Chapter One: ELLA SUE, Part 2

The screams first came faintly, high-pitched, definitely female. Then there were more, a crowd of voices of varied tones, still somewhere in the back of her mind, not heard through the ears. She'd fallen asleep again, and this time it was harder to wake up. 

Fast footsteps thundered past her. Running, the occasional gunshots and sirens, angry voices and bottles breaking, all these were nothing new to her and not enough to raise her from slumber. The jarring bump against the car, however, was.

Ella Sue rose with a disorienting snap. A flash of her surroundings entered her vision but flooded the gates of her incoherent mind. 

Through the windshield, she witnessed a woman laying on the hood while a man pressed her from behind. He grabbed her hair and yanked her downward, both their beings vanishing from Ella Sue's sight. 

From what she could see through her window fogged with her breath, people were wild tonight. They raced from the parking lot on wheels and foot, their screams indicative of a strange and new kind of fun, not like the laughing woman. 

Ella Sue rubbed the sticky web of sleep from her eyes, then glanced around for any sign of Mother among the hoard of men and women fleeing. They all passed her, left her alone with her pink, ratty bathrobe and backseat bed. 

She blinked slowly, her eyelids and head weighing heavy under the colorful lights. She nestled beneath her blanket again, the music of her lullaby laddering in volume as the screams faded. 

A different set of noises lingered outside her door. Lightly the growls came like the coyotes in Georgia when they cautioned encroachments. She balled up even tighter against the gnawing hunger pains in her stomach. The growls weren't outside, she convinced herself somewhere in a realm of dreams, it was her stomach. But the front door opening was real.

"Ella Sue, baby, are you all right?" She remained tucked and nodded, opened her eyes long enough to see Mother panting hungrily for breath, her makeup smeared in wet stripes. "Dear God, what's happening," Mother shrieked and started the engine. 

She must've had another bad man again, Ella Sue surmised. It happened sometimes, and Ella Sue wasn't to worry about it, but expect it every now and then. So when the vehicle whipped in several directions and sped onward, she didn't think anything of it. She let the sound of the tires along the road lure her into the deepest part of sleep, where she drew comfort in knowing they'd be at Mitch's gas station soon. 

It was her coughs which aroused her this time, and she sat up fully, rubbing her eyes and stretching her legs. She couldn't stop coughing. Something in the air choking her brought to realization that everything about being at Mitch's gas station was wrong. She was still in the backseat. The driver's side door was opened. Mitch hadn't knocked on the glass, but Mother wasn't sleep behind the steering wheel. She was gone, as if she'd vanished in the plumes of smoke filling the car.  

Ella Sue looked around frantically, opened her door and got out barefoot. She wasn't behind the convenient store. Through the mask of smoke, she saw she'd been sleeping beside a pump, a dinging coming from the dashboard. She called out to Mother but didn't get a reply. She needed to move out of the wind's path to see better, breathe better. 

Standing in a clearing of the lot, she spotted a truck and flipped car ablaze, atop an incline toward the highway. As the vehicles smoldered, a man and woman wrestled much in the way the couple on the hood of the car had last night at the club.  The woman screamed a terrifying shriek while the man grabbed at her, and down they went.  Ella Sue made a visor with her hands and shielded her eyes from the sunlight. Silhouettes of the man and woman created a disturbing kind of fun; at the end of the bout, the man stood erect, holding only the woman's head. 

Ella Sue ran, crying for her mother, ran as fast as her naked feet could take her across the hard concrete. Everywhere she turned there were cars parked sideways, along the grass, across two spaces, up against the wall of the convenient store. A roaming man or woman, here and there, growling like her tummy, but no Mother. If she couldn't find her, she'd search for the next best thing. 

Ella Sue, Part 3