Whispers of a Former Life: Episode 41

Charity clawed her way out of the nest of Alejandra’s old hoodie, dragging folds of fabric heavier than her whole body aside like she was tunneling through drifts of snow. The moment her bare feet touched the smooth surface of the coffee table, she paused, chest heaving, one hand pressed to the smooth wood for balance. 

The table stretched out before her like an open plain,  a vast, elevated stage where every step made her heart hammer with vertigo. She took a few cautious strides forward, marveling at how her legs obeyed her now without the ache that had haunted her since the metamorphosis began. No splitting bones, no tightness in her lungs. Only this new body: lighter, smaller, more obedient to gravity’s cruel grip. 

The room around her yawned wide and empty, yet alive with sounds she never used to hear: the hum of Alejandra’s ancient fridge kicking on and off in the kitchenette, the faint tick of a wall clock, the muted murmur of cars whispering by outside the window. 

And then,  the footsteps. 

Heavy, deliberate, each one a soft quake under Charity’s fragile world. But this time there was no terror of the unknown. She knew exactly who it was. Alejandra, her cleaner, her housekeeper, her silent shadow for years,  was striding closer, each step closing a distance that had taken Charity hours of life-threatening effort to cross the night before. 

Charity turned her head as Alejandra lowered herself onto the couch, a tired, sagging thing that in this moment seemed like a throne to Charity’s humbled eyes. The girl didn’t sit with the stiff posture of servitude anymore. She sprawled back, one knee hooked over the other, the faint smell of weed and cheap laundry soap curling through the air between them. 

Charity hated how her voice trembled before she even spoke. She hated the way her throat closed around her pride. 

“Please, Alejandra. I know you probably have things you want to do today, but if you can just call my friend Kira? She can come get me. She’s guardian trained, so… it won’t be a problem.” 

She heard herself. She sounded like a mouse squeaking at a mountain. Her words dissolved into the cavernous air of Alejandra’s living room, not a living room really, more like the only room, a single, boxy space with chipped paint and a window barely large enough to leak in some gray daylight. 

Alejandra didn’t rush to answer. She leaned forward instead, the couch springs groaning under her weight, and set her battered phone on the table. The cracked screen winked at Charity like a broken mirror. 

“Patrona,” Alejandra said,  softly, but her voice still wrapped around Charity’s bones like iron shackles. She tapped the phone once with her finger. “Look.” 

Charity’s eyes flicked to the screen. At first she saw the spiderweb cracks, and then the words. Her eyes traced the simple, traitorous lines: Nombre: Charity Jiménez. Below that, Nombre Original: Charity Stevens. And under it,  her pet name, her common name: Patrona. 

No title. No Miss Stevens. No aura of money and old blood and better breeding. Just… a little. A little with a new last name, as if her old self had been wiped clean like dust from a windowpane. 

Charity stumbled backward so fast she nearly fell onto her backside. “Wh–what is this, Alejandra? What did you do? Why does it say that? That’s not my name.” 

But the word was there, clear as day, black on white: Jiménez. Her mind lurched, grasping for sense, until it hit her, sudden and suffocating: Mexico. Alejandra was a Mexican national. Mexico and the United States had harmonized their Little Database. The same system that had once protected Charity’s status now caged her without mercy. 

She remembered the news piece on the universal registry, some dry reporter droning on about “unified global oversight of vulnerable citizens.” She’d barely paid attention. She’d laughed with her father about how efficient Generitech was at monetizing misery. 

Now it was her collar tightening. 

Alejandra sank back into her couch; one arm draped lazily over the backrest. Her lips twisted around words that sounded almost gentle, but to Charity, each syllable was a stone sealing her tomb. 

“In Mexico, Patrona, littles are expensive. Very expensive. But registering one?” She shrugged, a fluid roll of her shoulders. “Free. You don’t run free anymore. Not now.” 

Charity’s whole body shuddered. She heard the echo of Alejandra’s old voice in her head, that quiet, almost deferential Miss Stevens? when she’d ask if she could leave a few minutes early. She heard herself snapping back, After the marble floors are done. I want them spotless. 

Now that same girl, not even a citizen, with her cheap clothes and her grimy old phone, could say Patrona and mean mine. 

“Alejandra, you can’t do this,” Charity choked out. It came out a squeak, a stutter, so small it hardly filled the space between them. “You work for me. You,  you cleaned my toilets. You can’t, I’m not,” 

But she was. 

The cracked screen glowed back at her: Estado de Custodia: Asignada a Residencia Particular. Assigned to a private residence. Not a free person. A registered CER, Citizen of Reduced Scale, with no say, no vote, no path back. 

Alejandra just lifted her chin, amusement flickering behind those dark eyes, calm as a stone in a river’s current. “Let it sink in, Patrona.” 

And as the room seemed to swell around her, Charity finally understood: there would be no call to Kira. No rescue. No lawyers. No father’s money or mother’s tears. 

She was Charity Jiménez now. Patrona. A pet name, a pretty word, a small thing in the hoodie that once just soaked up the sweat of a tired girl scrubbing someone else’s floors. 

The roles were reversed. And the world didn’t care. 

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