“I’ve had enough of your shit,” Mayra told him. “Come on, Matthew.”
Mayra started moving forward, but before I could even take a step with her, Justin nodded toward his buddies behind us, and I felt my arms being grabbed from behind. Mayra cried out and turned toward me as I was pulled backward, but as soon as she did, Mark moved forward and grabbed her arms, too.
My arms were wrenched behind my back, and I immediately noticed the two guys grabbing onto me smelled of stale beer and cigarettes. As I felt an arm move around my neck, effectively holding me in a headlock, I had a strange, surreal feeling I had only encountered once before. It had been in the hospital when my mom was dying. I recalled the doctors telling Travis it could be any time now, and his reddened eyes had turned to mine as he walked over and pulled me close to him.
“Come here, Travis,” Mom had said, and he released me to sit on the chair beside her bed. In a raspy voice, she told him to make sure he took care of me, and he promised her he would. Then she called me over, and I sat beside her and held her hand to the side of my face because she couldn’t quite hold her arm up without help.
“My beautiful boy,” she whispered. “So much we were still supposed to do.”
Even with the warm feeling of her palm pressed to my cheek, it felt like I wasn’t there—like I wasn’t even in the room at all but watching all of this happen to someone else. She didn’t look like she was supposed to, and I didn’t feel like myself. In my head, I wondered if it was just a dream and what I was going to have to do to wake up from it. Deep inside of me, there was a tiny ember of anger over what was happening to her—to me—but there had been nothing I could do to stop it. The burning feeling just sat there in my gut with nowhere to go.
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.