I can see what it is now, how he could risk the train the second after me, the second that he should have died.
He doesn’t have a death wish. He’s already dead.
My vision blinks out, and then the pressure is gone from my neck. I suck in a loud, hideous sounding breath, rolling onto my side, choking on air. He’s already standing, but he bends to swipe his phone from the ground where it fell. The end of the train shoots by, the lights from the lot beyond suddenly casting him in silhouette.
The two other guys are there in seconds, grabbing him, yelling at him.
“What the fuck?” the loud one yells, punching him and hugging him at once.
“Get off me,” he says, shrugging the guy away and glowering at him.
“What are we going to do with her?” asks the one with glasses, bending down to inspect me like I’m an ant he might burn to a crisp under a microscope as a diversion on a summer’s afternoon. He rolls the sucker from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue as he watches me.
“Leave her,” says the guy with the dead eyes. Then he turns and walks away, his brothers following him across the tracks. A minute later, I hear the Range Rover roar to life, and I scrape my ass up off the ground so they don’t get any ideas about jumping the tracks in their fancy SUV and running me down. I jog across a stretch of pavement and jump the ditch growing more empty chip bags and used condoms than grass. Sparing a glance over my shoulder, I see the car speeding off as I reach the boarded-up storefront of an old Fred’s store.
I step around the side of the building and crouch between an old Dumpster and a wall tagged up in Zeph’s signature style. My head feels like it’s being squeezed in a vice after hitting the asphalt so hard, and my face is burning from its encounter with the pavement. Gingerly, I reach up to touch my cheek. My fingers come away bloody in the worst places, but it’s mostly just scraped. I pick a few pieces of small gravel out of my palms and flex my hands to make sure they’re okay. My jeans are torn on both knees from where the asshole slammed me to the ground, but nothing’s broken.
I know it could have been worse. I shiver when I remember that huge guy’s body between my thighs, crushing me into the ground. I remember his brother checking me out before that. Wouldn’t be the first time a girl was gang raped and left for dead on this side of town. On this side of town, if you can walk away from a fight with nothing but a few bruises and a wounded ego, you call yourself fucking lucky.
*
Small Town
Young blood
Young thugs
Have some respect
Says the old man
With his cock in a young mouth.
New blood
Young punks
What’s happened to this town?
Say the old men
With our money clutched in their fists.
New money
Fresh meat
Up to no good again, I see
Say the housewives who undress us
With their lonely, hungry eyes.
Fresh perspective
Sweetheart:
Maybe bad feels better than good