“Check his jeans,” someone urged.
With blurred, dizzy eyes, I watched them pocket my money and lean over me again.
“You better pray you got more on you.”
Definitely not a cat,I thought groggily.No nine lives here. Just a short, sad one about to end.
CHAPTER
TWO
Ghost
Most fought against the consumption of darkness, and long ago, I was one of them.
For some, darkness brought isolation, a certain type of erasure that left a man forgotten. Inky, opaque shadows that echoed with finality and a sense of permanence that there was no coming back from.
Personally, I thought of it as surrender, letting go of everything I lived and breathed to be true.
That man was a stranger to me, and the one I was today was at home in the darkness. Instead of battling against it, I embraced its honesty and let it swallow me whole. You’d be surprised at the things a man could learn by being invisible. After all, the masks people wear slip when they think no one’s looking.
I wasalwayswatching, observing quietly from obscurity to cut through the bullshit and get right to the truth. I refused to go back to believing a beautiful lie.
The ugly truth? Life is cruel and people crueler.
Low laughter punctuated my thoughts as two men slammed their bodies into a tall chain link fence, jolting the ice-coated metal and making it clatter. The man trying to scale its eight-foot height slipped, and the paper bag he’d been clutching dropped to the ground, a victim of the vain attempt at keeping his grip.
The little bit of footing he gained was put to the test when the men below started rattling the fence anew, the frosty metal wobbling and groaning under the pressure.
The climber slipped, a pained sound echoing through the dark alley while he dangled helplessly above his attackers. From the shadows, I saw his limbs shake, practically smelled the exhaustion in his panting breaths.
It was hardly the first mugging I’d witnessed in Buffalo, but it was rare that someone fought when they were clearly outmatched. Probably why I stopped to take in the show, curious if the kid would get away.
The nice part of me hoped he made it. The realistic part of me knew he’d never.
With a grunt, one of the men leaped up, grabbing the kid by the ankle and yanking. He gave way instantly and barreled into the cold, hard ground with a sharp slap.
The two men converged on him while their friend stood by, pointing a flashlight like he was some kind of lighting expert. Ironic, really, they weren’t scared to beat up on someone half their size, but the dark stole their confidence.
Amateurs.
The body on the ground bowed upward when they yanked at the front of his coat. Something in my stomach tightened as I watched his blond head flop back in submission.
Wake up, kid. Wake up.
“Pockets are empty,” one of the men spat.
“Inside his coat,” another suggested.
The man holding him up like a rucksack dropped him back to the ground, roughly grabbing the zipper on his coat and yanking it apart.
That seemed to snap some fight back into the blond, and he let out a yell and swung his arm, fist bouncing off the closest man’s cheek.
“You little prick!” he grunted, drawing back a meaty paw.
I straightened off the wall, staring directly at the violence. Looking away from something bad didn’t mean it didn’t happen.
The hit was hard and fueled by anger, forcing his small, pale face into the pavement with a scrape. A light whimper rippled through the alley, the sound so poignant it disturbed the stillness of the black shrouding me.
