Chapter 1- MEERA

[Hi guys. This is the first story I decide to make read to someone other than myself, my conscience and my other personalities (not so serious).For now, the description and characters and the title itself, (which is incomplete, being the anagram of what should be added), are very poor in content, because I would risk spoiling what, instead I want you to enjoy chapter after chapter. So I will update them from time to time that I will reveal what needs to be revealed. Okay, end of service communication. I hope you like this Fanfiction and I hope you want me to know what you think, give me suggestions and even criticism. So comment without fear. See you soon].

The floor on which her body was abandoned was reminiscent of those of a slaughterhouse in the ghetto. Decomposed tiles, whose original color was impossible to decipher, covered with a thick layer of dirt, blood, and droppings. To go to the butchery, however, were human beings. There were all sorts of them: hostages of the mob, those destined for the trafficking of organs, and those who were squeezed to death for pure amusement. She belonged to these. The smell of urine, the rotten room, the tortured meat, from circular burns scattered throughout the body, because used as an ashtray. These sensations were real, so everything else was real too. It wasn't a nightmare, which meant she was still trapped in that hell. A panting breath was pounding insistently against her ears. It was her breath. It could not be anyone else's, the strong smell of blood mixed with putrefaction, suggested that members belonging to her same consignment of goods had long since died. Some bodies had been abandoned in the room, waiting for nature to take its course, while others had remained practically nothing. The soft parts had been sold on the black market. The rest of the body had been dismembered, the heads incorporated in quicklime and smuggled as simple building blocks, other parts were mixed with scraps of meat for slaughter and ground, then sold in the slums as a filling for waste food, others simply cremated in furnaces used for the iron and steel industry for the creation of illegal weapons. There was no one there. She would abandon herself on the floor, her shoulders against the wall with the same filthy tiles, her bruised and swollen wrists and the tools that chained her firmly to that place. For some strange reason, she felt all the sensations, as if her senses were altered, every single noise, every smell. What she didn't feel were the emotions. There was physical pain, but there was no fear, there was no frustration, there was nothing. Even though she had a first-person view, she felt as if she was living outside her physical body and that she felt that pain because it was imprinted in her memory. Either that, or she was dead, finally. Suddenly, noises from outside the room broke the silence that had lasted for hours. She could not distinguish voices or words, but could see the entity: there was a lot of agitation. She was upset when she heard an entire clip unloaded on who knows what, or who. The noises continued to come closer, then the door jerked.

An alarm clock. An interminable, harassing trill, left free to latrate all over the floor, made the old wooden nightstand vibrate dangerously. Next to it, on a mattress, resting in turn on a packing platform, lay a body, in a supine position. It seemed lifeless, if it weren't for a faint, imperceptible movement of the chest, in the phase of inspiration and exhalation. The window overlooked the street, barely lit by the first lights, still free from the traffic of the city, except for some homeless and for those for whom, at night, they lived it fully. The light that penetrated it revealed a basic room, with a cubic shape, and inside the bare essentials. In front of the bed there was a wardrobe and to the right a full-body mirror. The semi-open door in front of the window gave onto a corridor, overlooked by a second door for the toilets. The corridor flowed directly into a living area with a kitchenette and the entrance door gave right onto this room. Not bad and cheap to be an apartment almost in the city center. Thuds, strong, sudden and in succession. It almost looked like the door was about to collapse under the impact of a bazooka. Meera jumped up from her pelvis as if she had come back to life after a cardiac arrest that lasted endless minutes.

-Hey, the one to whom the voice belonged from outside spoke, while he kept beating on the door with some infernal object, whose noise crept unpleasantly into the temples to inflame the brain, was probably a frying pan.

-Hey, fucking psycho. Turn that fucking machine gun off, you hear me? The walls of that shithole you call a house are as thin as paper.

Meera barely managed to obtain the lucidity necessary to grasp the alarm clock and turn off that noise that she had only felt at that moment. She turned it off. She remained calm.

He who was behind the door gave one last powerful blow to the door as if he wanted to unload them against all his anger - Every day, the same fucking story. I swear I'll have you evicted! - Heavy, decisive steps, a door slamming. Morning routine.

*Nice as a broom up the ass.*

*It's not daylight yet. Be good*

*Fuck..... I'll rest a little more then*

Thuds, strong, sudden and in succession. It almost looked like the door was about to collapse under the impact of a bazooka. Meera jumped up from her pelvis as if she had come back to life after a cardiac arrest that lasted endless minutes.

-Hey, fucking psycho. Turn that fucking machine gun off, you hear me? The walls of that shithole you call a house are as thin as paper.

-Oh no! I did it again. -

Meera grabbed the alarm clock with clumsiness. She began to turn it around in his hands nervously

-Please turn off.

Pressing all the buttons on the tool

-Please, please, please, please.

And the door continued to vibrate behind the ever-increasing beats in intensity.

She looked around as if he was looking for help from someone or something to make the object disappear before she risked being left without the front door to her apartment.

Enlightenment. She grabbed the two pillows and pushed them fervently against the alarm clock so that it would at least muffle the noise, but by some coincidence, in the act of suffocating it with the cushions, she had managed to push the exact button and finally, that noise vanished.

Still with her hands open, firmly pressed against her "lifeline", she exhaled lifted as if it were her first breath after apnea for several seconds.

One last powerful blow to the door. -Every day, the same fucking story. I swear I'll have you evicted! - Heavy, decisive steps, a door slamming. Morning routine.

* At least this time he was nicer than usual*

And with a liberating verse and open arms, she let herself freely fall on his back.

An hour later, she was ready to leave the house and go to her place of work. She took one last quick look to make sure everything was in place. Her black eyes scrutinized the silhouette reflected in the mirror, which was particularly insecure. The wavy dark hair, gathered with two oriental forks, the one Tanya had brought her from her summer trip to Japan, a tight burgundy wire sweater, with a round neck, a pair of dark jeans and a pair of Mary Jane shoes, just to give a professional touch to all that banality. She escaped her reflection as if she feared that it might come to life at any moment. She grabbed the white coat from the closet, the bag and the coat on the sofa in the living room, pulled the bunch of keys from the hook next to the door and went out. She walked the floor quickly but discreetly, to avoid anyone else noticing her presence, in fact, she was not pleased with the company of many people, except for some of her colleagues, Paul and sometimes the 24-hour market cashier in that narrow side street of River Drive. The eight flights of stairs went down quickly, the elevator was so old that the only squeaking of the car door could wake up the tenants of the building next door. She went outside and shivered. It would have been better to think about adding a scarf and a pair of gloves. She would have thought of it tomorrow. She wasn't planning on doing four floors again on foot. Rubbing her hands against each other to produce some heat, she begin to walk the 250 meters that separated her from the subway station, reached it in a few minutes. The road was still deserted and the sidewalk overlooked by several shops almost completely closed. It would have been particularly difficult during rush hour. She went down the dirty stairs of Midtown station. It was only two stops away from Old Gotham, but it was better not to risk, taking on more icy air and therefore a cold insured. She couldn't have applied for a work permit. Waiting on the tracks with her arms folded and moving with small jumps disjointed to overcome the icy wind that penetrated underground, her gaze was drawn by photo signage of the GCPD. "We ask the kind citizens to provide any information they hold about this individual. Do your good deed for your city." The one depicted was a strange being. He had dyed his hair acid green and grotesquely made up his face with white wax, surrounding his eyes with a black halo that covered his entire orbits. The shocking thing was the enormous scars on the sides of the mouth sewn up by inexperienced hands, as the flesh had thickened, leaving protuberances where the cuts had been sewn together by the thread. As if that wasn't enough, his mouth was dyed with a deep red that gave the impression that those cuts had never really healed.

The photo of that man disturbed her, without any apparent reason, perhaps because of his makeup, or because he had a fierce and insane smile on his lips and it wasn't just because of those terrible scars.

*I hope I never meet him in person*

*We've already met him, you worthless sack of garbage. *

Meera was forced to look for support to the nearby wall. Everything whirled in an exaggerated way.

*Only that instead of being you, we were me. Maybe you weren't even born*

She closed her eyelids before that whirling made her go back up that coffee she had drunk before leaving the house.

*It's not the day yet,it's not the day yet, it's not the day yet*

Everything stopped. Her eyes were drawn to a photo of the GCPD signage. Any information to help the police frame a single man. If he was protected by the Mafia, the police were just wasting their time. She looked away. The photo of that man disturbed her, for no apparent reason.

*I hope I'll never meet him *

A light at the end of the tunnel and a screech of brakes indicated that the metro had arrived at the station.