by Luke Valen
I am the humiliated. Anger and frustration swelled throughout my being.
“AHHHH!!!!” I screamed as I picked up the nearest rock, throwing it as hard and far as I could.
Not more than two seconds later, I heard, “Ah. What the hell? Who the hell is throwing rocks?!” A man’s voice came from the other side of the junk pile.
“Oh, shit.” I stood up and began making my way toward the exit as fast as possible.
A group of gangsters came running around the pile—three guys to be exact. Dressed in black and gray plaid button-ups, matching bandanas, and sagging khaki pants, they posted up.
“Hey, pendeja, are you the one throwing rocks?” the larger one yelled from the middle of the trio, his bald head reflecting the sunlight.
I turned the opposite direction and began walking. Just keep your head down and keep moving. My confidence was broken after I couldn’t even defeat the traitorous Coke machine—how was I going to fight three guys? I kept moving as fast I could, not looking back. One step, two steps, almost there. With fifty feet to go, I was almost home free when I slammed into one of them like a brick wall. He must have run around the other pile while I was looking down. Reluctantly, I raised my eyes to meet his. He stood there, menacingly, shaking his head no.
“You think it’s fun to throw shit? Didn’t your mommy ever teach you to not throw rocks?”
This guy again. My patience for people was really, really thin.
“Mommy wasn’t around much.” I looked around at the other two and back to this guy. The two were just standing there, about twenty feet away, near that indestructible Coke machine.
“Ah, pobrecito. He don’t have no mommy. Maybe we should teach him not to play with rocks then, ¿que no?”
This guy was starting to piss me off.
The group began to close in on me real slow. I kept my eyes on the one in front of me.
Sling.
My ears perked as I heard a knife pop out from one of the guys behind me. Believe it or not, that was not the first time I had heard that familiar sound.
“Listen, I’m not looking for any trouble.” Yet, somehow, maybe I was. The next words slipped out faster than I could think. “Why don’t you just run home to Mommy before you get hurt?”
Shit. Why did I say that?
“You guys hear that?” The thug broke into laughter, pushing me a step back. “We got a tough guy here.”
The others drew in closer. I could feel my blood begin to boil. They were within reach. All three of them. Like hungry animals.
I turned as fast as I could, swinging with all I had left from the beating I had taken earlier. It wasn’t quick enough. I missed. One of the thugs dipped my right hook and threw his own punch. The only difference between us is that his connected. Like a freight train hitting the side of my face. I fell to the ground, catching myself on my hands and knees.
Her face flashed in front of my eyes.
Why now? Why did I keep seeing her?
Shake it off, Dean.
With a furious rage, I swung from the ground up, connecting with the chin of the thug who had knocked me down. A trail of dust followed my fist. Faster than anyone could blink, he was soaring through the sky and over the towering piles of scrap and trash like a rocket launched into space. The sticky mud claimed his boots.
Dumbfounded, the two remaining guys took a brief step back, watching their hombre go flying through the sky. The two looked at each other in silent fear, as if saying: “What should we do? Do we keep fighting?” The look on their faces was priceless, like a baby who just discovered a hot stove top. A dumb baby reaching out to touch it again. After their intimate and silent conversation, they turned back to me and charged.
“AH!” the one on the left yelled.
The quieter of the two ran, wielding his switchblade as he lunged at my core. I parried, causing him to stumble past. The leader took this opportunity and crossed me with a strong right hook. My neck twisted ninety degrees as if on a swivel. Turning back, eyes fluttering, somehow I caught his next attempt at a left hook. Looking this lowlife thug in the eyes, I saw genuine fear. Nonetheless, I threw him across the yard like a rag doll.
Something caught my eye. My wrist—my birthmark—it was burning again.
“I’m doing it!” I blurted out in excitement.
Distracted by my own self-appreciation, I had forgotten the third guy who’d slipped past earlier. Taking this brief moment of contingency to charge at me with brute force, the sneak picked me up, slamming me into a rogue piece of sharpened steel projecting from the surrounding scrap.
“AHHHH!!” I coughed up, simultaneously front-kicking the clown in front of me.
He flew through the air faster than a Formula One race car, heels gliding the ground with a cloud of dust cycloning around him as he came to an immediate, bone-crushing halt, hitting the unmovable pile of cubed cars a hundred yards away.
The sharp, swordlike object was at least seven inches inside my back. I could feel it touching my intestines. Sliding my body off the piercing piece of metal, blood dripping, I strutted my way over to the talkative thug lying face down in the mud. “Pobrecito, didn’t Mommy ever teach you not to pick a fight you can’t win?”
Blood dripped from my broken knuckles as I proudly stepped over the unconscious body, into the golden beams of the setting sun that elegantly graced my exit. Numbed by pride, I hardly noticed the fissure of flesh that was once my complete back as it oozed the scarlet liquid that filled my veins.
Life was about to get very interesting.
—§—
“I don’t know, Abbs. This Dean guy seems like bad news if you ask me,” Cherry said as they entered Abigail’s house, returning from school.
“Something about him is different though,” Abby said, ascending the tall, seemingly endless spiral staircase. “I can’t explain it.”
As she had finished her sentence, the doorbell rang, echoing throughout the chambers of the castle that was her home.
Abigail turned to Cherry. “Can you get that? I’m going to run up and check something on the computer real quick.” Abigail didn’t wait for Cherry to respond—she was already running up the remaining steps.
“Sure…why not?” Cherry reluctantly said behind her. “You’re welcome!”
Abigail heard Cherry head down the staircase. “And stop talking about weirdo Dean and these creepy old symbols!” Cherry yelled up as she made her way to open the door. “That’s all you’ve talked about for the past three days! Freak,” she muttered the last word as she swung open the ten-foot-tall door.
“Hey, is Abigail here?”
—§—
Cherry’s jaw dropped in obvious disgust and confusion.
My breathing was shallow and my face was pale. I had lost a lot of blood and the adrenaline had since stopped pumping. Not to mention the walk from the junkyard was over two and a half miles, draining me of any remaining strength. Trying to keep from passing out, I worked up a smile. In my mind, it was a nice, soft, inviting smile…to her it was probably the creepy smirk of a murderer.
Cherry sneered back a charitable crack of the lips.
“Umm…” She didn’t take her eyes off me, as if fearful I may pounce. “Abby! Someone’s here to see you.”
I held my smile. And my side.
“Who is it?!” I heard her voice from the top of the stairs as she came running down in excitement. “Oh, Dean…hi.”
Not knowing whether to be excited, confused, or scared, she stopped a few steps from the bottom. Her body language was all over the place. I gave a half wave and a painful smile.
“Ummhummm, I should be going.” Cherry moved toward the door. “I have to go watch my little brother. Are you going to be okay?” Everything about her posture screamed that she wanted to get out of there as fast as possible.
“Yeah, I should be,” I responded.
She gave me a confused look and then looked back at Abigail. Stupid. She wasn’t talking to me. Why would
she be talking to me?
“Yes, I’m fine. Thanks, Cherry.” Abigail flashed a quick smile.
“Okay…be careful,” Cherry said—as if I didn’t have ears. She looked me up and down, then looked back to Abby with concerned.
I widened my murderous smile as a thank-you.
Cherry left quickly after the awkward encounter.
“What are you doing here?” Abigail asked, coming down the stairs the rest of the way.
“Can I come in?” I was about to pass out right there on her gold-engraved marble steps.
“Oh, yeah, I’m sorry. Come in,” she replied.
I made an attempt at the second step with no success. As I stumbled forward into the doorway, she caught my fall. As she removed her hand from my lower back, she noticed the red organic paint that now coated her palm.
“Oh my gosh! What happened? Did this just happen? Come upstairs—I have a first aid kit.” She quickly reached to help me up.
Ha ha. Funny girl. She thinks I can make it up the stairs when I couldn’t even get up one measly step. Good one.
I looked up into her deep blue eyes etched with concern, and she stared back into mine. The pain seemed to vanish as I floated in the essence of her gaze. It seemed to vanish. It didn’t. Trust me, it did not.
But it seemed to.
“Come on, let’s go.” She put my arm over her shoulders and began to walk me up the stairway. One slow step at a time, we made our way up.
The seemingly endless staircase finally gave way as we summited the mountain. At the top of the staircase was a rather large painted portrait of a blond-haired, blue-eyed man in a suit with a red power tie. Her father was the obvious guess.
She caught me looking. “My father,” she said. “He’s not home, don’t worry.”
I must have had a worried look on my face.
Countless doors lined the arched hallway on both sides. Thankfully, we stopped at the first on the right.
“Come.” She opened the door. “Sit.”
We entered her room. I was in too much pain, fighting the urge to pass out, to notice the details of her library of books and the artifacts that populated her private quarters.
She helped me over to her bed. Did she not know I was dripping blood? Her nice bed is going to be ruined. I sat anyway.
“Just can’t seem to keep out of trouble, can you?”
I wanted to laugh, but all that came out was a grunt. “This is just not my week for first impressions, is it?” I am funny.
“Mmmm…you made a pretty good impression on Bobby’s face the other night,” she said, rummaging through her desk drawers.
“What do you mean?”
I had a feeling I knew what she was talking about.
“I mean, it’s all over the internet already. The video has like over three million views on Facebook.” She found what she was looking for: the first aid kit. “You kicked some serious ass at Chase’s party, don’t you remember?” She seemed somewhat enthralled as she set down the first aid kit and reached over for her laptop. Pulling up the viral video on YouTube uploaded by Bryon Badass—ha, Bryon—she handed the laptop to me.
“I need to cut your shirt off, okay?” she said as she began cutting, moving from the bottom to the top of my shirt, not waiting for my approval. I didn’t mind. Her hands worked so earnestly. As she removed my shirt and pulled it from sticking in the gash on my back, she did it so tenderly. Distracted completely from the laptop, I couldn’t stop watching her beautiful, shining blue eyes, focused and hard at work. She slowed, her fingers traced the scars that lined my body like ridges on the horizon. Troubled, she looked up into my already lost eyes, only to lose her own. Tension rose as an awkwardness entered the room like an elephant dressed for a dinner party. She seemed intrigued.
The butterflies in my stomach multiplied into millions. Flapping around in a frenzy of emotions. This time the pain really did vanish. Every time I looked into her eyes, this seemed to happen. This must be what they talked about in all the movies and books. I could see she felt the same. Her eyes searching for something, something deep. As I wished this moment could last forever, the pain began to return, releasing me from love’s hypnosis.
Breaking eye contact, I hit the play button on the video. She quickly went back to work, pulling out a needle and thread. Watching myself slam a kid through a wall was fascinating. I had never seen anyone do anything like this before—I didn’t think this kind of thing was possible, especially from me. I tried to spot my birthmark, but there was too much commotion; the camera wouldn’t stay still long enough.
“Ahh!” I pouted as she jabbed me with the needle.
“Oh, calm down, you big baby. You’re almost done,” she said sternly.
Almost done? Liar! Like the dentist when they say they’ll pull the tooth on three and always pull on two!
She was tough, though. I liked that.
I resumed the video.
“Shit…This has been Bryon Stockton live from…”
“Gimme that camera, boy!”
The video came to an end. I still couldn’t believe it. Doing it and seeing it were two completely different feelings.
“All right, you’re all done,” she said as she bit off the last piece of thread.
“Thanks,” I said, getting up to leave. I was truly grateful, but I was also so excited and confused as to what all was happening, I didn’t know what else to say.
“Thanks? That’s it?” She seemed upset.
“Thank you…very much? What else do you want?” I stopped and faced her. If I stayed any longer, I would only get hurt. The fear of letting someone in only to be abandoned was real. Being left at birth and tossed from family to family was not too reassuring when it came to my trust.
“Umm, we can start with an explanation.” She held up the bloody bandages and sewing kit.
I had stood too quickly. That dizzy feeling was coming back. I couldn’t let her see.
“I slipped, okay?”
I don’t like reliving painful moments.
“You slipped. Just like you slipped onto that guy’s knife?”
Who ever said it was a knife?
She was beginning to frustrate me, so I motioned for the door. “I don’t have time for this.”
She cut me off and blocked the door. “I have saved your life twice already.”
“I didn’t ask for your help the first time. I would have been fine.”
Her arms stretched out, blocking both sides around. “You came to my house. I deserve an explanation. How did you even know where I lived?”
Reaching into my dirtied jeans pocket, I pulled out a ripped yellow page from a phone booth that had her last name and address on it.
“Okay, fine.” She seemed dissatisfied. “At least explain this to me.” Abigail went over to her desk and pulled out a sheet of notebook paper with doodles all over it. Except these were not typical doodles, it was…my birthmark.
“I don’t know what that is.”
Liar. Yes, I did. Now I was the dentist.
She snatched my wrist faster than I could think to move it. “Oh yeah? It’s on your little book you keep hidden too.”
Her grip was impressive.
“Who do you think you are?” I asked. “So you saw my birthmark and drew it—so what?” I didn’t have the energy for this. My weak knees were knocking like a joke. I pushed past her to leave as she reached into my pocket like the little pickpocket she was and stole my journal.
“What are you hiding in here, huh?” she tormented as she began unraveling the rope around it.
I grabbed for the book with a quickness. But her grip was tight. “Let. Go. Of. The. Book.”
A tug of war broke out between the two of us. She was a lot stronger than she looked. Or I was still weak from being impaled earlier today. Vexed, I pulled harder, as did she. My levels of annoyance rose. As they did, the mark on my wrist once again began to illuminate with a bright red glow. Abigail noticed, and hers began to illuminate t
he same, only hers was a bright and beautiful white essence.
Out of pure shock, we released the book, dropping it to the floor. The silence in the room was thick as the bounce from the old leather journal could not be heard. Amazed and bewildered, I grabbed the book as fast as it had fallen and ran out.
“Don’t expect me to be there for you when you get shot next time!” she yelled as I stumbled down the staircase and slammed the front door behind me.
“What the hell was that?” I muttered to myself as I ran down the street as fast as I could, making my way back to my safe place. To my sanctuary.
If I wasn’t so distraught, I may have noticed the hooded figure that was looming in the trees, ever so guile. Just watching. Listening. Its gaze like that of a sniper, unwavering as it stared up into Abigail’s towerous window. Watching her standing there, angry and confused, it took pleasure. The town lay silent. Not even the crickets made a noise.
—§—
“What is going on?” Abigail whispered to herself, making her way to the window. She stood there just staring at her wrist, flipping her hand up and down.
Abigail stopped—she could feel the eyes burning a hole in her back. Looking out the window, she searched the dark void of the surrounding forest. The night breeze pushed the treetops from—side to side. Something was off, but she didn’t know what. She closed her blinds for the night. Just as she did, a shiny, new, silver Bentley pulled into the drive with a license plate entitled RED. The door swung open and a black Italian leather shoe took its arriving step out. A man in a blue pinstriped suit emerged from the depths of the car.
“Abigail. I’m home,” the voice echoed as the figure entered the castle.
CHAPTER 5
DISCOVERY
I’d taken the night and most of the next day to rest and recover. My body seemed to heal itself quickly, knowing it may be under attack again soon. With a tornado of thoughts whipping around in my mind, I couldn’t stay stagnant another day. I put on my coat to brave the weather and was off.