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.”
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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.”