SCAVENGERS: Blood Squad

CHAPTER 7

"Is the food ready yet? I'm starving, you ungrateful kid." Victor called upon Sierra. Damn this life, she thought.

Victor Creston is Sierra's adoptive father. Since her childhood, she was brought up on candies, chocolates and treats from her loving mother. Then her 'father' happened.

Sierra turned a knob on the bio-gas stove, flames licked into life as she placed a pan on top of it. Kisses of blue heat placed their lips undearneath the aluminum pan. Pouring cheap cooking oil, Sierra lifted the pan and rotatedly tilted it to simmer the whole pan's face with oil. From a plate she hauls a thick slab of beef into the pan, it was glazed with a bit of seasoned crushed wild olives and a flick of sugar. A satisfying hiss steadily continued on while the lower portion of the meat cooked.

"It's coming Vic." Sierra replied huskily with a hint of anger. She hated Victor for ever marrying and using her mother's hard earned Neocredits in his addictions and vices. What a jerk, she thought.

"So which fucker taught you to decide by your own and call me just like that?" Victor in irrational anger stood from his chair by the kitchen table and paced hastily to his daughter. In a reflex of grabbing Sierra's hair, she made a revolting sound of helpless shock and rebounded her head as Victor dragged it backward. His face is a literal vision of utter terror staring at the girl's scared eyes, anytime by now her arms would be another field of bruises and half-healed scabs.

Victor's last birthday was a day Sierra couldn't recall anymore but there was a chance that Victor was more or less thirty-one years old. In this age his face was a tempered mass of gaunt fixtures brought by time. His eyes were sunken deep in their sockets and his grizzled bush of a beard displayed him like a sickly old bear. A heap of hardly-groomed hair crowned his rectangular head, it was flaked with white and occasional strands of grey.

"I-I'm sorry father. The food is almost ready look," she gestured to the cooking beef.

"I will tolerate this once more tonight but never further again. Remember that Sierra, or do you prefer the beatings I delicately enjoy? Watch your mouth you little girl. They won't be talkin' long after you lose a few more teeth." Victor shook her head and released it. Tremors of soaking relief pulsed through Sierra. Her abusive father's fits of madness takes its toll on her young mind. If only there was a way to escape this rough misery, she pleaded silently.

Fetching a plate, she quickly gathered a fork and a glass. Sierra retrieved the smoking meat and neatly flipped it to the waiting plate. Not a few minutes after, the table was set and Victor propped himself in front the ready meal.

She is tired of her life. It was a repetitive cycle of endless torture and pain. Countless evidence is laid upon her right arm down to her thin hands, every time Victor was drunk or probably high on hallucinogens he took great pleasure in physically damaging Sierra. She covered it with her left hand as she headed for her room. A solitary living has taught her that the best way to break down is alone. She opened the door to her small quarters and entered silently. Her steps took careful caution of not causing too much noise, every little commotion angered Victor, and what happens after that wasn't pretty. This is Sierra's nest, a four-cornered space adorned with a simple single bed worn by the years and a few cabinets that stored her stuff. The walls were painted purple and a faint flicker of soft moonlight entered tenderly from a cracked window facing the front yard of her home.

Gaetherine, her mother, has died after the heavy weight of exhaustion buried her. She worked all through night and day to provide for both Victor and her daughter, but a home will never prosper when a father steals both Neocredits and happiness from his family. Although Gaetherine was also beaten daily by Victor, she never failed to reassure Sierra with hope and joy. Her mother only wanted the life she deserved, well-fed and finely treated. But now Sierra's life is a total trainwreck with her father and everyday that it went on her hope faltered as a candle light struggled through a windy storm.

She trodded across the bedroom window and gazed outside the boundaries of her melancholic world. A deep hum of silence echoed outside the dark streets, while behind the slums, a block across the busy cacophony of traders bartering with customers and shouts of business, the noise fused into the roar of Market Alley.

Sierra drifted into the sensitive atmosphere of the pitch-black night, a cold draft shifted her chest-length hair and brought warmth to her young amber cheeks. Then a strong gust of wind followed, forcing her to close her eyes as she braced herself of the sudden movement. Hands gathered in her chest, Sierra's beige dress crumpled and she felt the sensation of heat beneath her palms as a scent of an incoming storm aroused her senses.

Then heavy raindrops steadily pattered up the roof, and a loud boom of thunder shuddered the walls slightly. Bring the rain on then, Sierra thought calmly. Carefully she closed the windows and brought down the shutter, paced to the bed and groped her hands for her thin blanket. As it covered her body, she slid her left arm beneath the pillow over her head and faced the wall. She will sleep soundly tonight, the song of raindrops reassured her in a succession of repeated taps on the roof.

Not a few minutes later her tired blue eyes shifted to weary sleep, and a calm tune sang in her ears as if Gaetherine once lulled her to dream.

Thump, thump, thump! A continuos banging resonated from the bedroom door.

"Get up Sierra! Wakey-wakey! We're going to somewhere nice!" Hurriedly she bolted up and dressed a change of clothes. She wore a black shirt printed with a neon-shaded depiction of a guitar. It must've been Victor's shirt once but now it belonged to her. The shirt hung loose below her knees as she ran outside to her father.

"Where are we going father?" She inquired upon rubbing her drowsy eyes by the back of her hand.

"I'm gonna milk cash off you and find work you can do. Hurry up! I'm not gonna wait forever." Victor replied angrily. Obviously he was drunk again by the looks of his flushed face, this monster of a Victor enjoyed booze for breakfast.