“A study of Egypt has shown how a consciousness of its special nature persisted…Behind this there still lived some memory of a past reaching back beyond Islam: the wonders left from the ancient world, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, and the ancient shrines, rituals and beliefs of the countryside, to which men and women could still look for protection.”

‘Eat dust Jackal boy!’

Suvee lunged right and smashed her meaty shoulder into the head of the scrawny man and bolted. Her heavy hip caught his bony hip as he careened away and sent him crashing into the clay jugs.

Bibi snarled, “Bitch, you shall die!”

The other Jackal Twin darted for her so there was no time to climb the ladder; it must be a run up or nothing. Her foot hit the bottom rung within a few quick strides and she was stepping up the rungs fleetly when the dirty-handed youth grabbed her outer gown, for domestic slaves were not provided with travel quality attire. She had never worn a robe that would hold up during a journey to freedom. Also, since she was not a decent woman, but a whore, her under gown was sheer and formed to her body; the outer gown loose and sheer as well. If not for her debased status as a pleasure girl, she would have been caught then and there, flung down into the street to die under Bibi’s bloodstained club. Her flesh house girl’s attire saved her life. The outer gown was torn away in those jackal hands as he fell back into the street.

‘Up and over!’

As shell felt the last sheds of sheer fabric tear away from her shoulders, and heard the excited snarling and salivating dogs beyond, she tucked the babe between her breasts with her left arm, hooked the top of the wall with her right, and swung up and over. Bibi’s club smashed her fingertips as she held on, causing her to let go before it was most desirable, pitching her to the alley and the milling mass of dogs below on her backside. Two yelps and a mortal squeal accompanied the snapping of one large dog’s back.

Suvee ducked her had as teeth flashed and spun on her knee in the corner. The snapping of jaws sounded and blood splashed from her forearm and hair was torn from her wholly head of hair that had been picked and puffed out prettily after the fashion that Mistress Ebil desired for her black lover. Sound engulfed her. From the other side of the barricade behind her—mostly made of carts and furniture—Bibi was cursing and driving the Jackal Twins up the ladder. On this side was a savage cacophony of snarling, snapping, yelping, growling, ripping, and salivating as the dog with the broken back was torn to pieces, and another with a broken leg was being eaten as it yet lived.

The dogs closest to her were worried by bigger dogs from behind and gave her the odd bite. Then the creak of feet on the ladder spurred her to action and she clutched the baby with both hands and ran over the struggling mass of dogs who were piled two to three thick as they seethed over one another seeking a bite of flesh. One of the Jackals Twins leaped from the barricade and landed on her back, knocking her wind away and sending her rolling over a number of smaller dogs to the center of the ally which reeked of smeared feces.

Scrapping her knees she reared back and smashed the clinging Jackal Twin against the wall and felt his ribs crunch. As he wheezed she pulled away and kicked her heel up in his groin. This caused him to wince and curl up. Immediately, a dozen dogs were leaping for his face, throat and thighs. A smallish rat-killing dog dove over the rest for her face, and, as she reared back, caught a hold of her left breast and hung on, biting her painfully and clawing with its filthy feet at her soft belly.

She kicked out with her powerful legs and sent a medium sized dog flying against the far wall and then ran, ran her fastest, making sure to scrape the breast-biting dog against the wall.

‘Better my breast than the baby.’

Something crashed into her, knocking the rat-killing dog loose. Something else bit her knee, something else her hip.

Bibi could be heard heaving the other Jackal Twin over the wall. She did not look back, but thrilled when she heard his shriek of terror. The dogs lunged at her face, some tearing hair, one biting her shoulder, most just bouncing off as she gained speed.

Behind her she heard the hideous wailing of the Jackal Twins as they were torn to shreds by the larger dogs.

Before her numerous dogs adopted various attitudes; some skulked, terrified of a living human; some lunged blood mad at her; others merely snarled and kept pace, running beside her, waiting for that one fateful fall that would bring her down.

‘If not for Bibi smashing my fingers and that crooked dog-crushing fall I would be dog-meat now. Do not stumble girl.’

She kept her chin tucked and the baby tight hoping that she did not suffocate it, but knowing to expose it to a bite would be the end. A small dog scrambled with a savage yip over the backs of other larger dogs and launched himself like a cat at her face, jaws wide. She struck the little beast in the face with her head just as Master Efran had done to her when she had not spread her legs wide enough. All the cruelties of these past two years were emerging from her inner place to fight for her, to strike back at this evil world, at the lowest of its denizens, in this tiny realm of blood and filth.

A dog bounced from her knee, another snatched at her gown, and another, and another, until a pack of dogs yanked at her under gown. She ran the faster and tore free of the garment, now running naked and bloody for her life.

A large dog charged and leaped over the backs of the dogs that were running ahead of her trying to cut her off. The dog hurdled straight for her face. She felt its wet spittle and heard its confused bark as she hurled herself across the alley, tripping over numerous dogs and crashing into the wall with her shoulder. But she kept on running. Even though her shoulder had hit hard against the wall she dared not collect herself, but ran along the wall, smelling her skin burn away from the friction even as her shoulder lit up with pain.

“Ahhhhy!” she screamed as she ran as fast as she had ever run, despite the buffeting bodies. The dogs were all much smaller now; little ones who could not get to the head of the alley for the water, who could not get there now to feast on the Jackal Twins. Six strides and she would be there.

With two long strides she ran clear of the wall along a smear of feces that caked and coated her bare feet, thankfully hardened on the bottom in her youth. Her feet were so calloused on the bottom that Mother had called her “Leopard Paw” and Master Efran had insisted she wear slippers when entertaining visitors. Never mind her leopard paws. She was faring well in this ordeal precisely because she had such tough feet.

Another long stride brought her heel down on a cringing cur dog which yelped as she trampled him hard.

Her next stride was shorter as she tried to slow a bit as something flew at her face. She did not slow enough and a beastly little dog latched onto her hair and clawed her shoulders. She ran on shaking her head, the dog swinging around snarling, until more of her hair tore away and it went spinning across the sea of lunging heads and barred teeth that herded her to the barricade. The barricade was ten feet and jaggedly sheer, thankfully made of piled things.

Her fourth stride brought a dog flying into her face and knocking her silly. Her head wobbled as it bounced off her shoulder snapping the air.

Three dogs crowded around her knees and slowed her progress as she ploughed through them with her bleeding knees, bowling them against the foot of the barricade and stepping upon their thrashing bodies as a wave of small to medium-sized dogs bore down on her like one living gnashing thing.

Clutching the baby with her left hand she reached for a hold on a table leg with her right and stepped up to the base of a broken chair piled on the remnants of a cart. The little beasts hit her so hard as one that she felt her hold slip. She saved herself from falling by wedging her head between to planks. The pressure on her neck was terrible, but she did re-grip the table leg and begin to climb.

She reached for the broken bucket above and felt a strong set of jaws bite into her backside on her right. Another set of fangs pierced her left buttocks and tore loose a chunk of flesh.

She grimaced and climbed, with one hand and two feet. A smaller set of teeth gnawed at her neck as one of the more fiendish little dogs had leaped upon her back. She stopped and shook her head furiously and the dog fell away snarling.

She grasped the rim of the barricade and hauled herself up, one medium-sized dog with a broad snout still hanging on to her right buttock by its jaws, snarling away, not to be bought off with just a bite out of her tale, but to pull her down and feast on her entirety. Another smaller set of teeth clamped on her left ankle, and she climbed still, a second dog dangling from her ankle even as dozens savagely bayed for her flesh below.

Finally, she stepped into the broken bucket, one dog attached to her butt another to her ankle, and was able to place the babe on the top of the barricade, where it began to cry now, having not the warmth and soft comfort of her touch.

She kicked out with her left foot and smashed the small dog against the wall of some building, and it fell spinning to the gnashing teeth below. It’s pack members began tearing it to bits before it even hit the alley floor.

She then turned, holding to the top with both hands, one on either side of the baby, and glared down into the blood mad eyes of the broad-faced dog that would not let go of her butt.

“You, I shall name Efran!”

With these words she reached down with her right hand and scraped its eyes from their sockets, and still, it did not let go. It held tightly to her hind-part even as blood ran from its ruined eye pits. Still the dogs below leaped and bayed and feasted on their fallen.

Suvee looked over her other shoulder to the jagged wound in that butt cheek, then back to the insane dog, afraid seemingly to let go for fear of becoming dinner below.

‘Mourning Bird, those heavy curves behind you have meant nothing but bondage and degradation. This side might as well match the other.’

Suvee reached behind her and grabbed the nasty dog by the scruff of the neck and tore him loose from her butt. With him came a mouthful of her butt-fat, but she reasoned she had plenty to spare, and knew besides that she would never lay face down on a pregnant whore’s bed again. Stronger now then she had thought she could be, she held the dog out over the pack and let it fall whimpering into their gnashing maw. One last look up the alley gave her no sight of Bibi above the opposite barricade, and nothing but two churning packs of dogs where the Jackal Twins had fallen.

‘Now to my baby!’

Suvee turned to haul herself up forever from the sight of the grisly feast below only to see a bare plank top to the barricade, with no baby there at all. All the pain of her son being drowned in her chamber came back to her; and all the anger too. She heaved herself up over the wall so that it was waist high, and saw a dirty rag-garbed rascal looking back up at her, the delicate pale baby in his dirty hands.