Despite the bite of the brick against her skin, or the rough nails digging crescent moons into her arms, the thing that truly irritated her was the rasping, panting breath roaring like the ocean against her ear. “Scared?” Tyler’s nasal, whiney voice hissed in a fashion Mariah could only assume he meant to be fearsome. She could feel his teeth, wet with saliva, brush the shell of her ear when he spoke and it sent a shiver down her spine. How like him, to mistake disgust for fear. Mariah couldn’t help but wonder if he would understand the sick thrill that went through her every time they got into these situations.
The alley that had been chosen for this little encounter wasn’t particularly dark. It was mid-day and bright, without a cloud to be seen in the cerulean sky. To say that this was unusual for a fall day in London would be an understatement, but there it was. With the rare bird singing and most kids in school it had been all too tempting to slip the shackles of intellectual imprisonment, a temptation that she and her classmate Georgie had been all too willing to take. So, it seemed, had Tyler and his gang of thugs.
From the eye that wasn’t being pressed against the brick outer wall of the local laundry mat, Mariah could just make out the others pounding into Georgie’s prone body; she could hear more of it. The strangely wet thumps of feet colliding with stomach, back and bum were each punctuated by a vague groan or whimper of pain. That was good; it meant he was still conscious.
Unfortunately for the both of them, Clark Street wasn’t very busy this or any time of day. Mostly a residential zone after it had been rebuilt following the Fire of 2017, the majority of the surrounding area was contrived of apartment buildings, small homes squeezed together with tiny strips of green “lawn,” and a few “ma-and-pa” shops scattered throughout. The Asian-owned laundry mat Mariah was pressed against was one of three small shops clustered together on this end of the street. Directly beside them was a tiny baker’s shop from which the smell of fresh bread wafted with an uncaring air for a poor passerby’s empty stomach and wallet, and across the street, wedged on the corner of a dead end block whose sign had been stolen and name forgotten to all but the local post master, was a tiny corner store that sold everything from hot sandwiches and batteries to hankies and socks. The windows were covered in peeling posters which dated back to the turn of the century, and lined with newsstand racks far older than that. Mariah couldn’t remember having ever seen a paper for sale outside the shop, but the stands still remained, empty and rusted.
“Well?” Taylor pulled her off the wall a short enough pace to shove her back into it. This time she tasted metal and knew she’d managed to get one or both of her lips cut. It only made her blood sing louder and once more the girl struggled against the male holding her. If only she could get one arm free…
“******** no,” Mariah laughed, contemptuous even when kissing the filth that had been caked into every miniscule crevice of this wall long before she’d been born. Her wrist twisted beneath his and her elbow jerked, seeking ribs to poke its boney joint between. “What reason I got t’fear a chav like you? It ain’t like you gotta d**k ennyhow.”
There was a growl, slight under the louder noise of the beating still going on behind them, and Taylor scraped her offending arm against the wall. Mariah’s wrist left a dark, bloody stain against the dingy red brick, yet another layer for the alley to collect. Like most of the men Mariah had grown up around, Taylor did not like it when a woman defied him, especially one like her. This he had made abundantly clear over the course of their relationship, which had involved shoving one another’s faces into disgusting places and spilling one another’s blood over every street of White Chapel. By this point, Mariah thought there wasn’t a single place in the entire Borough of Tower Hamlets that hadn’t seen at least a single bruise on one of their bodies.
Yet it wasn’t only Mariah that Taylor had a problem with.
With his attention on her right hand, Mariah made a faint by tensing it. When he’d seemed to follow for it, she struck back with her left elbow to his ribs. There was another grunt, and Taylor stumbled back with the force of the blow. She raised one foot, clothed heavily as it was with a pair of thick-soled thrift-store army boots, and brought it down upon the insole of his torn and holey sneakers. Her lips twitched with sadistic humor at the howl of pain that rewarded her efforts. Taylor didn’t willing release his remaining hold on her right wrist, but as he fell back she turned and jerked it away from him. It didn’t hurt, though there was a twinge in her arm and shoulder which told her she’d pay for her immunity later.
The scuffle had alerted Taylor’s brutes, who turned away from Georgie’s now fetal body one by one to face the only girl in their midst. A quick look down told her that he wasn’t dead, or even unconscious… but he was in a good deal of pain. Mariah’s body went cold with anger at the sight of him, clothes torn and curled upon himself on the ground. Georgie may have been her elder, but what he gained in age, he lacked in physique and attitude. Of her small collection of friends, Georgie was by far considered the “baby.” Though most boys his age might have objected to such a title, Georgie did not. His place in life was to be the one who always smiled, no matter how bad a situation seemed or how much he was hurting. There was never a joke which couldn’t make him laugh, or a frown he couldn’t alleviate, if only for a minute. To see him subjected to such a beating caused her blood to boil and fists to shake.
Good sense informed her, if her body wouldn’t, that there was no hope for her in a fight that was four to one. Now that she had lost any element of surprise, and Taylor was climbing to his feet more incensed than ever, a single cold bead of sweat dripped from her neck down the curve of her spine. It felt like the bony finger of Death himself, come to claim her long before her time. That was, if she was lucky. Her eyes darted about the alley for something she could use, some form of weapon that might bridge the gap between their statures and found… nothing.
A single dumpster resided in the rectangle darkness of an otherwise cheery day—ruined and stale and bordering on rusted with more piles of garbage rolling unchecked from the overflowing heap than could be healthy. At the precipice of those piles was the day-old bread that had been tossed out that morning, now infested with flies and maggots and snarling, quadrupedal mammals of all shapes and sizes. The last had enough fear of humans to back away when approached, but would hold their ground so long as they weren’t looked at. A single, hysterically comedic thought informed her that a flung cat could be a very dangerous weapon indeed. It was also one that could easily misfire, and so she stalled her hand just before reaching for the nearest flea-infested pelt. Other than the dumpster, the alley was bare save for a half-broken fence at the back far too high for her to jump without a booster, and a few loose bricks in the corner behind Taylor.
She suppressed an irritated growl; those bricks might have been useful.
“b***h,” Taylor spat as he got shakily to his feet. Mariah smirked to see that he was favoring his left foot now. The boy’s face was a mask of fury, and one of his ham-sized hands balled itself into an equally large fist, ready to pound into her already marked face. Mariah barely registered the thought that she might get some attention if she screamed, when the sound of a gun cocking—a sound each one of them knew so well it caused the same, sickening lurch in the pit of all of their stomachs—put a pause to the entire scene.
All eyes turned towards the entrance to the alley, and the tiny, improbable figure standing there. He was a twiggy man, older, with a sandy complexion and white flecked dark hair that receded near the top of his skull. With the addition of a heavy beard and mustache, the man took on a distinctly Neanderthal look, shielded only by the beak-like nose and dark black eyes which pierced like a falcon’s talons. And at the moment, he seemed an angel. “You five are going to get out of here,” The man drawled, twin barrels aimed beyond any doubt at the nearest of Taylor’s buddies. If he’d fired right now a shotgun of that caliber would easily blast out a few ribs in a single go. “Fast now. Leave the girl and boy.”
“Who the ********—,” Taylor only managed to take a few steps towards the man when one of his posse stopped him by a hand on the chest. The man with the shotgun hadn’t lowered his weapon or even shifted an eye off the group when Taylor moved. An uneasy silence drifted into place, broken by a few passing cars and the muted chatter from the two businesses beside them. No one thought to stop the man with the gun, just as no one had bothered interrupting the boys beating one another in an alley way.
“Come on man,” One of the thugs—Mariah had never bothered to get his name—clapped a meaty paw to Taylor’s shoulder, causing him to stumble slightly. A faint grunt answered him, and then Taylor gave a jerk of his jaw towards the head of the alley. Slowly the group of four edged around the gun man whose hand remained steady, and made their way down the road. Though the man remained with his gun trained on their backs, the group had barely rounded the alley entrance before entrance before Mariah sank into the dirt at Georgie’s side.
Leaning over him, Mariah swept her hair back behind one ear with an irritated gesture. A moan, barely audible over a hissing fit one of the dumpster cats had broken into, issued from between the boys thick, blood crusted lips. Mariah turned to kick the dumpster. The entire writhing mass raised their eyes, beady and bright in the afternoon light, to give her a long look before rushing off into the dingy streets in a flurry of fur and claw. That mess settled, the girl turned back to her friend just as the man dropped his gun and approached the pair still on the ground. Georgie rolled slowly onto his back, legs stretching out of their fetal position with a hiss of pain marring his dark face. Mariah began to check his chest for bruises, wincing with empathy once she’d sighted the deep brown-purple, and yellow tinged marks spreading across his chest. The shirt he wore was torn and stained with blood and dirt, a few buttons gone with the vestiges of time.One brown hand, knuckles caked with dirt and a ring finger swollen with the promise of pain, reached up to push her away. Georgie tried to rock himself up to a sitting position, succeeding only in coughing hoarsely, and Mariah once more leaned in to help him.
“Don’t be a fool,” The man who had helped them rested the butt of his pistol on the ground and slowly bent upon arthritic knees. He walked with a limp, Mariah observed, favouring his left leg. It was likely that he needed a cane, but with a gun in hand he wouldn’t have been able to carry one across the street. It was a wonder she hadn’t even seen him coming—but also likely that if any of them had, they would have disregarded a man of his slight stature as unimportant. Georgie responded with naught more than an animalistic growl, and in his state Mariah didn’t blame him. She hooked a firm arm around his shoulders and began to half-pull, half-support him as he struggled to his feet. Once there he swayed, nearly taking her over with him. Fortunately they were of a height, and once they worked out the trick of leaning their weight into one another, they remained steady.The man shook his head as he watched, but no more words of protest came, nor any move to stop them. Instead, he stepped back and waited until they’d adjusted themselves, Georgie with his arm slung over Mariah’s boney shoulders and she clutching at one hand with her other tight about his back, before lifting his shaggy brows into a bemused expression, “Well then, shall we adjourn to my shop?”
It hadn’t been until that moment that Mariah recognized the man. Her eyes shot to the empty looking store across the street, the door of which was now propped open with a ragged looking box of an undeterminable nature. It was a wonder that he didn’t look familiar, though she had never paid much attention to the man’s face behind the counter. Then again, she’d also never paid for much of what she left the store with, and so had never had much reason to look him in the eye. A black weight of guilt settled briefly in her stomach, but like most things it didn’t stay there long. Her mind nagged for a name, but she couldn’t force one to the surface. “What fer?”
