Page 2 of Lamb

“This can’t be it!” I lunged towards the damp wall, hands searching along the cracked and jagged surface for anything—a foothold, a crack, a small gap I could press myself into. It was useless. Not a ledge, a roof, or even a dumpster to step foot onto. Just walls, walls, and morewalls.

Blood ran over my red, raw palms as they dropped, leaden and shaky, to my aching sides. My legs, thin and brittle, rattled beneath me, beseeched of what scarce strength I had gathered, and my laboured breaths dissolved into the cold air.

There was nowhere left to run.

Nowhere left to hide.

I was trapped.

A sharp cackle had my heels spin, and a murky puddle of water splashed across the slick concrete. Droplets of moisture trickled into my shoe, soaking the fabric of my shabby socks and stinging the scratched skin beneath. I did not have the power to care.

Two men, not much taller than me but much stronger and sinister, stood shoulder to shoulder in the narrow alley, saccharine smiles pulling at their cheeks. They teetered on the edge of my poor vision, blurs clinging to the edges of their large and imposing masses.

“Now, now, princess,” one spoke, wiping an arm across his forehead, sweat trickling down and into the collar of their shirt. “I think we’ve had enough of playing mouse.”

“She ain’t no mouse.” The other laughed, and I pressed my back harder into the wall, feeling the grooves of the bricks etch themselves into my bony spine.

“She’s a cockroach.” He cackled, reaching one hand behind his back. It returned, and in his gnarled grip, a knife glinted under the transient glow of a nearby neon sign. The wicked pink parried off the edge as he twisted it back and forth under his gaze. “She just won’t stay dead.”

“Sounds like a payday to me.” The first one shrugged, stepping to the side to cut off any chance of escape.

“You do not know who you are messing with,” I growled, the harsh words stumbling out of my dry, cracked lips.

Laughing bounced around the dank walls of my trap, the sound surrounding me from all sides. The man with the knife stifled his with a hand over his mouth, breathing until the noise bated.

“Are you threatening me, princess?” He smiled, taking long strides to close the distance.

Stepping into my limited field of clear vision, he was bigger up close, and menacing—hulking shoulders, a slew of scars and tattered tattoos distorted by damage and time, none of which communicated his competency with a knife.

“Because the only thing you’d be able to do to me now”—he reached forwards, the blade resting on the exposed skin of my neck. It took purchase on my clavicle, the point indenting my cold, clammy skin—“is threaten me with a good time, if you catch what I’m saying.” The knife slipped farther down, a sharp sting slicing through the shivering cold at home in my bones.

I tasted bile on my tongue and felt the acid in my nose as his lecherous eyes followed the knife down. The blade buttedagainst the hem of my collar and exposed a slither of my sloped, pale breasts. His hot, sweaty musk steeped into the damp air, and disgust dug its way deep into my mind. My sneer bent my mouth, and my hands balled into fists. Heat roiled over my chest in a flash, faster than I could contain.

From panic or fear, something took over me and, before I knew it, my claws were drawn, and I did the worst thing I could have.

My temper sprang.

My spit landed directly on his cheek, and the man went deadly cold.

“Fuck you,” I growled, the words registering in my ears before my brain had caught wind.

“You little bitch!” the man roared, pulling back the knife and raising his free hand.

Water splashed against my face, the hard concrete knocking into my temple and side, and the blazing burn of a handprint deepened across my cheek. Ringing deafened my ear as warmth spread in my mouth, and a numbness covered one half of my face.

I coughed, blood splattering into the puddle and dying the murky water red.

“No wonder no man wants you.” The man hacked and spat from high above my crumpled body. “Not even your father.”

I struggled to sense my surroundings as a throb drummed to life around my skull. His words meant little, but I heard him continue the depraved insults and swearing with great speed and little dictation.

Blinkers settled on my brain as I drowned out his drivel, eyes searching for anything helpful. The burning in my chest was simmering as the cold puddle leaked in and darkness swam like ghosts at the edges of my vision. The past lurked in thatdarkness, and I could almost hearhervoice in the echo of his. The cold leeched in deeper.

No.

I’d listened to enough.

I rolled to my side, finding sparse strength in my arms to drag my head out of the puddle, grit and blood spilling from my lips. I reached my arm forwards to where my bag lay crumbled in the puddle, the dark water soaking through the thinning, worn material.

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