ellen began to say.

“Forget about the excuses.” her father said.

It had been like this since she turned fifteen, and showed no obvious signs of slowing down. She did what any other girl in that situation to.

She got herself a lead pipe.

After the ordeal, she packed her bags with blood on her face. She unpacked herself a bottle of mace, packed it in her purse. In her backpack, she carried a small laptop. She also got herself a change of clothes and toiletries. She had never been homeless before. But now she didn’t have the choice. After she climbed out the window, having locked herself inside, she saw the silhouette of another man, who seemed to shape shift from that of a human sized tarantula, and she was unsure whether it was real or a product of the trickier of city lights. Slephner’s silhouette revealed itself, who held a Luger.

He shot the spider several times, to make absolutely sure it was dead.

“Oh, Ellen. Is that you? Why the blood on the face?”

“It’s a long story.”

Ellen carried the stuff she could carry, along with the last fifty dollars she would ever see, into her new life as an adult, despite being ten years younger than most. But it was better than being an alley cat on these streets.

It was school where Malcolm failed his grades. He was one of the few that still went to standardized education. The topics about human anatomy were never something he payed much attention to. At least that part of his life was over; but not the endless calling from his father that broke the silence like nails on a chalkboard. If the windows were made of normal glass, they would have broke. While his father wanted to lecture Malcolm about his grades, the boy himself thought of it as has dad just wanting to use him as his sounding board. “Why are we talking about my grades now? Hadn’t he already?”

It wasn’t the first time his dad yelled at him, but all the times he did always seemed like the same reasons. “We can’t take care of both you and your sister. We have to pay for your sister’s cancer treatment. You’re out!” His father got himself a shotgun, and chased him out of the apartment. Then shot in Malcolm’s general direction. “Don’t come back now!”

Malcolm ran off into the night. Now on these streets, he no longer cared about anything. Not the friend he thought he had, not even his own famille. He wondered if there were still computers to use the currently degenerated networks at the local library, but he forgot that he no longer had his identification. An erased face, a blotch of nothingness. He could be murdered, buried in a heap of garbage. And nobody would come looking for him.

He heard screech that sounded like a cat, but he was not sure. He went to the source of where the noise came from. He checked out the cat to make sure it wasn’t wounded, then gave it a gentle scratch on its left ear. “So it’s just me and you.”

This was a few months ago. And the sound of the cat’s murder still gave him nightmares, and could not wash away the blood on his face, despite long since running off in the shower. He didn’t remember the cat killer’s face. And now, having given the cat a name, he would go out the name the new cybernetic he made from his own resources, after the cat. The cat whose named was Pod. Pod-Net. Malcolm made a promise to himself, that the new friend who had made after tending to Nadine’s care, would not end up like his cat.

Nadine was still sleeping on their old couch, in their old apartment room they rented on the cheap. But it was better than him, Blanci, and Nadine being out on the street. He supposed it could have been a lot worse.