Carminite Girl

Severance

Mama Callida loomed against a backdrop of distant city lights that glittered like blood diamonds against a velvet night. She stood over six feet tall and was built like an ox, a heavy face surrounded by a mane of golden ringlets. Hey eyes peered out from under a powerful brow, dark and reflective like the lenses of cameras tucked away into ceiling corners, unobtrusive and ever watchful. "Have you been eating well, Columbia?" she asked. The girl across the desk was slight, bony, and wrapped in a skimpy nylon dress the same bright shade as the smudges across her lips. Her platinum hair neatly framed a gaunt face, high cheekbones and eyes that darted about like spiders across a wall. Her painted nails scraped harshly against an ugly mess of livid veins on her inner elbow, scratch scratch, scratch scratch.

At her words, the girl's eyes turned up to meet her mother's, the same dark, silvery lenses in both gazes. Her voice had carried exactly the right amount of grave concern to sound perfectly genuinely. "Yes Mama," Columbia replied.

"I have more sons than I can count," Mama Callida continued. "They are doctors, lawyers, they are security," she gestured around her at four big, stark men in neat suits that stood at each corner of the room, "but my only daughter is a mess. A hopeless mess. It is such a shame."

"Yes Mama." Scratch scratch.

"Do you know why I had your brothers bring you here?"

"No Mama."

Her mother's gaze became somehow more piecing. "One of my biggest warehouses was attacked by the White Tigers today. They brought incendiaries. Millions of dollars of synthetic opioids, gone! Up in smoke!" she leaned forward across her desk, resting on her meaty hands. "That warehouse was among my top 20 biggest secrets. They should not have known its location." She sat back in her tall leather chair and threw her arms out above her. "For the life of me, I cannot figure how they learned of my warehouse!"

Scratch scratch.

A frown creased Mama Callida's cheeks, and her fingers traced a silvery tulip that rested on a chain against her neck. Columbia flinched away. The tulip garden was Callida's secret weapon, the dark horror that had let her become the city's crime kingpin.

"Did you tell them, Columbia?"

"No Mama." Scratch, scratch. The girl looked up, and a twitchy smile flashed across her lips. "If I had, do you really think I'd have stopped at one piddly little warehouse?"

The gently tracing fingers froze for just an instant. Then Mama Callida reached into and pulled out a flimsy little silicon square in a clear plastic wrapping. Columbia's eyes widened and fixed onto it. The big woman held it away a few moments longer, then tossed it across the desk toward her. Columbia darted forward, nails scrabbling at the desk as she tore open the wrapper and pressed the patch against her inner elbow. Her body tensed for a moment, her breath caught, her lips parted. Then she melted back against the chair, eyes distant, limbs just slightly twitching.

"Your car is waiting," Mama Callida told her, and nodded to her sons. Two of them came forward and reached under Columbia's shoulders, lifting her out of the chair. They turned to walk her out of the room, but the girl suddenly convulsed, writhed out of their grasp and lunged across the desk to grab her mother by the collar of her shirt.

"You could help me Mama," she crooned, her eyes wide, her grin manic. "You could let me out of the Starlight District. I could get a job. I could have a life. Just let me go." Columbias' brothers hauled her off the desk, dragging her toward the door. "Just let me go!" Her limbs flailed, nails scratching uselessly against her brothers' suits. As they dragged her out of the room she caught a last fleeting glance of her mother's cold, silvery stare.

The doors slammed shut,and Columbia stopped struggling, hanging limply from her brothers' hands whilethey carried her through a hall, down a set of narrow stairs and out across a massivewarehouse floor. They tossed her out through two giant doors that slid slowlyshut behind her while she lay twitching on the cold ground.