Jezimai Gerishan

Biography ...


Doshviyra dug her cracked and yellow fingernails into the arm of the Sanene girl as she dragged the youth out of the shack and into the darkness of the back alley. "You will do as I say, always, you little wererat! Always!" she shrieked, her spittle landing on the girl's eyelashes.

The girl was numb to the shrillness of her grandmother's voice; she had been listening to it for close to eleven years now. So it wasn't the high-pitched banshee scream that led the child into her next course of action. No, it wasn't the inevitable nagging squeal that made the girl wrench her arm from the old hag's grasp. And it wasn't the blood that the sharp, decrepit fingernails drew from her soft arm that made Jezimai reach out and slap Doshviyra across the sagging jowls. It wasn't the years of incessant name-calling that forced Jezimai into tackling the haggard woman until she lay shrieking in a crumpled state in the dirt. It wasn't the dull and unprofitable hours spent doing the wench's bidding that caused the Sanene girl to climb atop the flailing heap and rip the long, blue braid from Doshviyra's bun and coil it around the wrinkled neck. It wasn't any of these things that told young Jezimai to tug and squeeze harder and harder, until the flailing retreated into a helpless squirm, and then into a sick stillness.

Jezimai stood up and smirked at the pile of lifeless skin and bones that lay at her feet. With a sharp intake of breath, she reached the blood-streaked arm up with new energy to wipe away the cause of all this chaos in the alley behind the deteriorating shack.

It was the spittle.