• “Fight”
    He couldn’t tell if the voice was his own. He stopped asking. He forgot the voice and focused on the message. Conscious thought, for the moment, nauseated him.

    He paused. He didn’t want to fight. Waiting on the ground for the bastards to finish was so much easier. He was tired. Easier to believe that he brought this on himself, he had walked outside in his black and turquoise hoodie. Those were Ambrose colors, bound to raise the ire of the local BGD-Nation. What the ******** did he expect?

    He coughed as another boot creased his liver. Another dented his kidneys. It made him want to piss. Angry hoof-like boots were everywhere, falling at once. He was lucky these three had no gun. They must be new to the fold, fledgling gangbangers eager to prove themselves, make themselves feared.

    He lay on the street, getting kicked. The street lay across the South Side like the spinal column of a long-dead dinosaur, a great fossilized bone, tiny one-way boulevards sprung from either side like ribs, between them swirling in the great belly were the bungalows and tenements, taverns and taquerias, shops run by Arabs, Mexicans, Koreans and the occasional black man. None of them stayed long, and they were easily replaced. No melting pot, more of a simmering stew already swallowed but not yet digested.

    On the street, Finn Collins, 17, wondered why blood bubbled the way it did. If they got tired soon, he could still make the bus to school, clean up a little before first period, Algebra II. He hated Algebra II. Hitchcock used chocolate syrup for blood in Pyscho. Looking at the tiny puddle draining from his bleeding nose and mouth, he understood why. Blood is thick and blood is dark.

    He remembered that voice, “Fight.” He flopped over onto his stomach. The boots stomped on his back. He pressed his hands against the ground, a parking lot sharp with gravel and gas, and lifted himself to his knees. A foot caught him on the chin and he almost went back down. “Fight,” he said yes. “Fight.” He brought one knee up in the manner of genuflection and paused to absorb the force of more kicks, and now that his head was up, the occasional punch. Then he was standing. Fight he said yes. Fight. Somehow, they were behind him, nameless in their black and silver. Yes. Fight he said yes. Fight. Blood and saliva oozed onto his shirt.

    “Youwansomo, b***h?” “Youwonsomo,” the tallest of the three wheezed at him. He better go home after this. He was a mess. He knew his mother would cry when she saw him. Yes he would fight. He said yes. He had to change his shirt. He felt ashamed for making his mother cry. “Yowonsomo?” They had stopped throwing punches, stopped kicking. They were moving around him, waving their hands in generic malice, but with without direction, not really doing anything.

    Finn understood they were uncertain. They hadn’t heard the command to fight. They hadn’t heard his answer yes. Fear is their luxury. Fear grants them impunity. They are not accustomed to people standing back up. They had slammed into him like a brick wall, but the rising sun exposed cracks, vulnerabilities.

    He hit the closest one square on the chin with closed fist. He poised on the balls of his feet, one behind the other. He passed his shoulder over his hip, putting his weight behind the punch, curving his arm into a perfect left hook. One of them went down. The punch wasn’t tremendously powerful, but the guy was off balance doing his awkward menacing dance. And so he fell.

    The other two scooped him up. The morning was growing older now, nearly 9:00 and Finn was late. People were coming into the street, riding that spine to work and school. “You dead, whyboy,” the tall one called before turning away and vanishing into an alley. Three men perched on cinder blocks near the alley’s mouth saluted him by raising their greenish bottles of beer and taking another swig. They were always there, begging for change and filling their gullets with their ubiquitous puke-green bottles. Zen and the Art of Getting Shitfaced, the bottle had become an extension of the hand. One had a wild gray beard, the neighbor kids called him “Manson.” People forgot that wasn’t a home they were sitting on. People forgot they lived on bricks. They were just big transparent eyeballs that people walked through.

    He walked away from the alley, towards home. Blood. His mother would cry. Why did he fight? He stood for a moment looking at his blood on the ground, no longer part of him. He felt naked. Who had seen his blood? He wished suddenly he could take it with him. One’s blood is an intimate thing.