Short Story Serial: ‘Saturday Afternoon, Odessa’ - Part One

     And so begins November's short story serial, 'Saturday Afternoon, Odessa'. I'd love feedback on this character as this is actually background for a longer  piece that I'm writing, which involves this character (provisionally called 'Ekaterina') 10 years on from this point, after she has tried some of the things she talks about here, and is at the point of having to resort to other means.  




      I need to get out of here; I actually judge my parents for the fact that this gutter, this utter wasteland, is our home. Through the moulding window of my cell-like window as I sit (alone, thankfully; I think my poisonous sister's gone out to play in the rubble) I can see one of the seething packs of stray dogs that linger around the houses, rolling over and around each other for scraps like a spinning, malevolent cloud, snapping and biting at each others' flanks and faces over something that was probably once alive. I don't much enjoy running to avoid them on the way to school each morning as I invariably arrive jangling and flushed with humiliated nerves and a school blouse damp with sweat. Who lives like this?
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