The Boy With Tattoos

TBWT | Preface

"What's wrong with you?" I heard a voice scream from the hall around the corner. The voice was masculine and there was a hard edge to it. The tone wasn't friendly. My imagination thought that it might've been a couple in an argument. I had a bad feeling about where it was heading.

I shouldn't have been eavesdropping, but I couldn't stop listening once I heard a loud, painful smack. Following the hit, a girl whaled out, "Jordan! I'm sorry," her voice was filled with agony.

I bit my lip and tried to walk away from the scene. I didn't want to put myself in between them. I knew of Jordan. He was a gangly sized jock with thick bands of muscle wrapped around his biceps. I knew if I got into this fight she wouldn't have been the only one with a bruise on her face.

"I don't care if you are! You are an embarrassment. How do your parents even look at you know you are a whore?" His words even bruised my ego. I couldn't bring myself to move from this position, or even try to come out of my hiding space to help her. However, I didn't want anything to come to harm to this girl.

I looked around the corner, sneakily, and witnessed for myself Jordan ramming his size fourteen foot in the side of Ashley Harm's ribcage. My mouth gaped as I realized that was his pregnant girlfriend. She was curled up into a ball next to metal lockers, protecting her swollen eight-month round stomach.

Tears welled up into my eyes as each kick looked as if it were in slow motion. His foot targeted for her abdomen, kicking her square in the center of her stomach. My throat had tightened as her shrieks became sheer horror. "Jordan, stop! Think about the baby," she pleads.

"Don't tell me what to do, bitch." He seemed to adore her agony. The thought of someone being ken of someone else's discomfort sickened me. It apparently did someone else too, because a boy fled out of the woman's bathroom. He was skinny but muscular, his hair was in a faux hawk cut, and it was a jet black. He wore a wife-beater, which exposed part of his back and arms, and cargo pants. The exposed skin showed the black ink of his tattoo.

I continued to watch as he pulled Jordan off of Ashley. His fist easily collided with Jordan's face, and I took that as my chance to help Ashley.

"No, what's wrong with you asshole!" the guy asked Jordan as he struck his fist back into Jordan's face. Jordan quickly got up to speed on what was happening and joined into the fight with the boy with the tattoos.

I rushed over to Ashley's side and kneeled down seeing the progressing bruise on her cheek. "Ashley, you don't know me, but I need you to trust me."

Her eyelids fluttered slowly opening and closing; she was struggling on keeping herself from falling unconscious. Ashley's eyes looked up to me and then down to her stomach, placing a hand on it, she muttered, "My baby."

"Yeah, I know, I'm going to help you," I whispered hoping not for Jordan to see us not escape. I placed one of her arms around my neck helping her get into a sitting position. She cried out in pain digging her nails into my tender shoulder. "Come on," I murmured into her ear. She mumbled curse words into the air and raised one knee in a kneeling point to completely stand. She managed to get up without moaning in torture. She kept her eyes closed when we started to walk toward the exit. When we hit the corner I look back and I was mortified at a puddle of blood trailing behind us. Ashley wasn't bleeding from her injuries.