My walking speed had long ago hastened to a sprint. It's pretty interesting to see how much a scare can get out of you. I ran for several blocks without running out of breath at full speed. The lit streets ended and I went back to the darkness. I tried hiding under a parked pickup truck, but noticed it wouldn't help any if they started looking below cars from different angles. Hiding in a dark alley was out of the question too at that moment because who knows what may lurk in one of them. It could be a dog, another set of cholos ready to kick my sorry ass or whatever the imagination of a scared moron (me) may conjure.
As I looked around me, my apparent salvation appeared. I was at a usually crowded street that had been paved and a bridge over what once was a river but had long become a drainage ditch.
What did I do?
a) Hide under a car
b) Hide in a dark alley
c) Hide under the bridge
If your answer was "c," you're right. I jumped into the former river's darkness and became engulfed by it. I heard the voice of one of them saying "There he is! Grab him!"
I landed on the slope and almost dropped the stick that had saved me before. I managed to keep hold of it and ran towards the underside of the bridge along the slope, trying my damnedest not to trip and end up on the bottom of the ditch. The murky, swampy waters smelled to high hell. I would have barfed from the stench of rotting, stagnant water long ago if I hadn't been so scared of what might have popped in their heads to do to me.
I got to the bridge, but noticed that somehow the moonlight was actually effective in betraying my position. The reason? Everything was painted white. It's only logical that a dark, human shadow would contrast against the dirty whiteness of the paint.
My solution was run up the slope and press against the surface of the cement in an effort to diffuse my silhouette against what seemed to be trash bags.
The sounds of the feet of my pursuers against the slope and the tripping of one that sent him right to the bottom indicated that they were closing in. I pressed myself against the cement and turned to try to locate them. The one on the bottom decided to get out of that place. It was the logical thing to do. Who knows what manner of infection he could grab from his contact with that rotting matter floating on the water. My pursuers were down to two.
They had entered the underside of the bridge.
"Do you see him?" one of them asked the other.
"No. Maybe he got out," the other responded.
"I don't think so. He should be tired after that run" the first one responded.
He was half right. I was tired after all that walking and the overkill that had been that long run. I was out of breath, my legs were hurt after the kicks on my shins, my sides were a mess too and to top it all, I had lightly sprained my right ankle when jumping down onto the slope.
The second one pointed to the bottom of the ditch. "Take a look. There are dry parts there and more shadows on the other side. There are bushes too. He's gotta be there."
"Little fucker's dead..." the first one said while chuckling.
The two of them walked down the slope and crossed over to the opposite slot.
"Now's your chance to get out of here, kid..." a raspy voice said next to me as the air around my face filled with an alcoholic stench.
I turned to my right, towards what I thought was a trash bag. It was actually an old man INSIDE a trashbag, stuffing the thing with old newspapers to protect himself from the cold.
"If you get out now, they won't notice, but if you take too long shitting your pants, they will come back! Get out of here and run! Run, you dumbass!"
I did as the old man told me. I almost wet my pants from the sheer scare of finding out I wasn't alone. I climbed the little wall that stood erect above the slope I was standing on. No surprise I sprained my ankle. I just jumped in without being able to see what was below. I had been really lucky. With the moonlight, I could perfectly see thin metallic bars where I could have impaled myself.
Another rush of adrenaline at thinking about that possible outcome filled me with a renewed wish to get home and helped me ignore the pain that by then stung like hell on most of my body.
I walked lightly around the street and onto the bridge that had almost saved my sorry hide while tightly gripping my only means of defense.
Fifteen minutes later, the distance between my home and I was short. I was coming into the usual streets so a slight sense of relief came over me.
The slight calm came with a price. The adrenaline wore off. I felt pain on most of my body. Torso, abdomen, legs, all of them were pulsing with pain. The only thing getting better was my sprain because of the constant walking.
From behind a car, four guys came out. They were smoking tobacco. Their clothes were also much better than mine, which pointed to their upper middle class background.
"Gimme all you have. NOW." one of them demanded as the other three laughed.
They were just a bunch of teenagers. I was slightly older than them and they threatened me. My pain quickly faded and was replaced by rage. Not just anger, pure, unadulterated rage. Rage at being threatened by a bunch of middle class twerps that fancied themselves cholos but wouldn't cut it when thrown in with the lot of them. I had been alternating between running and walking from dogs, REAL cholos that wanted to kick my dumb ass, jumped into a ditch and had been chased by three robbers willing to do who knows what to me. All of that to get threatened by four little assholes that fancied themselves badasses.
"FUCK"
"THIS"
"TO HELL!!"
Those are the equivalent of the words that I screamed in my head. I swung my stick at the one that had made the threat and hit him on the face. He flinched and I immediately kicked him on the stomach. Another one, a taller, but much thinner grabbed me by the neck, trying to put me in a chokehold. Instinctively, I clawed him with my relatively long nails and opened painful wounds on his arm as I kicked him with a mule kick. The other two that weren't attacking me slightly backed off, but I again swung my stick at them and hit one of them on the wrist. When he flinched, I grabbed him by the neck and jumped at him, sending him to the ground, hitting his head against the sidewalk we were on. The fourth tried to kick me and succeeded. His foot made my chest hurt more than I could take without letting a squeal out, but despite that, I grabbed his leg and bit him. My teeth against his skin pressed and tried to get to his bone. His shin was much bonier than I initially imagined. He hit me on the head with his knuckles, causing a sharp pain, but also increased my anger. Lifting his leg was much easier than anticipated with my left hand, so I punched his balls with my right... one, two, three times. He began crying and squealing, pleading for me to stop.
As I rose to my feet, I saw the one that threatened me looking at me from the ground, having finally managed to catch his breath after my kick. He was sitting with a scared look.
His face looked disgusting. Not because of being on the ground, but because of how cocky he had acted and made that threat with his friends. The image of his smug face, with that ridiculous smear of a mustache he was beginning to grow made him look even worse in my eyes. A pubescent boy that can't even grow decent facial hair had threatened ME. Someone that hadn't once crossed his path, was not looking for a fight or provoked his ire in any way.
I lifted my broomstick and swung it against his head once, opening a cut on his forehead by hitting him with the tip. He began CRYING! That is something I have ALWAYS hated about teenagers with nothing to do. They pick fights over NOTHING. If you're going to pick a fight, pick it like a man and if you win, you can gloat. If you lose, LOSE like a man and keep your fucking trap shut or accept you loss and raise your hands in defeat.
I walked past him while cursing those four in a faint voice. The truth is that my sides hurt like hell, so I didn't feel like doing more than muttering.
After minutes of walking, I arrived home. I opened the door and went inside. I took my clothes off and went straight into the shower. Warm water fell on my back and head. I could feel the typical sting of water making contact with an open wound. I had a small cut on my scalp. I washed it and continued with the rest of my body.
Once I got out, I looked at myself on the mirror. I had bruises EVERYWHERE. The ones on my shins and sides were already black. The kick I had received on the chest was turning black as well. All in all, I HAD gotten a thorough beating. Luckily my face and arms were relatively unharmed, so the evidence of my damage wouldn't be easily visible. I got out of the shower and went into my room. I put on some clothes and went to bed.
The next morning, my dad saw me playing videogames on the living room.
"You weren't here when I left last night. At what time did you get in?"
"I don't know. I just went into the shower and then to sleep."
"Well, there was a scuffle eight blocks from here. They called the police after some nut job beat four kids who were hanging out late."
I chuckled and felt my nerves light up like a Christmas tree with pain.
"Maybe those little fuckers deserved it..."
He looked at me for a long while. I pretended not to notice, but his piercing stare was such that I couldn't concentrate and I got killed in the game. He didn't say anymore, didn't pry anymore and didn't mention this to my mother, but for a long time, every time I went out, he regarded me with a stare.
As an adult, I can't help but be thoroughly amazed at how lucky I was to even make it out in one piece. The memory of all that pain has never EVER faded from my memory. It's burned into my memory and that experience with dealing first hand with what goes on in the streets first hand has proven to be a VERY valuable experience. It taught me a VERY important lesson in self preservation, adaptability and the limits of my own body. But that's just the relatively unimportant stuff. What it really taught me was to BE CAREFUL. To NEVER take anything for granted and NEVER again to jump into something without assessing the possible consequences.
As for the broomstick that I picked up, I still have it and never plan on parting ways with it. It may be silly sentimentalism on my part, but I felt that such a fine piece of wood should stay in my hands.
