He laughed wickedly as he descended upon her, grabbing for her breast and ripping off a chunk of her blouse instead.
Mike started to walk home from school early, and none of the teachers or administrators did bugger-all about him skipping fifth period. It was Family Education, a subject that he found positively mundane. He only went to see Cathy, and with her gone his attendance seemed moot.
What was it Sara had said? “You know society’s going down the shitter when you need a class on how to not hit your kids.”
That one had always made he and Cathy laugh. Not so much Xander, though. He had found the whole subject of domestic violence appalling while growing up. Surprising, considering he’d grow to become the poster-child for abusive tendencies. He grunted to himself, pushing the idea aside. He hadn’t realized that he was thinking about Sara until long after the fact and it wasn’t an avenue he particularly enjoyed exploring. Traveling down memory lane is like traveling on Baltic, he mused, thinking of the popular board game; both are completely useless.
His train of thought kept defaulting back to Julie and Greer. He couldn’t tear his mind away from those poor girls, or what had been done to them. Now Greer was in a coma, but the lumps and scrapes told the story pretty well for Tim and his forensics department. Julie wasn’t talking, and it didn’t seem like she ever would. Unless something happened quick, those assholes would get away with everything they’d done. He kept seeing poor, young Julie Peterson being held down as they each climbed on, beating her and calling her vulgar names. Making her feel as though they were doing it to her, just like Grendel had. Argh! he screamed inwardly, grabbing at his hair with one hand while clenching the other into a fist. The knuckles ached, still sore from trying to punch in Tommy’s locker yesterday. At that precise moment, he would have given anything for something to hit.
Then he heard it. Down by The Factory, right around the old sitting rock where he and Cathy had made-out for the first time. Cathy and Xander always acted weird when they went down there, though he didn’t know why. He couldn’t see the actual stone from where he was standing, but the sounds of struggle were clear. He peaked his head around the gray slate corner of The Factory and saw Allan Bishop slamming Roxanne’s back against the rock, choking her and riding his free hand up her skirt. Mike barred his teeth as he stepped around the corner. Suddenly his hand didn’t hurt anymore. That’ll do just fine.
Roxanne was crying, her shirt ripped in several places and a clump of her hair blowing about in the wind. Mike could see the blood rising to her scalp where it had been ripped out. Her purse had been thrown aside, makeup and pictures spilt out everywhere. Allan was huffing something sensually disturbing about how he knew she liked it. Mike grimaced. Give me Adam Genblade any day of the week, he joked inwardly, then he thought better of it and simply got ready to fight.
Carefully, he snuck up behind Al, then shoved him as hard as he could. Al flew over Roxanne, who seemed just as surprised as the would-be rapist. It was only then that Mike noticed her leg had been sliced near the pelvis and her underwear was dangling lazily around one ankle. The hole for the other leg had been ripped off. The image provided more fuel for his rage as she turned to run, not bothering to look back at either of them. That was fine by Mike, who had wanted nothing more than five minutes alone with this creep for well over twenty-four hours now.
Al started to rise to his feet, blood gushing from his nose and cheek from where he’d skidded across the ground. Grass stained the front of his white Yankees shirt as well, and his jacket had been ripped. The man suddenly seemed to grow, as if he’d gained a foot in every direction since Mike had shoved him. Mike gulped loudly, starting to feel the sweat dot his brow randomly.
“First the brunette,” Mike observed as he clenched his fists and got prepared for an attack. “Then the blonde and now a redhead. What next? Some silver haired old lady? Geriatrics style, sponge-bath rape? Am I close?” Mike kept quipping, mostly just to keep from wetting himself. The insults made him smarter than Al, made him braver.
“You’re close to death,” the rapist replied, and there was no humor in his tone. No anything, actually. It was like a teacher reading from a textbook. He wrote Mike’s death sentence as if it were a god-given fact.
It stripped Mike’s bravery away in an instant. “Um...” he started. He didn’t have time to crack wise again. Instead, he felt Al’s fist against his face before he even saw the killer move to strike. He felt his teeth chatter and one come loose, slithers of blood being unleashed into his mouth. His eye was swelling before he even hit the ground, which he did at twenty miles an hour. His other eye jammed against the sitting stone, snapping his head back to the sound of a large snap. When he tried to open his eyes again he found that he could not, bruises having already formed over them. Blood dribbled from his mouth and nose. Pain shot into his scalp as Al picked him up by the hair, slamming the child’s face into the concrete wall of The Factory. Blood splattered in all directions, and something in Mike’s cheek cracked.
With every ounce of energy that was still inside of him, he drew back and punched Al, breaking the child abuser’s nose and quite possibly his own hand. The cracking sound was amazingly loud, echoing several
