by Shay Savage
But it hadn’t been a dream, and neither was this.
“Get your fucking hands off of me!” Mayra screeched as she twisted and turned in Mark’s grip.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Lords said as he walked up to her. “It’s time to get what was always supposed to be mine.”
I wondered what it was like to float in the air the way birds of prey soar on the wind and if it felt similar to the way I was feeling now. I also knew my mind was getting far too distracted, and I was having trouble focusing on what was going on around me. I could hear Mayra cursing and see her writhing around to try to escape the hands holding her, but her actual words were somewhat lost as well as the meaning of what was happening before me. The fire in her eyes was strangely beautiful, though. That detail didn’t escape me.
Everything seemed to speed up as Justin and Mark grabbed Mayra and shoved her into a darker part of the alley behind the bar.
I heard the tear of cloth as Justin’s hands met at the top of Mayra’s blouse and tore it open, buttons flying around and making little clicking sounds on the asphalt. His low laugh echoed around the deserted street as he pawed at her again, tearing the dark blue bra off of her with an audible snap. As Mayra’s eyes widened in terror, Justin moved one of his legs in back of hers and tripped her at the same time Mark started pushing her to the ground.
Mayra’s head snapped back, and she started to let out a scream before Mark’s hand covered her mouth and muffled her cries. There was hot breath on the side of my face as one of the two holding me back leaned a little closer. The smell of his beer breath crawled over my face as he spoke.
“Don’t worry, bud,” he said. “When we’ve all had our turn, we’ll let you have some fun with her, too.”
I felt my body turn cold as the implication of what he was saying poured over me like a bucket of ice water. My head was immobilized, but my gaze found the dark corner where Justin now had Mayra on her back and was pushing her skirt up over her hips. I could see a sliver of deep blue—the same color of her torn blouse and bra—right at the top of her thigh. Justin’s fingers wrapped around the delicate blue lace and started to pull. Mayra tried to kick him, but she was pinned beneath him, and Mark had her wrists captured in the hand that wasn’t covering her mouth.
The numbness of the detachment I had been feeling seemed to fall to my feet as the iciness in my body was rapidly replaced by the burning heat of a rage I had never felt in all my life. Even when Mom’s hand had slipped from my face as I watched her eyes close and her chest rise and fall for the last time, I had felt only the emptiness of helplessness.
But I was not helpless this time.
I couldn’t do anything to stop what had happened to my mother, so I turned the rage I was feeling toward Mayra’s attackers. I closed my eyes in an attempt to assess my situation in more detail.
There was an arm around my neck, holding firmly but not overly tight. I could breathe just fine. The bigger problem was my hands, which were locked behind my back. One arm was behind me, held by the same guy with his elbow holding my neck, and the other arm was immobilized by the second guy to the right of me though his grip was not as tight.
Justin's laughter fueled my anger and reminded me that I didn't have much time before he hurt her—before he really hurt Mayra. I could still hear her muffled cries from the ground a few feet away from me, and I knew I had to incapacitate the two guys holding onto me before I could help her. I didn’t have a whole lot of time to ponder my actions, so I went with instinct.
Turning my head as far as I could to my right, I made the loudest retching sound I possibly could. The guy holding my right arm took a half step back to avoid what he surely thought would be puke in his face and loosened the grip on my arm just enough.
With a quick pull, his fingers slipped from my forearm. A moment later, my elbow connected with the underside of his jaw, and he flew backwards. My right arm was now free, and I didn't hesitate to swing it around and connect my fist with the nose of the one holding me by the neck.
My mind screamed about the lack of gloves, but Mayra's muted cries were louder in my head.
The dark-haired guy with a serious acne problem was not someone I recognized even before his nose exploded. He was decently strong, though, and didn't lose his grip around my throat. Instead, he tightened his hold, which gave me just the leverage I needed to bring my knee up with a twist of my hips and pound it into his gut once, twice, three times in quick succession.
With the air gone from his lungs, his hold on me relaxed enough for me to duck down and escape the grip on my neck and left arm. I brought my hands together in a double fist and slammed them down on the back of his neck as he doubled over to try to catch his breath.
I felt the impact of a fist to my temple before the acne-faced guy dropped to the ground. I winced as the skin across my temple was torn open by a ring on the other guy’s third finger. He was short and stocky and had a buzz cut of dirty blond hair. He swung at me again as I ducked and spun around to my left, bringing my leg up and smashing into his side with my foot. With another spin to my right, I landed a roundhouse kick to the side of his head, and he dropped beside his companion.
With both of my captors on the ground, I turned my attention to Lords and Mark.
Justin was still above Mayra, up on his knees between her legs. His hands gripped her thighs tightly, holding her against the cold ground. He was apparently oblivious to what had just transpired between me and his two friends, but Mark was looking up at me with a shocked expression. A filmy red haze covered my eyes as I looked at Justin holding Mayra on the ground, and I lost all ability to think.
“Shit!” Mark cried out, but not in time. I tackled Justin with my head crashing into his side, and we both went rolling away.
I bounced back up and turned to face Lords as Mayra started to really scream. A quick glance to the side showed me Mark’s retreating form as he ran down the alley and out of sight. Justin was still on the ground, looking up with a dazed expression. The buckle of his belt and his fly were undone, and the current of rage washed over me again.
I cried out as I jumped on top of him, landing my knee and all my weight into his groin before shifting upwards and slamming my forehead into his face. He pulled his arms up to cover his head, but my blows found their marks anyway. Face, head, chest, shoulders—I just continued to hit him. Every few strokes, I kidney punched him before going back to his face. A couple of times, I raised myself up only to bring my knees into his stomach.
He struggled beneath me but was getting slower in his movements. I was pretty sure he was screaming at me to stop, but I wasn’t listening to anything he had to say. The cliché red haze over my eyes seemed to be impacting my hearing as well.
I have no idea how long I kept hitting him. I only know that when I finally snapped out of it, he was unconscious, and Mayra was curled up on her side, sobbing. She had the remnants of her torn blouse gathered up in her hands, and she held it tightly against her skin.
I crawled off of him and over to her, reaching out tentatively.
“Mayra, are you okay?” Stupid question. My hand touched her shoulder, and she flinched. It reminded me of all the times I had flinched from people when they tried to touch me and how I had even done that to her a few times in the beginning.
Moving up behind her, I reached around and stroked her hair away from her face the same way she usually did to me when we were on the couch watching TV. As the adrenaline in my system soured, my arms and legs began to ache, and I was increasingly aware of the pain in my head and the dried blood on my face and in my hair.
“Mayra? I need your phone.”
I watched her chest rise and fall twice with deep breaths before she pointed with her finger to her purse on the ground. I reached over her and pulled the cell phone out of the bag and dialed 911.
“My name is Matthew Rohan,” I said quietly. “My girlfriend and I were attacked in the alley. I’m pretty sure we need an ambulance here.”
After giving the operator all the pertinent information, I placed the phone back in Mayra’s purse and looked over my shoulder. Justin was still sprawled out on the ground where I had left him and so was the dark-haired guy who had me in a headlock. Both Mark and the boy with the buzz cut were gone.
Mayra shifted a little and pulled her knees up closer to her chest. She sniffed audibly, and her shoulders began to shake as she continued to clutch the scrap of fabric against her chest. I quickly unbuttoned my shirt and got her to sit up long enough to get her arms in the sleeves and the buttons at least partially closed in the front. As soon as my shirt was on her, she started to lie back down on the asphalt, but I stopped her.
I couldn’t let her lie on the ground. Instead, I gathered her up in my arms and held her until blue, red, and white lights started to flicker around us. Before the first cop could even get out of the car, there was another coming from the other direction. Mayra seemed to snap out of her stupor a little at that point as she looked up at me.
“You’re hurt,” she said. She reached up to my forehead, but she didn’t quite touch it. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m okay.”
Mayra turned her head to look toward the light and then buried her face back against my shoulder.
“Is he dead?”
“Who?”
“Justin.”
“No,” I said. I looked over and saw his chest rise and fall again. “He’s out of it, though.”
“I wish he was dead.”
“Don’t tempt me,” I mumbled.
The first police officer walked quickly to Lords, placed his fingers against his neck for a moment, and then went and checked the other guy. He said something into the radio at his neck and then came over to where Mayra and I were on the ground.
“Looks like you’ve had a rough night,” he said. He looked at me as I stared at a little piece of Mayra’s hair lying across her shoulder. “There’s an ambulance about three minutes away. Are you up for telling me what happened?”
Mayra kept her head tucked against my chest, so I gave a quick overview of what had transpired in the alley. The cop wrote down a bunch of stuff on his pad of paper and then handed it over to another cop. Just as the ambulance was coming around the corner, he reached out and placed his hand on Mayra’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said quietly, “but I need to ask you something before we head to the hospital.”
Mayra’s eyes looked up at mine and then over to the officer. She nodded once.
“Did he penetrate you?”
I felt her go stiff in my arms for a moment before she shook her head.
“Matthew stopped him before he could.”
“She was fighting him the whole time,” I added.
“Good for you,” he said. “I’ll be right back, okay?”
I nodded, and Mayra leaned her head back against my body. Two EMTs showed up then and lifted a groaning Justin Lords onto a rolling bed. I had to admit to a little sense of satisfaction when I saw one officer handcuff him to the edge of it. Lords and the acne guy were both cuffed and loaded into the back of the ambulance, and then the officer walked back over to us. I gave him descriptions of the other two guys as well as the name Mark, though I didn’t know what his last name was. The cop wrote all that down, too, and then one of the police cars drove away.
“What time is it?” Mayra asked.
“Eleven thirty,” the officer responded.
“I need to call my dad,” she said. “We’re not going to be home on time.”
Mayra finally sat up next to me and started rooting through her purse for her phone. Once she called, she told him we had a little problem, and we were going to be late. I could hear his voice getting louder on the phone, but when she said we had been attacked, he went quiet.
“He wants to talk to you,” Mayra said as she held the phone out to the officer.
“Ma’am, I really can’t discuss…”
“It’s Henry Trevino,” Mayra said quickly. “He says you probably know him.”
The officer’s eyes widened a little.
“Henry Trevino is your dad?”
“Yes.”
The officer took the phone and placed it up to his ear.
“Mr. Trevino,” he said into the phone, “Peter Gregory here…She looks just fine, but we’re going to be taking her to the hospital for a quick check just as a precaution…No, sir…I don’t believe so. I get the idea the boyfriend here managed to stop that…Yes, sir…He’s definitely making the trip—he’s going to need some stitches…Yes, sir…Oh…yeah, of course. I can take care of that. I’ll meet you in the ER when you arrive.”
~oOo~
I winced as a nurse injected my skin with some kind of local anesthetic before she started stitching up my temple. I had already recapped the whole ordeal twice with two different police officers, and I was pretty sure they were doing the same thing with Mayra. I supposed they just wanted to make sure they were getting the same story from both of us though they didn't seem to doubt what happened.
I had heard one of the officers talking to a doctor, and not only was Lords way up on the intoxication scale, but they found cocaine in his system as well. The other guy they brought in—the one with the acne problem—apparently had cocaine in his pocket and was known to the police. They were hoping for more information when Lords regained consciousness.
When I thought back to just a couple of hours ago when my fists were connecting over and over again with Justin’s head like they usually did with the heavy bag, I just felt numb. I remembered every moment of it though it didn’t really feel like me at the time. Everything in my head just screamed that he was going to hurt Mayra, and I had to make sure he would never, ever try to do that again.
The nurse finished with my head and then fussed over the cuts all across my knuckles and fingers. She also had me lie down on my side and applied some sort of cream and a bandage on my leg, which had been badly scraped on the asphalt when I tackled Lords.
Mr. Trevino walked in just as the nurse finished. She nodded to him as she walked out, glancing at me briefly before disappearing. Mayra’s father stood for a minute by the curtain separating me from the open hallway before he came over and sat on the rolling chair by the bed.
"Matthew," he started to say, but his voice cracked, and he closed his mouth. He paused to take a couple of breaths and run his hand over his face before he continued. "You saved my daughter from something about as horrific as it gets. I don't even know where to begin to express how grateful I am that you were with her tonight."
He stood up and took a couple of steps away and then turned around.
"I'm paying your hospital bill. Not going to listen to any argument about that, so save your breath.”
He walked over to the curtain and pulled it back.
“Mr. Trevino?” I called out.
“Yeah?” He turned around again to look at me.
I fiddled with one of the bandages on my finger, took a moment to collect my thoughts, and then spoke.
“I’d never let anyone hurt her,” I told him. “No one. Ever.”
I continued to look down at my hands, but I could see him standing motionless off to my left. After a minute, he ran his hand over his face again.
“Matthew?” Mr. Trevino said with another long breath.
“Yeah?”
“Call me Henry.”
I nodded slowly without looking up from my hands. I wasn’t completely sure how this changed our relationship, but I sensed the shift. He walked out without saying anything else.
Hours later, I finally got to see Mayra just as we were both being discharged.
She looked tired and still shaken, but she smiled when she saw me and wrapped her arms tightly around my neck. We stood there just outside the ER for a few moments as Henry talked to the lady at the front desk. Mayra was still wearing my button-down shirt, and I was still in just the T-shirt I had been wearing underneath.
&nb
sp; “Mayra?” I said into her ear.
“Yeah?”
“I was going to ask you if you wanted to go to prom with me,” I said, “but I’m kind of thinking maybe we could just stay in? Maybe rent a movie or something?”
“I’ll pay for the movie and pizza,” Henry piped up as he walked by us.
Mayra laughed quietly against my shoulder.
“It just seems when we plan a date, it doesn’t go so well,” I said with a shrug.
“I can’t dance anyway.” Mayra giggled. “Pizza instead of prom is the plan!”
It was four in the morning before we managed to actually leave the hospital. The doctor had given me a bunch of painkillers, which made me dizzy, so I wasn’t allowed to drive myself back home. Travis and Beth came to get both me and my car and drove me back home, and Mayra ended up going home with her dad.
Unfortunately, it was a bit too much like the end of our last failed date night.
Travis drove in silence though he kept looking at me with a strange expression on his face. I didn’t think much about it since I was asleep before we were halfway back to the house. When we got home, Travis helped me inside. It was kind of hard to walk because the medicine really wiped me out. I wasn’t completely sure, but I thought he said something about being proud of me when he dropped me on my bed.
I woke to the phone ringing and stumbled my way out of bed to answer it. It was raining and pretty dark outside, so I couldn’t tell what time it was.
“Hello?”
“Matthew?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Henry.”
“Oh…um…hi…” I blathered. I rubbed at my eyes with my free hand and stood up a little straighter for no particular reason.
“Look, I was wondering if you could come over.”
“Is Mayra okay?”
“Well…that’s just it.” I heard him take a deep breath. “She hasn’t slept much at all—she keeps having nightmares and waking herself up. She’s kind of a mess, and she’s asking for you.”
