Black Flamed Candle Books 🕯️📚’s Reviews > Femme feral > Status Update

“A sharp edge catches at my waist and something rips off, clothing or skin, I can't tell. I don't stop. Meagre moonlight filters through windows far above, too faint to illuminate the cavernous space. I run blindly. My feet pounding…the sound echoing in every direction. Mine? Theirs?
fear is driving me…I run & run until I realise my panic has led me somewhere I shouldn't be…somewhere deep in the bowels…”

“I still have not looked back. I dont need to. I can feel them after me, teeth glinting in the night. My brain flips through a highlights reel of every true-crime show I've ever watched.
…I don't hesitate. I shove it open and slip inside.
Darkness. My ears throb in the sudden silence…the door must have been left open…That means someone's nearby. A cleaner. A person. Help.”

“I must not turn. I must keep walking. I must stay calm. My pulse pounds in my throat. Horribly, I feel another hot flush come on. Not now, I beg my body. The heat that has been simmering inside of me all day comes to a boil. My face burns. Sweat runs down my neck. The air grows heavy behind me. Something rushing up behind.
I break into a run.”

“But amid the fear, there's something else. A flash of rage. Because I was minding my own fucking business. I was walking around my own fucking city. And these goddamn kids, these teenagers, are making me feel scared, for sport.”

“I'm afraid on a cellular level. Afraid in my skin, which is prickling…Afraid in my muscles, which are tensing so tightly that it feels they are stretching my bones. Afraid in my pores, which are opening a hundred streams of sweat all over my body. Afraid in my stomach, which roils and boils and twists inside of me.“

“Remind myself that I am a middle-class white woman in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, and they are literal chil-dren. I have all the power here. They haven't really done anything. I have no reason to be afraid.
But I am.”

“Something sharp pierces my foot, a bottle cap or a stone, but I keep moving, aware I must act like I am not afraid, so I do not trigger anything to be afraid of.

A dance every woman who has ever attempted to walk in the world is intimately familiar with.“

“The possibilities stand poised on a knife edge.
I decide the best thing to do is to act like nothing's wrong…head up, eyes straight ahead, hoping that if I don't acknowledge them, they might just leave me alone. I quicken my pace just enough that it won't look like I'm running.”

“They freeze at the sight of me, likely more confused by my get-up than anything else - my bathrobe, my filthy bare feet. None of them move. They are sizing up the moment, sizing up each other. I could be a source of trouble, or a source of fun. I could be a madwoman. I could be their mother yelling at them to go home.

Or, I could be prey.”