Inks
Member
Word Count - {1,455}
Impressions
“You’re in the wrong neighborhood, girlie-pie.”
Anne’s heart leaps in her chest, lodges somewhere in the vicinity of her throat, and freezes there. She hesitates for only a moment. Then she’s walking again, several paces faster than before, the hem of her dress whipping after her. Her heartbeat doubles, triples, fueled by panic. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Please, no. This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening. Please—
“Ah—hey! Wait up, lady! Where ya goin’?”
There are footsteps behind her, in time with her own. For every sharp click of her heels against the darkened, craggy sidewalk there’s the dull tap of a soft-soled shoe. She’s taken this shortcut a hundred times without anything happening. A hundred. Why now? Why tonight? There’s nothing different about her. No fancy clothes, no expensive trappings, nothing to separate her from any other lower-class girl. Her make-up was all given to her by pitying friends, her wavy blonde hair is just the result of a home treatment and lots of experience with hair curlers. Her dress is from Goodwill, for christ’s sake.
But she is out after midnight (so what? She’s been out later than this, before), it is a shady part of town (it’s the shortest route to her house – going up the main road would take almost three times as long and all she just wants to get home and take a shower and not die today, fuck), and she is a pretty young girl. All alone.
“Oh? Ignoring me? That’s not very smart, is it? I mean, for all you know, I could be a deranged serial killer. What if you’re making me upset, provoking me...in the middle of a bad neighborhood...in the middle of the night, no less.”
Well, she’s not alone anymore, but that’s the whole damn problem. She wishes she were. God but how she wishes she were. The footsteps, the voice, and the man to whom they must belong (it’s gotta be a guy, it’s a man’s voice – one of those light, friendly baritones that sounds so trustworthy, even if there’s no fucking way it really is) stay right behind her. The man doesn’t fall behind; he doesn’t try to catch up. For nearly half an hour he just follows after her, keeping...perfect...pace.
So as she turns the next street corner, comes out beneath a streetlamp, Anne reaches into her purse. And when the footsteps follow, she spins around and unloads a can’s worth of mace in the man’s general direction.
She barely looks at him – barely gets a glimpse of his features (messy black hair with blond roots just starting to show through, an unnervingly handsome face, a terrible scar on his nose, a white dress shirt and slacks) before she’s off and running as fast as her pumps will allow. Her heart’s hammering a mile a minute now, and she hopes – oh god but she hopes that she got him in the eyes. She hopes he decides she’s more trouble than she’s worth, she hopes that he’s given up, she hopes—
She misses the curb, too caught up in her own panicked thoughts to focus on what was really important -- running. As her foot comes down, her heel slips off the sole of her stupid, goddamn shoe, and her ankle twists. It twists hard.
“Fuck!” she half-shouts, half-sobs as she tumbles to the pavement. Her knees and hands are scraped raw, if a car came by now she’d be lucky if it didn’t kill her, and—and—shit, shit, shit. She can hear footsteps behind her. Approaching her.
“Did you...did you mace me, lady?” the voice sounds amused.
No, I tried to mace you and failed. Big difference.
She tastes her tears before she even realizes she’s started crying, and she drags herself to her feet. If she’s going to get attacked, she at least wants to be able to see it coming. She at least wants a chance at defending herself.
There’s a streetlamp on the curb she tripped over, but it’s been burnt out for months. There’s a streetlamp on the curb across the street too, though, and that one’s working just fine. Hysterically, Anne thinks that it should be the other way around – the man should be lit from behind, all sharp edges and darkness, something faceless and foreboding.
Instead, the lamp behind her reveals the man to be just that: a man. One with young, clean-cut features, pale blue eyes, and a smile like he’s just seen something hilarious and he’s trying not to laugh at it. There’s a blood stain on his sleeve. She realizes belatedly that one eye is muddy, opaque, and for a horrible second she thinks, I did that. I did that and now he’s going to kill me oh god--
She grabs at her purse again (it’s a miracle it stayed on her shoulder when she fell) and digs through it with frantic precision, but she can’t find what she’s looking for. The pepper spray is gone. She must’ve dropped it after using it on the man. Damnit. Damnit!
Desperate, she wrenches the bag off her shoulder and throws it. It hits the man in the chest and then spills out on the ground. Lipstick, tissue paper, a comb, a hand-mirror, a dollar or two in coins, all laid out on the pavement. It’s like a snapshot of her life told in meaningless junk. The man doesn’t move. Neither does his smile. The two stand there for a few moments, blinking at each other.
Anne clenches her fists, trembling with fear and wasted adrenaline. “What do you want from me?!” she finally screams, desperately. Her voice echoes through the late-night sky, mocking her.
Want from me? ...From me...? ...me...?
Even if someone hears her, they won’t come to her rescue. Not at this hour; not in this neighborhood. She’ll die alone, murdered in the streets, and she probably won’t even make the front pages. It takes all her effort to stay still. She wants to bolt, or hit something. Fight or flight. Just standing there is killing her. Maybe...maybe if she takes him by surprise, then--
“From you?” the man repeats in that airy voice of his. He sounds surprised. He looks surprised, comically so. “I don’t want anything from you.”
God help her, Anne can’t stop crying. Her shoulder are shaking and her voice quavers as she says, “...I...you don't...? Then...why? Why? What do you want?”
“You dropped your wings. I thought I’d give them back to you.”
“...I...what?” What does that mean? Is it a metaphor? Oh god, she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t fucking understand.
“Your,” the man says slowly, like he’s talking to a small child, “wings. Here.” He digs in his pocket, and Anne flinches away from the movement. She steps further from the curb, silently begging that a car come along. Any car. Anyone. Even if it hit her, at least it’d take her out of this nightmare.
Save me, save me -- please, God, someone!
Then the man pulls out her brooch, and she stops thinking at all.
Her hand reaches up on its own and pats at the left breast of her dress. Gone. The small, ornate brooch, the old family heirloom her mother had given to her before passing away, is missing.
No... It’s right there, in the man’s hand. A set of gem-studded angel wings, slightly flared as if preparing for flight. The cheap stones sparkle prettily in the dingy yellow light, winking up at her from a pale, scarred hand. It’s a small trinket, a memento, not particularly valuable, but...
If she’d lost it she would’ve been devastated. She hadn’t even thought...
She’d thought...
“I...what...but...” Anne says. “...your...your shirt, though! There’s blood on it!” She sounds hysterical, and she feels worse.
The man’s smile doesn’t waver. He sounds slightly exasperated, though, when he says, “Well, yes. Like I was trying to tell you before, girlie; this is a bad neighborhood. You should know better than to walk around here at night. If I’d been someone who meant you harm, well...”
Then he reaches out and, before she thinks to jerk away, seizes her by the wrist. Turns her handver. He pushes her brooch into her open palm and then lets her go.
“Well,” he says as Anne wrenches her arm backwards, hard enough to very-nearly send her to the ground again, “who knows what would’ve happened. G’night!”
And then he leaves, his footsteps echoing behind him even after he turns the block.
Gone. Just like that.
Anne stands there for a long time. Then she edges her way over to the curb, sits down, and starts to cry, wings curled in her aching fingers.
.