Gutter

It's the first part to a children's story (although it might not saeem like it right now. I don't know about this part yet, but the second part of the story will be much more child friendly) I'm coming up with, very slowly. It involves a girl being taken away to this Circus, which is some fantastic magical place. I'm writing it in a "make it up as you go along and see what happens" kind of way. 1


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It had an incredibly appropriate name. Gutter, the town was called - probably after the man who founded it, James Gutter, or maybe it was just named after the great big shithole it had become. It rained almost all the time in Gutter; if it wasn’t from the constantly-grey clouds that lingered above, then it would be the piss that people threw out the window. What did it mater who it landed on? In one of the many gutters of Gutter a rat swam in the mix of urine, spit, rainwater and last night’s bath. Sad to say that it wasn’t the worst thing that would be swimming down these streets. Its journey was stopped abruptly by the long sharp stick that had dug itself into the rat’s back. With one sad last squeak, the rat died.
The owner of the long sharp stick, an old woman, almost bent double from old age, danced around happily and let stream from her mouth a quite extensive array of gibberish words. She took off the rag which she had been using as a shawl of some kind to reveal a small makeshift bag which had been slung around one shoulder. It stank of mud and faeces and some animal which she had forgotten to take out some weeks ago. Watching the shish-kebabed rat with wide, greedy eyes, she was about to put it into her bag when, out of nowhere a large hand pulled her back, and with a lot of force, slammed her into the wall of a nearby building.
The huge man then picked up the rat-on-a-stick and smelled it with his hair logged nose.
“Ooh! S’fresh!” he said. Ripping the rat off the stick and shoving it into the pocket of his tattered cloak, he ran the down the street.
The old woman lay there, her face in full embrace of wall, her body limp, lying on the pavement and her feet in the hell-shod gutter. From the shadows of an alley on the opposite side of the quiet road, a pair of eyes watched the scene.
The old lady certainly didn’t seem conscious. Maybe she had money in her bag. It wasn’t very likely. No one in the whole of Gutter had any money, but no one knew for sure because if they did have money then they certainly go around telling people about it.
A horse, long since separated from its owner, probably having narrowly missed being turned into steak, trotted past. The small girl who had been in the alley took this opportunity to step out into sunshine - or rather, cloudshine. Once the horse had gone, she made her way to the old lady. She bent down to pick up the bag that had been dropped and almost threw up from the smell that came from it. She tipped the small stained cloth bag upside down (as far away from her as possible of course) but the only thing to fall out was a small jagged rock and a folded piece of paper which, once unfolded, had a picture of a small child (sex unknown) in a cage, not really smiling but not really frowning either. Underneath that were the words WARNING. CHILDREN LEFT UNATTENDED WILL BE SOLD TO THE CIRCUS. The little girl couldn’t read, but someone had once read her these exact words to her not long ago and she remembered what the shapes were. She was only seven, but she had heard of this Circus business, finding children and then keeping them. Once a day, a cart would be seen going down the streets, looking for children not under supervision. The old lady had probably put the poster in her bag to remind herself not to be gone too long, in case the Circus finds her children. And now, her children were all alone. The people of Gutter were poor, but if they had one thing it was their family. Besides, the poster said the children would be sold to the Circus but that wasn’t true. The Circus just took them, and no one was sure why. No one had seen the Circus do anything else except take children away. Occasionally from the sheltered cart that roamed the streets, they would hear animal sounds, from beasts that were from places attainable only by spending months on a ship.
But the Circus did nothing else. And people who tried to find out never returned.
From up the road somewhere, Cath, as the little girl was known by her ill father who was at home and was so weak that he had to get his seven-year-old daughter to find food, heard the sound of an animal trumpet. It was the Behemoth. Only the Circus owned the Behemoth. She had seen it once, when the cart’s sheets covering it separated and inside she saw a huge cage with a massive horned grey monster inside. The thing was horrifying. Where the Circus had managed to get one of those things was beyond her. But the Circus could get anything.
Her eyes wide with fear she ran in the opposite direction, towards her house. But the sound of hooves got louder, and having passed her alley, there was nowhere else to go except straight ahead.
“Stop, child!” A voice form behind her cried out. Cath froze, not because he had asked her to, but because something inside her told her there was no point in running. They had found her. What else was there to do? Her house was a good three minutes run from here and by then the horse would have caught up to her.
That was it. She was now property of the Circus. She heard footsteps splash behind her and closed her eyes. Something heavy hit her on the head and she fell forwards, onto the cobblestones.4

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