The man glowered at me, shook his head. Another trolley was coming into the loading platform. This second one I would not let pass by.
“Come on, now!”
The man ambled towards me, turned his head backward. He exchanged glances with people outside the platform, behind the turnstiles. They had tickets in hand, but didn’t dare to enter. They wanted to see blood, the old violence of always. Renato’s blood had bathed the floor they stood on, and now they wanted me to paint the floor at the loading platform.
“Get the fuck out of here, you vampires. Vampires!” I screamed.
The man cringed in fear, hunched his back even more.
He hopped into the trolley, so did I.
Inside the car there was no place to sit, only bars and poles where people could keep their bodies from falling. Its windows were high, started on my shoulders up to the ceiling, and the rest was metal. It slid out from the platform, the trolley stuttered and honked as it grazed on its iron tracks.
I took a fast glimpse outside, the face of the Gloria Santa slum draped in brick and asbestos roofs, all conveying that same seedy feeling that pervaded the slum down to its crevices.
I ordered the old man to sit at the front of the car. I aimed the pistol at him the whole time.
The car swayed under a slight wind licking it sideways. The bottom was coming closer each second. I could feel the change of density in the air as it passed through the windows. It was the fresh air of nature, the breeze of the ocean, free from the stench that corrupted the atmosphere of Gloria Santa.
I closed my eyes. Breathed in to fully appreciate the purity I missed so much.
Then the trolley swayed to a halt and I jolted forward.
Chapter 33
I tried to keep my balance, hands groping the air searching for the steel pole, but the invisible force over my body was too big to handle. I fell headlong onto the grimy floor, broom plunging alongside me. I splashed my face against the metal surface, my body slid forward, toward the man crouched at the front part of the car.
I didn’t let go of the pistol. Neither when streaming down the gutters flooding with rainwater, nor when skimming that filthy car steel base.
Inside the trolley, however, instead of the mistreated dog to which pain I could empathize, what greeted me at the end of the way was the opportunistic strike of a man whose evil I did not share.
He jumped over me, his hands clasping my hair, pressing my face against the floor. I felt his other hand going straight for the gun. The nape of my neck ached deeply under his pressure. After so many wounds, I learned to focus only on the one aching the most. Which in the past hours had been my sprained knee.
But now it was my neck again.
I was unable to move my head. He flung my hand against the floor, tried to open it and grab the pistol. I resisted.
He was an old man, stronger than me, but not capable of snatching the gun out of my grip with only one of his hands. He needed both.
He let go of my head, the pressure in my neck suddenly released. A sharp pain flashed inside my head. Whether it came from outside or inside I couldn’t tell. The man grabbed my hand and the gun with both hands, wedged his fingers between mine and the handgrip, started pulling them out.
I was about to lose it.
My head was free. I writhed around,his body hunched over me. The man had practically sat on top of me, his boots close to my face, his butt on my nose.
Even though I couldn’t get a glimpse of my hand, I could feel it. And with this unseen path in my mind, I slithered my other arm under his body and reinforced my grip on the pistol, tangling my fingers with his.
The old man went even further, even harder, and put his knee on my breast, squeezing my breath out. Then he slid sideways, his thigh next to my face. The gun started slipping from my hand.
Desperate, I bit him. I went straight for his thighs, covered by a worn out jeans months away from the last washing. The first bite only grazed my teeth. He didn’t seem to notice my attempt.
I opened my jaws wider and went for a second chomp, down to a part where his flesh folded into a lump. Teeth fit around the flesh, I bit down with all I had left inside.
He screamed. His grip faltered. The pistol was firmly in my hand. He wiggled in a dreadful dance to get free from my teeth, but I didn’t let go.
One of his hands let go of the pistol. On the corner of my vision, I saw it soaring high towards the ceiling, then the fist swooshing down against my temple. All went white, the taste of blood filled in my mouth.
Was it my blood, or his?
My body went all tight, I saw Marlon coming toward me. He had come to help, to bring me home. But then, behind him, I saw Paulo Pinto and Roberto Rôla. They also had come for me. They wanted to use me. They wanted to kill me.
It was then I pulled the trigger. And pulled it again.
The urge to fight disappeared, the grip in my hands released. I slouched my arms to the ground, the weight of that man spread over me. I breathed in, tasted the blood again, and tried to remember Marlon—no success.
Only darkness pervaded my mind. All black. Because It was the second time I had
