Can Anybody Find Me?

Chapter 5

~~ This is my mental image of Elonore. Down the right hand side -->~~

Elonore sat at the bar, back to the crowd of people seething around her and drank her beer. It was cold and wet and free, making it better than nothing. Being around this many people still bothered her, but she'd learned to deal with it. After her father's death, she'd been through enough to officially end any chance at a normal life.

First of all the doctors had discovered what her fahter had done to her. That'd gotten the psychologists out, all wanting to test her state of mind. Secondly the police investigation into her act of self defence eventually made it into the news and then Lone had really been uncomfortable. Everyone in the city had known then, what had been done to her, knew how dirty she was, how tainted. She had left after the police had declared it a 'clean kill', obviously in self defence. She took the General and drove, no destination in mind at all, but needed to go somewhere that no one knew her. No one would look at her with pity or horrified disgust.

She'd ended up broke in a bigger city, with no friends, no family and no clue what to do to survive. She'd spent the last of her money in a seedy bar on the only meal she'd had that day. She ate slowly, planning on sleeping in her car again when a fight had broken out behind her. She'd felt it coming, with the way their auras had changed colour and texture, had moved out of the way to not get involved when the violence broke loose. But then one of them slammed into her table, knocking her meal to the floor and she lashed out. In a moment she had both drunk men flung out the door, completly lost on how she'd kicked hte shit out of them.

The bar tender had called her over afterwards and passed her battered $10 back. 'For the good show'. He had said laughing. She'd taken it back without arguing and turned to leave when he called her back. And then he told her something interesting. That she could make good money in the fights. This city had a healthy underground fighting ring where amateur boxers and MMA wannabes could pound on each other and get paid to do it. So she'd agreed to let him set it up. That was how Larry became her agent. He would go around and find when hte fights would be, setting up events and then bringing in the bets while she fought.

Elonore didn't win all the fights, but she won most of them, and often against long odds. It seemed that the more aggressive her opponent was, the faster and harder she brought them down, showing no hesitation between male or female combatants. And the money started to come in. It wasn't legal, of course, but it was a living. She'd slept in her car until she had enough cash to get a simple apartment room in a halfway decent building. Her next door neighbor was a second rate escort, barely a step above prostitute.

'Belle' as she called herself, would have clients that called her and they'd always come over to her place for the fun. But one of her regulars got jealous one day and decided that if he couldn't have her to himself, no one would have her. Lone had heard him hitting Belle and had gone over, kicking in hte door to stop him. Then she threw him out the window. It was only the second story and he survived the fall, but it convinced him to stay away. So Belle had made herself Lone's best friend of sorts. Lone wasn't much into talking about her past, and still had trouble around people, but she learned to ignore that part of her brain unless she was using it. In a fight, she was learning to use the changes in a person's aura to read what they were going to do. And she'd learned that the aura a person had in general was like a personality guage. Belle was a drowsy magenta, sex and lust, vanity and ignorance, but she was a good friend. Once she knew Lone wasn't a rival escort, she would come over and share some of her baking, Lone would do laundry with her and generally acted like this was all normal. After a fight they'd always go for drinks until the pain faded and Belle would help stitch Lone back up. And if a regular got too rough, Belle would bang three times on the wall and Lone would run over to help.