Krista couldn’t believe what she was seeing.  Two legs sticking out of a dumpster, not just any dumpster, her dumpster.  What was this fool doing in her dumpster?

She grabs an ankle, pulling back hard, hearing a muffled curse from inside the confines of the dumpster as the poor person tried to claw away.  A tug, a pull, a grunt, and the young man landed on the sidewalk, looking up at her with fear and desperation.

The kid was skinny and frail, barely an adult.  Krista hovered over him with her hand on her machete, looking down at him.  “What the fuck are you doing?” she demands.  The kid looks up, a look of fear on his face, but also a look of need and hunger.

“I’m just trying to find food!” he says through his chapped lips.  “Do you have any food?”  If he’d been healthy he’d have outweighed Krista, but the kid obviously hasn’t eaten right in months.  The skin on his chest clung to his ribs.  Krista wasn’t much better off, but she had some luck lately.  Gotten some old cans of food and this dumpster was in her territory.

“No.” she responds coldly.  “This is my neighborhood, these dumpsters are mine.”  She points down the road.  “You walk your scrawny ass a half mile down the road and I’ll leave you alone.  The kid dejected, shoulders hunched starts slowly walking away.  He’d be lucky if he made it a month before he died of hunger and thirst, but more likely she’d run into him again, with that dead gaze after the dead had feasted on what little meat he had left on his bones.