Truant

Truant


I twist and bend through corners, my vest and dress pants stretching in awkward ways with each stride taken to reach the girl just a few feet in front of me.

She keeps turning her head to face /me/, a massive grin plated across her face.

It's as if she's fucking mocking me.

This young, dark-skinned bitch is mocking me, Renard Velta the Third, a man of such prestigious blood that even the poor tre-

I yell out as juice squirts into my eyes from the blunt smack of a tomato connecting with my face. My face turns as red as the object, liquids running out of my eyes and dripping down onto my expensive set of clothing.

I continue to pump my legs, but seemingly gaining no ground on her. In fact, she looks as if she's pacing herself in front of me, giggling like a god damn school girl every single step of the way.

I think back to how I've even managed to get myself into such a moronic situation.

Ah, yes, that's right.

Now I remember /exactly/ what happened.

Those puppy dog eyes and oddly mismatched clothes were the first thing to catch my eyes. She was just standing in the middle of the sidewalk, dragging her feet through the biggest financial district in town.

Of course, my place of business happens to be there.

That old and battered sunhat plus a pair of goggles, cracked and worn from what looked like years of abuse...

Let's be honest, what kind of cruel, black hearted creature could /not/ feel bad for her? For fucks sake, she was so malnourished and everything!

I stopped her and her eyes immediately lit up, as if someone had just set off a pair of fireworks somewhere in the distance.

“How are you, little lady? I'm Renard Velta the Third, and just seeing you look so beaten up while heading to work...”

Of course, being the over the top polite gentleman that I am, I fished out my wallet and handed her a couple of bills.

She just stared down in amazement, like someone had given her a solid brick of Euridium from the Exemplar star system!

I close my eyes as my anger, and heaving chest, begin to catch up to me.

“Oh come on old man, is that all you've got?”

I scoff as I stop and put my hands on my knees, the young thief not even bothering to continue off ahead of me.

“Old?! Let me ask you something, you little peasant. Do you even have a fucking clue who you're messing with right now?”

She stretches her arms out above her head, my wallet loosely gripped in her hand, and releases a big yawn.

She seems completely disinterested in me, and it's really starting to piss me off.

“I'm Renard Vel-”

“Velta the Third, yeah yeah I heard you the first time. Does that title give you superiority here?”

“It absolutely does!”

She laughs and bounces around her in her ripped pair of stockings, practically rolling on the ground as her average sized chest lacks air to breathe properly.

“You actually believe that! Are you kidding me right now? Obviously all that title has gotten you is a smaller total in your bank account!”

My temples pound with pure hatred and rage.

“I graduated from the top of my class in the most elite school in the entire universe! My intelligence is nothing to be insulted! You're just some no-named thief who has nothing to do but try and pick on people who are more fortunate than yourself!”

Sweat continues to pour off of my forehead, bringing a feel of sickness to my stomach.

Her laughter runs through my entire little spiel. Not one moment does it cease, and it certainly is not helping my anger problems.

“Sir, I just have to ask. Does intelligence yield common sense?”

My eyes go wide and stare at the stone path below me, people simply passing by the two of us with no interference. I finally set my body up straight again, looking at the amount of poverty surrounding the two of us.

She literally managed to lead me on a fifteen minute chase from the financial district all the way into the slums.

I pain shoots up my leg as I recall my body slamming into the hard ground that I had previously been standing on, a simple shove from a frail looking girl doing quite powerful job.

She just laughed and waltzed off with my money.

I had enough money in there to last me for an entire month, maybe even two. Now, all I can think of is that laugh.

That mother fucking laugh.

She finally snaps her fingers at me, bringing me back to attention.

She closes her eyes and smiles, tilting her head a bit and waving the wallet in front of her face.

After taunting my already demolished self esteem, she pulls the wallet open and pulls out all of the contents that it had once contained.

With her hands, she files through bill after bill, counting the total amount of money that she had in her possession.

With each piece counted, her grin grew an equal amount more wide.

Finally, finishing her total with her massive, shit-eating grin as large as it has been since she stole from me, she simply relaxes her arms and shrugs at me, once again practically squinting at me.

“You're just too easy, Richard.”

“It's Renard, you piece of-” With that, she nonchalantly turns her back to me and walks into the slums, pausing for a moment and tossing the bills into the air, hers brown-skinned hands lingering up along with them.

The money rains down around her onto the ground, a massive crowd of the poor rushing into the street to round up what they could of the money. I run forward, managing to scourge one of the many pieces of currency, but my main goal was to find and strangle the petty thief.

As the crowd finally disperses, I twist my body in various directions, left with no sight or trace of the woman who had managed to just give away a somewhat painful amount of my last paycheck.

With my shattered pride and the painful embarrassment of being robbed by a tiny, frail girl encasing my emotions, I drag my body back home, only a few blocks away in the more upscale section of town.

As I walk up to the door of my estate, rubbing my temples as my adrenaline finally begins to take it down a notch, I notice a piece of paper sticking out of the crack in my door. I pull it out and unfold it, a very neat and girly looking style of handwriting scribbled in a sentence across the paper.

I nearly rip the piece in half, but the deed is done, sentence forever branded into my head.

“Oh, and by the way – the name is Harmony, but most of you rich folk know me as 'the Harmful' or some bullshit like that. Anyways, thanks for the money sweetie!~

~Harmony F.'

I crumple the scraps together and throw them off onto the sidewalk, kicking my door open and slamming it shut on the most embarrassing day of my life.



'Truant' is a song produced by Burial.