by Lexie Ray
So she waited, and watched as he made his way through the alley and towards the back of the building he had been leaning against just moments before. She continued to watch him until he disappeared into what appeared to be a low-hanging window. It was located on the back side where he was walking, and it was so low to the ground that he had to hunker down to enter.
What the fuck? Why would he ever go into an abandoned building? She continued down the street and made a right followed by another right so that she could be at the street parallel to the one she had started from, all so that she could be closer to the window he had entered.
As she drove up next to the side he had climbed into, she saw the window’s condition and gasped from shock and horror. She parked the car in astonishment, once again not really caring about traffic violations. Jagged edges of broken glass were still hanging on, somehow, to the window’s ledge, pointing upwards. It looked ridiculously hazardous, and worry and panic flooded into her, and all she could do was hope and pray that he hadn’t cut himself. She looked closer and didn’t see blood, but what was she supposed to do?
She waited for a moment, hoping he would come out soon. She had it set in her mind that as soon as she saw his figure appear once again, she was going to make sure he freed himself unscathed from the broken glass of the window before she eventually pummeled him to the ground herself.
She was going to force his ass into the car and lock him in and take him home. She didn’t even care about the situation that was going on between her and his parents. She just knew that they would be grateful she grabbed his stupid ass and brought him home. They would want to know what was going on.
She continued to wait – but she hadn’t looked at the time. Honestly, she didn’t care. It seemed like a fucking lifetime, and there was no sign of him anywhere. “Dammit! Fucking kids!” she screamed. She was completely distraught and annoyed at the same time.
She threw open her door in a rage and stomped over to the back side window of the painted, dilapidated building and hunched down. She tried her best to avoid the glass; not only did she not want to be cut, but she also couldn’t imagine the disease that festered there.
She climbed over the window ledge and felt her feet finally touch the surface below. Glass shards crackled beneath her weight as she finally stood steadily on the littered floor of the abandoned building. She smelled the musty air hit her nostrils, and she felt like her allergies were immediately going to begin acting up. But she didn’t have time for that, not now. She had to find Lucas.
She walked through the dusty room, which was obviously home to several spiders, and shuddered. She hated spiders, and creepy-crawlers in general. And what she hated even more was that she couldn’t determine what her surroundings actually were. Blankets were thrown over inanimate objects which were placed back-to-back throughout the room.
The falling walls protruded from the building’s foundation; it was far from a grand abode, but she could tell that by the architecture on the inside – it probably used to be. The smell was another thing that protruded throughout the building; the muskiness of it all made her cringe with disgust.
“Lucas?” she called. She was scared. For daylight, it was incredibly dark inside – which made sense: the alley had been as well – and she wasn’t sure if the building made noises due to a failure in architecture, or if she was surrounded by people, probably of the homeless variation – either way, she didn’t really want to be there.
She whipped out her cell phone for added light, and even though it gave her enough sight to move forward and not bump into large objects, she still seemed to manage to go face-first into a bout of cobwebs. She heard movement and saw a dark silhouette dash across the room. She squealed in terror. “Lucas?” she called, and felt terror when she heard nothing in response. Just more movement, but this time – it was farther away from her.
She continued onwards through a cramped hallway. A light shone in slightly through the hall, and she knew she was heading towards the front doors of the building. She sighed with relief, knowing that she was heading towards the light, because although she hadn’t found Lucas, the additional sight might aid her in her search.
She wanted to cry as she walked across the creaky wooden floors because, despite the tightness, objects were still littered across the floor, and it created a bout of obstacles. They were nuisances to say the least, and when she finally crossed the threshold into the more spacious front room, she breathed out dramatically with relief.
Just as she was catching her breath from the panic attack that was just about to consume her, she looked to the source of light that befell the room. It was out the front doors – and despite things having been stacked up in front of them, she could still see out – and she wailed audibly at what she saw.
There – outside – was Lucas. “How the fuck did he get out there?” she screamed, her voice strained from being out of breath. And then she noticed a pack of boys approaching him. She wasn’t sure – because to her all young boys looked the same – but she assumed that they were the same boys chasing him earlier.
“SHIT!” she screamed, knowing if he had been running that this could be – and probably was – trouble.
The leader of the boys walked towards Lucas, and was much larger in frame. She tried her best to get out there, but the debris wouldn’t allow her to. She first tried to dart around them, and in between, but soon realized her curves would have never allowed her to squeeze between some of the items. And then, in a panic, she began to climb.
She climbed random objects with all her might and forced her way through the mess, but it wasn’t quick enough. The boy’s face was odd. It was scrunched up into a seething rage, and his pace was definitely quick and aimed directly towards Lucas.
She watched as Lucas fell to the ground – likely in fear – and looked up at the boy. He was visibly shaking as the boy’s pace gained in intensity. Lucas used his hands and feet to back up, but only went so far before hitting the brick wall of the building’s stoop.
She wasn’t entirely sure why he was so frightened, but it was likely not just the robust size of the boy. She wasn’t completely sure, but her instincts told her that this was the boy that had been giving him problems at school.
She wished that Preston had shed light on the situation before something like this happened, but obviously he was unreliable and didn’t give a shit. If he could let this go on and not do a thing about it – what the hell did that say about him?
The boy was easily twice Lucas’s size. And there was something odd in the boy’s eyes. They weren’t the eyes of your average bully – they were much more intense and dark than that. In fact, as she looked upon the boy, she too felt fearful. For in his eyes was nothing if not pure hatred. Haley struggled more – when she saw the evil sneer that crept on the boy’s face – to leap over the multitude of objects, and she felt angry with herself for not being able to get through all of the stuff and rescue Lucas. She didn’t want to witness this! She wanted to stop it!
She felt immeasurably ignorant for not going back the way she had come. It would have taken just a few minutes, and she could have crawled back through the broken window and run down the alleyway to the front of the building. She thought it was quicker to climb all of the objects and go through the front door, but now she wondered why she had even thought that.
Hell, did she even know if the door would open? It could be chained for all she knew. Why wouldn’t it be? It was an abandoned building, after all. Her rationale dumbfounded her with its fashionably late status – better late than never, though, she supposed. She stupidly hadn’t looked for another exit. Lucas had obviously gotten out somehow, and she highly doubted he had gone through all the trouble she was going through.
She cleared a few more objects and climbed on top of a piano, a few keys playing as she went. She wanted to get enough height to see if she could see chains on the doors. But when her foot caught and she found herself looking back out the window, o
nly to see the boy reach Lucas and grab a handful of his hair, her fears were recognized. She was about to witness an above averagely large boy hit Lucas, the closest thing to a firstborn child that she had ever had.
“Fuck this!” she screamed, jumping from the piano back towards the direction she had come from. She hit the ground – hard. She landed roughly, her hands and feet catching her fall – just barely. Her palms had skidded across the cement floor and a fiery pain shot across them as they bled; she had also twisted her ankle when her feet reverberated against the pavement. But damn it all, she was going to go back and climb through the broken window again!
There wasn’t time for the hopscotch bullshit she had been subjected to for the last few minutes. She looked to the window again and saw the boy jerking Lucas’s hair from the roots as he pulled him up and slammed him against the brick stoop’s post.
She could see air pour from Lucas as he gasped, knowing that the air had completely escaped his lungs. He continued to gasp for air, and she winced as she watched him ache in pain. Suddenly, she shook herself from the view and descended back through the hallway, into the darkness and towards the broken window hidden away in the back of the building.
She didn’t understand why he hadn’t fought back, and as she ran through the abandoned hallway of a rundown building she wondered if this was even reality. Had she lost it completely? Had she had a mental breakdown of sorts? Was Lucas really the type of boy to run into a building like this, a building that, by the looks of it, could have been a heroin addict’s dream hideout? She was petrified at the thought of this all being real.
She knew he wouldn’t have been able to win in a battle against this boy, but to not even fight back? She couldn’t fathom it. And she could only imagine what was happening out front as she finally flung herself onto the window’s ledge – not caring if she got cut in her journey – and pulled herself with all of her might. Her imagination ran wild, and she imagined the boy drawing a fist and flinging it into Lucas’s jaw. She imagined his face burning like a flame as his teeth rattled and jaw clicked in a way that she could only ever imagine. She had never been in a fight, but seeing Lucas’s face, she knew that it could only get worse than the times before. And she had known that he had been in a fight recently. So how much worse could it get?
As she mustered up all of her strength, her might finally allowed her to pull herself up and out of the window, cutting her knees and hands as she went. She didn’t have time for her injuries. Despite having been cut, ankle twisted, hands burning – she didn’t have time to stop.
She had to get to Lucas. She ran through her pain until she rounded the corner and saw the large boy, still holding Lucas’s hair, smashing his fist against his face repeatedly. Even from her distance she could see that same horrendous look plastered on the boy’s face – now even more evident than before.
“STOP!” she bellowed with everything she had. The boys all snapped their heads to her direction before scurrying off, the larger of the boys – the one attacking Lucas – shortly following. He had dropped Lucas to the ground, and he just lay there – unmoving. She ran to him. His face was down – directly into the dirt – and when she finally turned him over to look at him, what she saw terrified her. He was beaten, bloody, and completely battered.
She watched his eyes flutter open slightly, and they glistened with tears. He was conscious, thank God – but he looked at her, pain evident in his eyes. It was only for a moment, though. As one more tear fell down his face and to his ear, he pulled himself from his daze and forced himself up with his wobbly arms.
She had to admire his strength. He was a boy of only twelve and had more guts and drive than most men had. He pushed himself the rest of the way up with a grunt and made his way to his feet. His movement was staggering, and he crumbled over holding his stomach. She could only imagine what happened to him when she couldn’t see, when she hadn’t been watching over him. And then she was terrified; what would happen to Lucas if she wasn’t around?
Chapter 6
As Marissa absorbed herself in the mound of paperwork that lay in treacherous mounds across her desk, she heard the shrill voice of her sister questioning someone. She asked “What happened?” and because of the volume of the question – loud and shrill – Marissa’s curiosity sparked slightly. She wondered who she was talking to. She could tell it must have been serious if she heard it through her closed office door.
She put her papers aside and threw her highlighter onto the surface of her desk. She wanted to know what the matter was. Call it nosiness, call it curiosity – call it what you will, but this was her place of business – her establishment – and she was going to investigate. She only hoped Joseph wasn’t hurt.
Poking her head out of her office door, she saw no one around. There was no one in the kitchen. Could she have been in the shop area? How was she that loud? Just as she was about to call for her sister, she saw her come through the door, her face white as all the papers she had been staring at all day – and her expression was serious.
“You may want to come out here...” she said, before turning back around and going back through the swinging door.
What the fuck? Marissa didn’t know, but worry washed over her suddenly before she went out to see what happened. Flinging open the swinging door, her breath caught and her stomach whirled. There they were – standing before her. Lucas and Haley.
“What the hell happened?” Marissa screamed. “Why the hell aren’t you with your dad?”
Lucas had been bloodied and bruised. He stood there, beneath Haley’s wing – protected as a baby bird by its mother, yet he held a face of stone. His jaw clenched and he looked straight ahead like a soldier, well-postured and tough. Haley squeezed his shoulder as if to prompt him to tell the story once again.
“I told Dad I was taking the bus home. I do it all the time, and he saw me off at the bus stop,” he replied. “I had to transfer, and I ended up running into some kids from school.”
“Is it the same kid as last time?” Marissa continued to question, a little angry that Preston had let him off the hook of spending time with him. It was as if he didn’t even care if he spent time with his children or not. And then, because of his carelessness, this happened! Lucas was supposed to call her if he needed to leave, and he and Preston both knew that. She couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to the story, but she let it go to listen to what her injured son had to say.
He nodded in response, his eyes visibly welling up with tears. “Tell me what happened,” she said before she walked over to him, her face full of worry. She grabbed his hand and led him – after some hesitation on his part – away from Haley, back through the kitchen’s door and to her office. That was the last thing she remembered before he unleashed a story so terrifying that she wished she hadn’t heard it, let alone known that her son lived it.
His eyes glistened as he retold the story, and she didn’t know why he hadn’t confided in anyone before. He hadn’t yet told what transpired to lead to the sort of brutality that left his face mangled to the degree it was. All he had mentioned was the attack that just occurred. He described each hit becoming more powerful and his consciousness moving farther away with every blow.
He said he counted the hits. Thirteen. Thirteen hits, and then Haley had interfered. Being a child of twelve, she was sure that he didn’t really understand the repercussions that could have come from the incident. Thirteen hits, thirteen fucking hits. If Haley hadn’t been there, Lucas may not have been anywhere.
As he described the first blow, Marissa allowed tears to flow from her eyes, and because of that, she could tell that he hadn’t wanted to continue. He never did want to upset his mom; at least, not with real issues. When it came to being a pain-in-the-ass teenager, he was all for upsetting his mother – but during circumstances like this, it was a different story. And from the moment that she saw his beaten face, she was forever grateful for the pain in the ass that he was and that he would be a pain i
n the ass for another day.
He spoke with such emotion that he, himself, was crying. His hardened demeanor faltered more and more with every word. He described the fear that his jaw would snap after the eleventh hit, and that he was so glad it hadn’t.
At the time, he said he was glad because he didn’t want to look weird for school – she laughed. Through all of it, through her glistening eyes and her fear – she laughed. She was glad he could still be twelve years old after what had just happened to him. She was partially glad that he didn’t fully understand the repercussions of an attack like this. He needed to remain twelve years old for as long as he could.
He said that he blacked out for a moment after he heard Haley scare the boys off, but only for a moment. She couldn’t imagine the horror that Haley – who she knew loved him with her whole heart, despite all that happened – had to go through as she peered down at him, motionless on the ground. She wondered how she might have handled the situation had she been the one that had been there.
She wondered if she could hold her composure to scare the boys off and get him up and to safety. She wondered if she might try and hurt the boys for hurting her baby boy. She wondered what she would do, and was thankful that Haley knew to bring him to her.
Haley always seemed to know more than her when it came to the kids, though, and it made her sad. She wanted to know more than anyone about her own kids, but she knew she couldn’t think about that during a time like this. She had to thank the universe that her son was safe and in front of her.
She could only hope to goodness that she would have known better than to just stand in one spot, petrified in fear like a statue as she watched her son’s attack. She hoped she would have acted rather than just watched in terror, her eyes closed tight. She hoped that she’d do more than just hope and pray for the foul image before her to be over, that she would actually fulfill an action to do something about it. Not just hope.