“Twelve, thirteen.” Now all of them are counting.
Trembling from her increasing bite, his hand slides into her dress, pushing under and onto her bare leg, where his finger slides over darkly stained underwear and inside to the source of that stain; a blood flow that started only this morning.
“Sixteen, seventeen,” the chanting grows more excited.
Repulsed by the violation of his finger, she screams at the top of her lungs–ear-piercing and shrill–only an inch from his ear.
He grimaces in reflexive pain and pulls her even tighter, squeezing the breath from her lungs, taking her to the threshold of consciousness.
“Nineteen, twenty.” Each count accentuated by a bang on the garbage can lid.
Then time slows. “Twenty-twoooooo.” The yelling of the boys trails off, and then magically stops.
Her captor becomes a statue as if locked in a photograph. The boys around her become mannequins, frozen with their mouths in mid-yell, their arms outstretched and unmoving.
Glowing tiny white particles start to fall from the clear air above, like hot metal snow trailing thin tracers behind each gleaming flake, landing on them, sticking to them, coating them and the rooftop with their radiant whiteness. Quickly, the aberrant snow fills the air to become a bright blizzard of white, mounding on top of everyone and everything; covering them until everyone appears as snowmen, shimmering and light in a field of fluffy snow.
Arcing out from her and Roberto, blue bolts of thin twisting electricity snake over the buried boys and rooftop snowfield: popping and zizzing, crackling and exploding. Underneath the electric coils, the light particles pulse and brighten with a life all their own. The generated snow light glows brighter and brighter, to eventually obscure everything with its luminescence; becoming a rooftop nova, blotting out the surrounding city, sky, sun, and mountains beyond–everything.
Inside that roof born star, a bubble of stillness envelops and inhabits Isabel. As a warm calm fills her body, she mentally detaches from her attackers to become hidden in plain sight; protected in this new sanctuary where nothing can harm her.
Relief sets in and a never before felt strength fills her. Closing her eyes, tapping into her new inner power, she strikes out in one momentous burst of energy against all that is threatening her, sweeping everything away; clearing the deck of everyone.
Suddenly, only silence remains.
With her eyes still closed and her sensing their absence, she realizes she is safe and all is well.
When she opens her eyes, gone are the boy’s arms painfully squeezing her. Gone is the stink of the boy hurting her. Gone is the gang threatening and yelling.
It is as if they had never been there. She looks around. No telltale signs of the boys remain. No shoes left behind, no dropped garbage can lid, no abandoned cell phone. No sounds of them in the distance; just the typical grinding of diesel trucks and cars on the streets below.
Gone.
All gone.
She is alone on the rooftop, no longer threatened.
Before her, in all directions, streaks of grey and black on the rooftop surface radiate from where she stands. The rooftop is scorched and burnt, smoking and smoldering. Turning slowly, she takes in everything around her, noting burn marks on the adjacent building as well.
Amazed by the transformation, she stares stupidly, uncomprehending of it all.
What happened?
She crosses to the metal stairs, stops and looks over the edge of the building, down onto the alleyway below. Where are the boys? They should be back in the alleyway below, breaking bottles, smoking cigarettes, kicking cans, punching each other and laughing. She glances right and left, looking up and down the alleyway, but there are no boys.
Straightening up, she looks off into the distance towards the snowcapped mountains to her east; beautiful, even behind the gauzy haze of afternoon smog.
But what just happened? Where did the lightfall and blue lightning bolts come from? Why is everything burnt and torn? She looks back to the spot she came from and then the pattern on the rooftop surface mentally clicks with her. It radiates from where she stood.
Did she make this happen?
Never before has it been like this. Always, in the past, a boy would beat her and then hang on to her for as long as he could; enduring the bite of her electric fear and the pain it brought him. And when he had enough, he would let her go. Then the other boys would laugh and congratulate him for holding on over the count of thirty. She would be ignored as they all walked away, clapping their newly initiated gang member on the back for having survived her charged emanations that had earned her the nickname, “The Eel.”
Left alone, she would nurse her wounds and cry once more at a cruel fate that had left her homeless and treated like a pariah by everyone, to be avoided until another boy wanted to join the gang. Then she’d become an integral part of the ritual once more.
But this time was different. When the boy had touched her where she bled, something had snapped within her. Already humiliated by the presence of blood emanating from there, when his finger had gone to its source, it had violated the sanctity of all that made her female, panicking her, increasing her fears tenfold. Her emotions had boiled upwards, aggravating her defensive bite like never before. When he’d squeezed so hard in response to her electric emanations, she had thought she would die from pain and suffocation.
But now there is only absence, within and without. No emotion. No threat. Just her alone, looking out over adjacent rooftops.
She considers the previous moments and goes back to her thoughts just before the white lights appeared. She remembers having looked off into the distance towards the snow-covered mountains, thinking wouldn’t it be nice to be there instead of here. Then the white snowfall of tiny lights began.
Is that what set this odd event off? Was she being protected by something that was watching over her? A guardian angel, perhaps? The Catholic nuns in one of the shelters had mentioned angels that watched over people. Was she being watched over? If so; why now and not in the past? Had she done something to now deserve protection? She would have to search her recent actions for a clue to what now made her worthy of protection.
This new occurrence required much consideration.
While her thoughts wandered into the past, unconsciously her hand went down her dress to her groin, where she pressed in on herself, feeling the sticky dampness of her first menstruation, bringing her back to the here and now.
She knew the menstruation for what it was, but the event was a surprise nonetheless. Something had to be done about it. She was no idiot. She had to clean herself.
Just before she prepared to leave the roof, she took one last look around and paused.
Was she protected now?
Or was it possible that she had made this happen?
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Aliens, Tequila & Us: The complete series Page 37
