Modern Day Cavegirls - Jane 02

Jane said nothing and didn't move. She only waited.

After what felt like about five full minutes, the person walked forward and Jane watched as they passed through the thin bars of light from above. Each bar broken by the silhouette brought a little more definition as the mysterious one came.

Jane thought that she'd been wrong and that it was actually a boy or a young man for a moment.

But there were details which told the truth, no matter what. The eyes were not like a boy's -- unless there was something ...

The hair was a light brown -- the part that she could see clearly in the bar of light. It was cut somewhat like a boy's style, she thought, but then she saw that it was ragged and it made sense. This person had cut their hair themselves, leaving just a little at the back which was collar length or a little longer.

The build was too thin for almost any boy.

Also, the build betrayed her even still, skinny and bone-thin or not.

The hips were very slim, but they were there, noticeable whenever she took another slow, careful, and worried step. It was the kind of build which boys never have and not many girls have either, Jane decided. The placement of the hips was just about equidistant between the feet and the shoulders, giving her a long, thin torso. There were workboots on those feet, old ones to be sure. The pants were black jeans -- also old, but they didn't look very dirty.

Jane saw an open plaid shirt over those thin shoulders overtop of a mostly-clean, old green T-shirt which read 'Red Hot Chili Peppers'.

Jane looked, though not too hard. She didn't need to.

This was a girl --

Who was absolutely flat-chested.

She could make out only what had to be slightly puffy nipples from the way that the shirt hung. There were no breasts there at all to disturb the way that the shirt hung over her, completely straight down but for two small bumps.

No matter how rail-thin they might have been, those boys in Jane's memory who had a build a little similar to this girl, Jane hadn't seen one yet who had puffy nipples. No matter how thin or underdeveloped -- or even weak -- those boys might have been made, she'd never seen a single one whose chest didn't change the way that a T- shirt hung -- not like this, for damn sure.

Jane scowled a little and walked to a wooden chair. Picking it up, she walked back and set it down.

"Sit."

The other person didn't move.

"Ok," Jane said, her voice and expression deadpan, "Please sit."

There was no response.

Jane sat down with a frustrated sigh on the edge of the bed facing the chair. She reached into her pocket and produced the key to the old Harley trike down below. She held it up high over her head so that the girl could see it clearly and she saw a slight look of despair flicker across that face.

"Just so you know," Jane said quietly, "I've had an absolutely shit-filled day so far.

And I'm told that I often don't exhibit a great deal of patience or even much wisdom either, like I was told just today, not even an hour ago, the last time.

And sorry to say, that's at the very fucking best of times."

She looked around herself for a moment, "I cleaned this loft out a long time ago to use as a place where I could be alone. I haven't been in here for a few years now. I doubt that any of my family has either, since you're here and all.

In my great-grandaddy's day, you'd be looking at the business end of his scattergun right about now.

To be completely honest with you, I came here today for the same reason I did all that time ago.

I came here to cry, where no one would see me and know that I was crying. Today has been just one long shit show, just one more little reminder to me that I'm an idiot -- just in case I'd forgotten."

She looked around, "But I found miracles in here today.

Naturally, I'm curious. I don't know you from anybody, but to me it looks like you worked a few major wonders in here and I want to know why.

I'm not upset at what you've done -- if it was all you. I know that you must have been trespassing in here for some time now. I don't think that I even mind that very much.

I'm not going to hurt you and I don't think that I'm gonna call the cops -- unless you give me a reason to."

She looked at those eyes dead on, "But I'm gonna get some answers now or I'll throw this fucking key over the railing there and it'll fall only God knows where among all the old mechanical ruin in this shed. Good luck finding it in anything under about a week if you ever even find it at all."

She pointed at the chair, "Now please.

Sit your sweet, skinny little ass down and talk to me."

Jane still heard nothing and she shook her head.

She held up the key higher and drew her arm back, "And they tell me I'M stupid ..."

There was a gasp and a wavering little cry which almost broke her heart to hear.

"NOOOO!!"

And after a moment, Jane finally heard the voice. It was soft when it came and it carried a hint of quiet desperation -- as well as a hint of nearly silent, almost breathless fear.

"Please Miss ... please don't throw that key.

My trike is all I've got a-and -- please, ... please don't. Please give it back to me and I'll go and never come back. I'm sorry for everything, for even being in here."

She swallowed once after a pause, "Do you like girls? You can fuck me if you want to. I'll do anything you want. I just have to have that ... PLEASE?"

Jane pointed at the chair with her other hand, "Here.

Sit right fucking here, girly.

This is getting way too close to those sick games that some people play because they like to boss the ones they care about around. And I don't even know you.

I fucking HATE that shit.

Look kid," she sighed tiredly, "I wasn't lying about why I came here.

But now I just want to talk to you. Why did it have to come to this?

Are you afraid of me or something? I told you that I'm not gonna hurt you. Why can't we just sit and talk? I'm not gonna even chase you out of here or anything, but I need to hear more and first, I need to know why, that's all.

Ok, if everything has to be a deal to you, I'll tell you what.

You come here and sit down. I promise that I'll only talk to you. I might even WANT you to stay, if you would. You tell me what I want to know, and I'll hand you your key.

After that, you can run away if you think that you need to. I won't even look to see which way you go. I'll probably just do what I came here for. Probably for a little longer even, if you do leave."

"Why?" the voice asked.

Jane sighed, "Because it'll just prove to me how much of an asshole I really must be if I can't even convince somebody that I don't mean them any harm, ok?"

She came a few steps closer and stopped. "My pants ... the crotch is torn out of them. I'm ... sorry."

Jane nodded, "Then sit so that I can't see, but please ... come the rest of the way here and sit with me."

The girl came very slowly and eventually sat slowly down and looked at Jane.

Jane saw someone who was in need of a good, hot, long-assed bath, though she could tell that there had been some large effort made at cleanliness.

"Where do you wash yourself? You live in this shed and it's hot a lot of the time since it's summer. Yet you don't smell, so that tells me that you're a clean person -- as much as you can be in a place like this with nothing."

The girl looked down, "There's a tap downstairs. I use that."

Jane nodded, remembering now. "That's just a cold water tap. It probably just pours out rusty water for the first five minutes."

The girl nodded.

Jane shook her head for a moment, "What's your name? I don't need your last name, but I want a name for this talk here, so give me one -- and I don't care at the moment if you lie to me or not -- though I wish that you wouldn't."

The girl nodded, "My -- my name is Maxine."

Jane smiled a little, "I hope that it's your true name, Maxine, because I really like it. My name is Jane."

She leaned forward a little carefully so as not to spook Maxine, "I'm gonna guess that you're homeless and that you've been here for a time."

Maxine nodded, "About ... Early in the spring, maybe the beginning of April. Last year. All I have is my trike, like I said. I rode down through a lot of snow up in Pennsylvania. By the time that I got here, I was real sick. I came in here because I needed to hide my trike and me -- at least until I was better. When the sun shone it was nice and warm in here and I felt better. So I just --- stayed."

Jane nodded, "I guess it's a little hard to tell the date. I doubt there's a calendar in here that's any newer than about 1949. How do you get gas? You siphon it?"

Maxine nodded and Jane groaned and shook her head again, "Fuck, that's gotta be a hard way to go. I suppose that you steal what you need and shoplift when you have to and you can't avoid it?"

Maxine gave the expected nod.

"Why haven't you taken some of the old worn-out parts lying around in here to sell as scrap -- or have you?" Jane asked.

"Can't," Maxine said, "They want to see ID there. My licence is from outta state. They won't accept it."

Jane looked over at the clothes and everything for a moment, but she was careful that it was not long enough to cause the girl to squirm or feel uncomfortable. "Ok, here's a tough one, but I hope that you answer it honestly -- are you wanted by anyone in a law enforcement capacity for any crime?"

Maxine shook her head, "No. Not yet, I don't think."

"'Kay," Jane said, "You don't have to answer this one if you really don't want to, but where the hell are you from, Maxine?"

She thought about it for a minute, "Pittsburgh?"

Jane nodded, "Wow." She looked at her hand and handed the key over.

Maxine asked why.

Jane shrugged, "I just remembered that I still had it. I was gonna give it to you before -- and before you ask, I was hoping that you might want to trust me just a little, though I'd absolutely understand if you couldn't."

"Was that all that you wanted to ask me, Jane?" Maxine asked.

Jane shook her head, "No, I've got one or two more and that's about it. I still want to know why you did all of this. My great-grandfather must be smiling his ass off if he can see what you've done in here to his old beasts of burden."

She pointed to the Norseman, "And what you've done there is freaking amazing and it's given me ideas. That's why I wanted to know why. I used to sit in that old bird and daydream when I was little. To see it like that -- what you've done ... well I'm about on my ass over it."

"I don't have a job" Maxine said quietly, "But I do know how to do stuff and fix stuff. My Dad was a mechanic before he got sick and died and he taught me everything he knew. I just wish that I knew what he'd forgotten to tell me. I guess that I wanted something to do."

"Well," Jane smiled, "You sure did it well, Maxine."

Maxine seemed to like that and she smiled a little.

Jane found that she liked Maxine, now that she knew a little about her. She thought that Maxine was far past pretty in a lot of ways. But there was something about her that struck Jane as ... a little feral, somehow. She guessed that there might be trust issues, maybe. If there were, she told herself, she didn't think that she could blame this girl either.

The rest of the time, she looked just a little ... well, slightly lost and Jane actually thought that it looked very sweet on her when it was there.

"Can I ask you something, Jane?"

Jane nodded, "Sure. Go ahead."

Maxine looked a little uncomfortable for a moment, "Why were you going to cry?"

Jane looked a little pained for a moment and then she looked up, "Well, I guess that like maybe four billion out of however many billion people there are on the world at the moment, I'm lonely. What I do for a living doesn't help it much, but I love what I do all the same.

I wasn't born here on this farm. My mother didn't do a thing to take care of me, I mean at all, not that I can remember anyway, since I was a tot at the time. I've been told that she just used to change my dirty diaper in the morning, shovel food into my mouth and leave me alone in a playpen all day while she watched TV in another room.

I'd scream if anybody touched my bottom, since it was covered in sores. The county took me away and I was adopted here. I was a little like an animal then and before I could fit in at all; I needed therapists and help learning how to walk and talk and everything. I was still a little slow by the time I went to school and the other kids just laughed at me all the time. I was Janey the Retard to them."

She shrugged, "I got over it eventually. But as loved as I am by my family now, I'm usually always feeling lonely. I can't help that and sometimes it feels like I'm living my life under a cloud that's not over everybody else."

She tried to smile a little, "You came pretty close there, when you were afraid over your key, but you were right. I do like girls."

She sighed heavily, "I had a thing with someone once in a while that I really ought to have cherished a little bit -- but you never really know what you have until after you throw it away. It's a little complicated, but I lost what I had because I met somebody yesterday and I pretty much ruined any chance that I might have had with that girl too and ... "

She inhaled, looking a little tired and worn and she looked at Maxine as she let it out. "And it's all my fault and I know that now. But it doesn't change how I feel inside one bit. Once again, Janey the Retard failed at something that lots of people succeed at every day."

Maxine looked down, "I know how that feels, I guess. I was always the smallest mouse of a girl in my grade -- almost all the way through school. My parents didn't have much money, so a lot of the time what I wore to school was the same thing that I'd worn the day before. It wasn't ever dirty, though. My Mom would wash my clothes every night. But the other kids noticed it and then it got around that I was poor, and they made fun of me for that and I used to stutter because I was afraid to speak, since I'd get made fun of whenever I did.

My mom died when I was fifteen and for some reason, I just started growing like crazy before my sixteenth birthday. My dad was trying to hold his business together, so there were no clothes for me. I took every after-school job I could find and I bought some clothes when I could with my pay.

When my dad died, I was barely eighteen and he cried when I sat with him."

She looked off into the shadows of the loft for a moment, "He was so sorry that he couldn't leave me much of anything. I told him that he left me the most important things, anyway. I found my trike in some piles of junk at an auction and he and I rebuilt it from the ground up and I learned a lot just from that.

After he passed on, I was thinking of trying to make a go of it on my own, but I found out that Dad owed so many people money that by the time that I settled up -- and I was short by over three thousand dollars, there was no hope. So I couldn't pay the last bills and I was out of ideas with the rent due in two days -- that I didn't have.

I emptied the last of my money out of my bank account and then I just saddled up and rode away."

She sighed, "Now I'm here with nothing. But I remember how it feels to be laughed at."

She looked down at her boots and looked up for just a moment before she cast her eyes down again, "Does this mean that you don't want to fuck me?"

Jane's mouth fell open for a moment like there was nothing holding it closed. She looked and saw that Maxine hadn't seen it, so she shut it quick.

"Where in the world did that come from?" she asked, "Maxine, I wouldn't do that for anything -- if it meant holding your key over your head so that I could use you. I'm not like that."

Maxine nodded, "I was just wondering.

Whenever I see a choice in front of me, all of the options are lousy ones. There's never anything nice to me in anything. I was hoping that you didn't want to use me, but ..."

She looked up, "Do you think that you might want to -- I mean if I wash first, of course? I don't have any tits, but I'll try hard for you."

Jane laughed at the way it was said, and as Maxine watched, the smile faded into a warm look, "I'd absolutely love to -- but I want two things from you first -- if you think it's ok."

Maxine was almost successful in hiding the way that she was thrilled inside. She got up and went to sit beside Jane.

"Alright," she smiled back, "What?"

Jane felt really hopeful for some reason that she didn't understand at the moment, but right then, she didn't care anyway.

"First," she said, "I'd like it if you didn't just leave. I don't want you to go. I think I can give you a better place to stay than this old shed -- and we'll figure out something for you somehow."

Maxine didn't know what it was about, but if it meant that she didn't have to hide out like a barn mouse in a machinery shed -- she thought that she just might agree to anything.

Especially if it meant not living in a drafty old place with no heat again. She nodded and said "ok," in a very soft voice that thrilled Jane.

"What's the other thing?"

Jane moved to turn toward Maxine more and they looked at each other for a long moment before Jane took Maxine in her arms and kissed her very slowly, as softly as she could.

Maxine looked dazed but she smiled, "I -- I was gonna say that I don't think that I've ever been kissed like that by anyone -- but now I'm sure."

She grinned, "I haven't."

Jane chuckled and she reached to touch Maxine's cheek and her hair, "You're so beautiful."

Maxine was about to laugh in a doubtful way, but she saw the look on Jane's face.

"Even here, in this old place, living as you have -- and that probably means in a very hard way -- you're amazing to me. Just the look on your face -- like you're just feeling a little lost is worth the world to me, because you still have that."

She shook her head slowly, "Please, don't ever lose that."

Maxine stared at Jane and they ended up locked together again, sighing and letting little moans escape them. Maxine broke away slowly to look down at her hand for a moment.

"What's wrong?" Jane asked and Maxine looked back a little sheepishly.

"Nothing. Nothing in the world for once, Jane. I just wanted to make sure that my hand was clean."

She reached for Jane's breast then and they held each other for a time before Jane eased Maxine down onto the bed. Breaking the kiss, Jane got to her knees as Maxine crawled backward up the bed a bit, watching as Jane removed her clothes.

"I ... I think that I maybe ought to wash," she said.

Jane shook her head, "No, it's ok. The only thing that I smell on you is warm skin and bar soap." She thought for a moment and understood, "Ok, you go wash and I'll wait for you here."

Maxine was gone the next second, running to get to the stairs. Jane felt a small stab of fear that she was now going to hear that old Harley clatter to life again just before she heard the door over there open and get to hear Maxine ride away. She could understand it, but it didn't happen.

She heard the cold water tap running downstairs instead.

When she heard the creak of the old steps, she looked and saw the dark outline of Maxine again, coming up the stairs with her clothes in her hands. All that she had on was her T-shirt, now wet from being pulled on over damp skin.

When she'd put the clothes in a pile on the chair, Maxine turned around, looking like she might pass out if she saw or heard the wrong thing now.

Jane sighed with a smile, "Gawd, you're amazing."

Maxine looked a little uncomfortable again, "My tits ..."

Jane wasn't listening as she pulled Maxine onto the bed. She had the shirt up and off the other girl within two seconds.