New Project,

It’s just another typical day.   Imagine taking a stroll down a familiar sidewalk minding your own business and then feeling the unmistakable feeling of a part of you disappearing from your mass.   Just a small amount of weight lifted off of your right wrist.   You don’t feel the metal band moving against the hairs and skin of your arm just the absence of that ounce and a half where it once was.   Then your mind knows the image, knows the item.  That silver surface rubbed free of blemishes not forty five minutes earlier, the glass encasement of the clock face no longer smeared with finger prints.  The black clock face with the silver numbers and signifying lines as the silver hands tick tock away.   My eyes glanced down but for a moment to make sure my body isn’t playing tricks on me and as sure as I am standing on that sidewalk my watch is gone.   There’s no time to waste as I turn my neck about to see who has made off with it and the barely visible brown jacket amidst the see of business suits and t-shirts with the latest superhero apparent in some form or fashion.

I turn harshly and rubbed shoulders with one of these drones and dart my way in and out of the pedestrian traffic.  I can’t deny that I’ve knocked over one or two of them as I feel the weight against my shoulder, one of them may have even been a pretty girl but I can’t be a gentleman right now, and I can’t offer up an apology.  One small utterance from my lips may be a waste of oxygen that I need to keep up my pace.  The pickpocket is smaller than me, he’s spry, his little fox legs helping him weave in and out of the wall of fabric and flesh that moves toward us.   Though my pursuit is less graceful he doesn’t gain any extra ground.

Then he’s gone but I know where.  Though he is out of my sight there’s an alleyway opening up on a coming left and I know that’s where he’s ducked off to so I stop myself wishing that my foot made a breaking noise and produced a blast of burning asphalt as I move myself from one direction to the next.  There he is freely visible now in the arid and pungent array of the downtown district’s trashy air.   My feet move with a brisk tenacity that I didn’t realize they could muster, but that little son of a bitch has my watch and I need it back.  If it were an ordinary thing worth a few thousand dollars I might just let him have it and go on about my day a little furious but not the worse for wear, but it’s not, it’s much more priceless than that.   It’s not some family heirloom, or some artifact that I managed to find in my possession, though I can’t doubt some family once owned it for a few generations or so, it’s still more priceless even than that.  

The thief turns down another corner and when I round it I find myself halting half falling over onto my face as the momentum I was moving with wants to continue to carry me.   When I find my balance – which only takes a second – I am bearing witness to a meeting of likeminded hoodlums.  A meeting of an army of gang members dressed in baggy jeans and triangular image of bones in the middle of every one of their vein popping necks.  The little guy looks out of place against the steroid induced back drop, him with his lanky frame looking like a David amongst a battalion of Goliaths.   There’s one bigger than the others, terribly pale as though he’s a vampire hiding back behind the trash cans.   Hidden within the shadows of skyscrapers lest he burst into flames.  Upon his dome is a Mohawk that adds another foot to his height, and he steps from behind the pack his red hair visible over the bald heads of most of the others, and the little guy drops my watch into this guy’s pale over-juiced hands.

“That’s mine.”  I say just in case there’s any doubt.  They all laugh as though I’ve just told the best joke they’ve ever heard, “Hey blockheads you don’t understand, that really is mine.  I’m gonna need it back.”

The red mohawked mime steps closer to me, and he squeezes my watch in his fist and he smiles.   His canines are metallic and sharp, and I’m beginning to realize that the likeness to a vampire isn’t an accident, he fancies himself some sort of blood sucker.   I look up and down the length of his bare arms and the muscles are pushing drastically against his skin.  Small little hills are indented all along the pale spaces and his veins look as though they are about to burst.

I’m in my school uniform and it’s awfully hot so I let my backpack fall off of my shoulder and I begin to undo the stupid blue tie we are required to wear.  Once it’s loose I breathe a little better and then I look this asshole down.  I do my best Clint Eastwood and say, “You can do what you like, but I’m gonna get my watch back.”   I smile too, for good measure.

He’s pissed now, or humored but either way he clutches my watch tighter and takes a full on swing at my face.   With the momentum behind that punch if it were to connect with the bridge of my nose as it were intended, it would have broken it, set a spray of blood down my nostrils and knocked me off my feet.  After which the gang of roid heads would then proceed to kick and pummel me into a weeklong coma and then walk away as though they hadn’t just accosted a seventeen year old honor student.   As it is though I tilt my head to the right and he misses sending his body towards me.  I deliver three quick jabs to his ribs and then step around him as he stumbles behind me.  The freak is keeled over a moment, and another guy steps forward.

He swings at me, a pair of brass knuckles on his hand and I wonder what the use of such a weapon is if you aren’t even fast enough to hit your opponent.  I do the same move and push him to the ground and he attempt to stand but falls back down onto his chest.   Another bastard swings a knife, and I realize I’ve just pissed off the hive and they all move in at me at once.  I spin a kick and my foot slides across the cheeks of a pair of smaller guys but this bigger one grabs a hold of my flying foot and spins me around.   Thinking I’m knocked on my heels he throws a punch but he’s big not fast, and he misses as I duck down I deliver my signature triple shot and then a left hook across his jaw.

That would have left me all fine and dandy but the Mohawk wearing vampire type throws his arms over me and he’s holding me in an iron grip.   I know it’s useless to pull at his arms so I concentrate on the couple of wimps who move on me now.  They are both wearing the imprint of my gym shoes on their faces and I oblige them with another one using the connecting kicks to the chests to force my new friend back a bit and just as I expect his grip loosens enough for me to squirm my way out.  The big guy is at me again then and he throws a punch but when I drop down to the floor his fist hits his boss’s nose and I hear it crack overhead.  Then the spray of blood from his nostrils lands on the right hand sleeve of my blue shirt.  “That’s not gonna come out you guys, honestly.”  I remark before rolling out of the way of the big guy’s foot.

The mohawked leader still has his fist clutched against my watch and the dozen or so members of his little posse are starting to get braver.  Those that were hanging back are now taking nervous steps closer.   The second guy I delivered the rib shots to is starting to stand back up.  I round about him and hold him in a choke hold and help him up to his feet.  I can feel the pistol in the back of his belt as it pushes on my stomach so I reach down and pull it out and put it to this guy’s head.   I’ve never shot anyone before, have never had the inkling to shoot anyone, and in fact have no intention of shooting this guy.  These guys don’t know me though.  For all they knew I was just some high school student on his way home from study group.  Then they probably just figured I was some high school student on his way home from his masterful Kung foo training.   Now though I make them believe I’m some badass psychopath, maybe one of those unhinged types the secret service taps early for special undercover training.  “Take a step closer and I’ll lay him out right here.”  They don’t stop so I press the barrel in harder to his ear, “I’m not screwing around, do want his brains all over the pavement.  Don’t test me.”

The leader with his bloodied nose holds out his arms in hands in front of everyone, and I can see the band of my watch dangling out in the open.   I can feel myself sweating underneath my mess of hair, to have such a precious item out in the open like this, in the hands of someone so dangerous is making me nervous.  “Give me the watch!  Or I’ll do it.”  I rest my finger more comfortably on the trigger, displaying as much confidence as I can muster while my eyes double check that I left the safety on. 

The little thief steps closer the Mr. Mohawk and presses his hand on his shoulder, “Do it, we can fence something else.”   He’s the voice of reason in this mad house.  It seems these other lads don’t care what happens to their partner.   Various rings hand out of their noses and eye brows.   Chains are wrapped around half of their arms.  The triangle of bones on printed on their necks except for this little pickpocket.  He’s a new inductee, and I hope I didn’t ruin his chances, who know what they’ll do to him for being soft.  Then I notice the resemblance the Mohawk guy and the brown jacket wearing thief have in common, and I figure they must be brothers.

I can tell he doesn’t want to give up his prize as the blood drops off of his chin to collect and pool at the toes of his boots.   I can also tell he’s going to.  His eyes dart to the side as if looking at his little brother and the little guy keeps his eyes on me as though I just killed his favorite puppy.  My prisoner’s nostrils must be flaring because I can feel his heated breaths frantic against the hairs and skin of my bare arm, naked without my familiar and precious watch.  My hand starts to shake slightly and I steady it calming the barrel in its place on the man’s ear.

The leader moves his hand in front of him and half-heartedly tosses my watch so that it lands just between him and my captive.   “Now, you are gonna be a good little boy and you’re gonna get my watch for me and toss it back, because if you don’t I’m going to place two in the back of your skull.  Let me tell you, I’ve never missed.”  I lie to him, better than telling him that I’ve never fired a gun in my life.  Not one that didn’t have plastic pellets in it anyways.  He nods that he understands and I loosen up and he steps forward.   Shaking a bit he takes a step forward, his steps are slow and careful, and I know that my words must have been delivered effectively.  The leader’s eyes are on me and I glance up and grin at him, and his chest heaves up and down lifting his shoulders as it does.  My captive must still feel how it felt having the barrel of his pistol against his head because he kneels down at a turtles pace and grips the band of the watch between his thumb and forefinger and then I wait.

All eyes are on me.   Waiting to see what I’ll do once I get my watch.   They all know I have nowhere to run, that a large brick wall towers behind me, and I know it too.  But I also know something else that they don’t.

The watch comes flying backwards at me and I toss the pistol to the wind and quickly strap on the silver faced time teller and the death row inmates are descending upon me.   When it’s clicked in place I can feel the fire rushing up my wrist into each and every one of my fingers, and I make a fist, and the Mohawk wearing monster throws a bunch at me, and I throw a bunch back.  Our fist twist and impact in the same place, but mine sends a shockwave that radiates through his and begins to shatter each and every bone in his big steroid grown muscularly ballistic hand but of course the wave doesn’t stop there.   I can see his skin move in a wave as if it’s sea in the middle of a forming hurricane and he flies back through his lackeys and into a dumpster where I know he won’t be getting up again.

His subordinates are on me still though and one finally lands a blow on my non-watch arm and I’m knocked back on my heels.  I swing about and slam this unlucky sucker in the gut and he sails a good seven feet in the air, but there’s too many.  I leg swoops in and trips me up and another fist lands on my watch arm, and I fall back.  I fall back passed my heels and onto my ass and I quickly swing my hyper powered fist into the hand of some other unlucky fool and I hear his finger crack and he halts giving me enough time to clamor up.   There is no time to waste, though I now can handle these guys with more space there soon won’t be enough room to move an arm to get enough momentum.   I channel as much more as I can and I raise my fist into the air and scream at the top of my lungs because typically that’s what one does in such a situation and my fist drills through a layer of pavement before sending a shockwave through the earth that move about our little fist fight like a pebble disturbing a peaceful pond but here’s the ducks going flying back and down amongst the cracked earth.

The gang members moan and groan nursing broken ankles or worse and I find myself stepping amongst the bodies attempting to make my exit before any authorities show up.   I’m passing the vampire when he snaps his un-mutilated arm to grab at mine.  It’s a weak hold, and I know even he knows it.  “Who, who.”   He says like a wounded owl.  I kneel closer to him letting him know that he has my attention, “Who the hell are you?”

There’s a smile on my broad little cheeks and I take my thumb and forefinger and I lift them off my wrist and let his hand fall against the rubble, and I tell him who I am, “Just call me Edgar.”