Collapse.
The rocking chair almost overturned backwards when he fell into his own body. In a flash he was on his feet, grabbed his heavy duster off the coat rack, and stepped out onto the fire escape. Thunder rumbled above as he vaulted into empty air. The leather holsters lining his coat jostled against his side with the weight of heavy metal. He dropped several feet toward the asphalt before he was able to catch and support himself, suspended five stories in the air.
Another flash of electricity and it looked as though he disappeared.
One second, two second, and three. The thunder rumbled as his Converse slapped the top step to the subway station. He shifted in the shadows and slunk down the staircase.
“I don’t have any money,” he heard her squeak.
“Oh, we’re not lookin’ for your cash, bitch,” The Cowboy chuckled, tossing his blade to the other hand. From his hidden place at the bottom of the staircase, he projected out into the gangers’ minds.
Stop this now and walk away. If you do this quickly, I won’t be forced to break all of you. His voice was stern and even as it resonated in their skulls.
“Who said that?” the Cowboy demanded. They were glancing around the empty platform, at each other, listening to echoes. They didn’t see him slip into the shadow of one of the tiled pillars. He could feel that one of them had been forced into the gang out of fear for his life.
Still as guilty as the rest.
It’s going to be alright, he whispered in her head. In her thoughts he saw the trigger of a Tazer pressed against her finger, hidden within her purse. Let me take care of them, he reassured, I promise it’ll be alright. Her finger relaxed and straightened onto the trigger guard. It twitched gently. He unbuttoned the clasps of his holsters. His hands smoothed over the athletic taped grips of his weapons.
The Cowboy stepped forward, knife still brandished.
“Who the fuck said that!?”
When I tell you, hit the ground, Okay? She nodded imperceptibly. Beneath his own drawn-up hood, lips parted and flashed a white wolfish grin. He sifted through the gangers’ minds, searching for their fears. Homelessness, drowning, life in prison, and spiders. His smile widened as he squeezed fear inducing chemicals from their own brains into their circulatory system.
“Oh God! They’re all over me!” one hollered, dancing into the light, brushing off invisible arachnids. He bumped into the other next to him, and they scuffled to keep balance. The Cowboy’s heart raced and his voice broke.
“I-Is this some trick?” he questioned the woman, stepping ever closer. He made a move to grab for her wrist.
Now, he commanded, and she dropped to her stomach on the cold floor.
The man in the shadows revealed himself, sweeping from behind the pillar, loosing the weapon in his right hand.
The steel pipe wrench turned end over end with a dull whistle, controlled by his will, and crunched The Cowboy’s fist, mangling nearly every bone in his hand. The knife clattered uselessly to the floor; the wrench hung suspended in the air. Clutching his ruined hand, their leader fell to his knees, a defeated whimper growing in his throat.
Before it could escape his lips, the Shadowed Man stomped a Converse into the Cowboy’s face, pulping his nose and rattling broken teeth. Spurred by a telekinetic burst, the kick propelled the kneeling man back into the shadows. There was a wet crack! as the back of his skull fractured on something thicker and harder.
One.
The Shadowed Man grasped the suspended wrench in his right hand; in his left he held a hard oak Military Police baton from way back during the Vietnam Conflict. It had been his father’s.
So had the wrench, he lamented silently. Slashing horizontally with the right, he connected just above the collar bone of the closest ganger. The young man crumpled under the hit, an immediate gout of blood sprayed from his mouth as he fell gurgling.
Two.
The others barely had the sense to react before he was on them. Spinning the wrench from his hand like a Frisbee, he felled two more of the youths. One would need the support of a cane for the rest of his life; the other would never be able to raise his arms above his head. They fell in broken heaps, a knee cap shattered, ribs, collar bones and shoulder blades ground to powder underneath the repeated thrashing of the steel slab. The wrench circled off into the darkness like a bird of prey taking flight.
Three, Four.
The youngest member of the gang was still frantically attempting to brush off the last of the spiders. His friend, who had witnessed the instantaneous and brutal carnage, reached for a pistol in the back of his sagging pants. He brought it up swiftly and fired a single shot. The bullet deflected off the rotating wrench, which appeared from the shadows, and ricocheted harmlessly into the darkness. The wrench remained, and shattered the man’s arm severely in four locations. He fell sobbing to the tiles.
Five.
Finally the youngest realized what had just happened around him. He stared in awe of the Shadowed Man, his thoughts pleading forgiveness. For the first time that evening, the Shadowed Man spoke,
“Do you plan to beg for mercy?” The youth collapsed to his knees, sobbing. “To beg, like all those women you six have brutalized?” The sobs grew louder. “I’m not going to kill you,” he finally admitted. The youth glanced up, eyes shrunken red with tears, and sniffed a mouthful of snot into his throat.
“Y-Y-You’re not?” he asked.
“No,” the Shadowed Man replied. The kid’s shoulders drooped in relief.
He raised the baton above his head, pulling the youth’s neck back with a telekinetic grasp of hair, and smashed it into the kid’s mouth. “But you’ll never smile again, just like those women.” He leaned in close to the kid’s ear as he spit a mouthful of shattered teeth upon the tile. “Rapist. Murderer. I know what you’ve done. I can see it all unfold in your mind. Don’t think that I won’t find you if you ever even consider trying it again," He probed the youth's mind as though flipping through a book. "You’re a smart kid, Derrick. Wouldn’t want to snuff out such a potential.” He brought the baton up between the youth’s legs sharply. The kid fell over sideways, shock shuddering through his body, triggering it to sleep.
Six.
Up above on the street, the sleeping cop grumbled and rolled fitfully. His dreams filled with images of the gang they were staking out. He watched from a distance as they were beaten severely and left to twitch and bleed in scattered piles. He could feel that someone was showing him these images, was trying to gently coax him awake.
That’s right, buddy. Up and at ‘em. His eyes shot open, and he tore out of the car, sprinting on legs made of pins and needles. Behind him, his partner stood in the rain by the driver’s door, yelling after him as he disappeared around the corner.
The woman was face down with her hands covering her ears. She stayed that way until she heard footsteps. Looking up, she was blinded by a flashlight.
“Hello?” called out an unsure voice, made of equal parts of sleep grog and trepidation. “Oh my god! Are you alright?” The police officer pounded over to the woman. He panned his flashlight over the groaning and unconscious bodies that littered the platform. “What the hell happened here?” he inquired. Thin puffs of steam rose from the mouths of the gang, fogging and dissipating in the cavern-like station. For the first time, she spied the aftermath of The Shadowed Man’s assault.
“I-I have no idea…” she trailed off. “Something…” she paused again. “Someone saved me.”
Up on the rooftop of the brick apartment building, The Shadowed Man waited and watched as paramedics and police trickled into the subway station. He took a deep breath in through his nose, filling his chest. Allowing the adrenaline in his system to ebb, he drew a twisted cigarette from a battered holder in an inner jacket pocket. Deftly he brought a silver Zippo toward his lips and struck a spark. A thick finger of oily flame licked the tip of his smoke. He pressed against the storm with his will, creating a pocket of open air for himself.
And he watched them walk the woman out of the station and place her in the passenger seat of a police cruiser. He smiled. They would question her, but there was no way she’d be held responsible.
Hell, they may even congratulate her. Helping to take down The Cowboy and his cronies. Far below on the city street, he could have sworn that she gazed up at him. The warmth radiated from smiling mahogany eyes and a deep shell inside his being melted. For a brief moment, the rain petered out and ceased. As she gently placed herself in the cop car and closed the door, a solitary rain drop touched his face and ran down his cheek like a cold tear. His glacial-blue eyes panned over the stream of activity far below.
There was a single flash of lightning far above, and he disappeared.
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