Page 1 of Moros

1

RYANNE “SHORTY” LARWICK

He peeled himself from the darkness like a cloud slowly coming to life. It didn’t take me long to wonder if I wasn’t safer with the men trying to kill me. In a swirl of flying arms, sailing legs and grunts for mercy, my attackers were on the ground in various broken positions and the specter who was my supposed saviour, was looking over a muscular shoulder at me.

He wasn’t even breathing heavy.

Dressed in all black, he had his hoodie up over his head, hiding his face. And even when he shifted slightly, he kept his face within the shadows.

It took everything in me not to scurry backward—fear permeating every part of me like water soaking through sand.

—level by level.

“You alright?” His voice was like the raspy roll of far-off thunder.

I swallowed.

My throat burned as if I’d swallowed sand.

I tried again.

“Are you hurt?” He barked.

I gasped and shook my head.

“Good.” He turned to look down at one of the men who, by some miracle, was still moving. “You should call the cops.”

“Um—I’m not sure what I would tell them.” I stuttered. “They probably just wanted my purse.”

The man glanced toward where my bag was now sitting, contents strewn all over the ground.

I didn’t have much.

A cellphone that was older than Jesus, a lipstick that was so finished, each time I used it, the plastic end of it scraped my lips—a few hair pins, a tattered wallet that once belonged to someone’s mother, an empty pack of gum and my keys.

The purse itself wasn’t even a designer—hell, I bought it at the dollar store close to my shit apartment with the leaky faucet and the toilet without a seat cover.

“Hey, what’s you?—”

I looked around.

Where’d he go?

I didn’t have to check, two of the men who’d chased me down this shit-ass lane, were now lying in a puddle of their blood—they were dead.

The third man looked as though quite a number of his bones were broken. Something in me told me to help him when he asked me to.

As I gathered my things back into my bag, I supposed I wasn’t moving fast enough for him. He called me a bitch, spat in my direction then tried lunging for me again.

I kicked him in the crotch and took off out of the laneway, made a left and kept right on running until I made it to my usual bus stop. There, I sat inside the lit shelter, my keys through my fingers, ready to use them as a weapon if needed.

I fixed myself up as best I could, straightened my clothes and when my bus came, I climbed on, trying to look as normal as possible—as normal for me.

After tapping my card to pay, I wandered to the very back of the bus with the empty seats and sat.

This way, there wouldn’t be anyone behind me.

The first time I took this route, I’d counted.

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