The Blood-Bird

Chapter 1: Do I look like Spider-Man to you?

"Christ, these nights are gonna get cold fast, I feel autumn picking up," Kyle whispered under his breath, sitting on a rooftop in west Brownsville Brooklyn, Cheese-Doodle dust layering his fingers. It was Sunday, Halloween; most kids were up at parties, but Kyle didn't party. He had a job to do.

He came up to the rooftop to feel vigilant, but he was anything but vigilant tonight. All that consumed his mind right now was asking Chrissy to the Fall-Ball, even if he didn't want to admit it. She was going to say no, he knew, but as if that mattered; he was going to try, that's what counted. It was refreshing for something else to consume his mind for once; it's been six months since it happened, and since then, it was all he could think about. But this, what he was out here doing, it started to chip away at the trauma. It started to tame the visualizations, the noises. The anger.

Crashhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!

The sound of glass shattering startled him, causing him to drop his bag of Cheese-Doodles off the New York City rooftop. He wiped his mouth with his arm, and began to pull his black mask down over his face.

"Show time, " he declared.

When he pulled down the mask, a sort of innocence escaped him. Rather, a sort of darkness came out from within him, a darkness he tries to suppress, but Kyle couldn't hide it; anyone could see it from that chilling look in his soft, brown eyes. He was angry.

He surveyed the brown-shaded Brooklyn streets, trying to pinpoint where that noise had come from. His eyes danced around the medium sized apartment complexes: they seemed concave, worn down like an old dog. It was dark, and hard to see; the only source of light came from a single dim street lamp.

"Dammit, where did..."

"STOPPPPPP!! GET OFF ME!!" Bingo. Kyle, not too high in the air, thought it safe to jump down.

---

In a cramped alleyway, off the corner of Chesser street, a drunken man pushes a small Latinx woman to the floor onto the shattered glass of a beer bottle. She cuts open her hand on the broken glass and begins to cry. The man is drunk, yes, but strong.

"If you don't stop screaming, I'll kill you, tease" he informs dryly. The lack of emotion in his voice terrifies the young woman, and she capitulates. His face is covered by a cheap plastic mask, however the smell of alcohol still protrudes out his mouth. They met at a Halloween party that night, from which he followed her home, cornering her in an alleyway. The man lowers himself to the floor, and begins to put his hands up the woman's T-Shirt...

The poised, sharp sound of glass breaking fills the quiet night air. The only street lamp around has suddenly turned dark. The man thinks this is good, and smiles. The woman is staring behind the man; it's hard to tell if she's imagining things in the night, out of desperation, out of fear, but she thinks she may see a man, dressed in all black, at the end of the alleyway...

"Get up, I'll say it once."

The rapist turns around, momentarily half standing.

"Listen, mind your own fuckin buisness or me.. I mean I...AHGGH!!" A small, self assured knife soars through the air and lands in his shoulder. Before the rapist can even open his eyes, shut from the pain, he is hurled over the masked-man's shoulder, hitting the ground so hard blood shoots out his mouth. The man in the mask turns toward the woman, firmly saying, "Run. Now." Petrified, however, she slowly moves herself backwards behind a sewer-green garbage can.

"I said mo... Fuck!" The masked-man yelps, falling to the ground. Stabbed in the leg, he thought, that's really not great. Almost as soon as Kyle hits the ground, he's on his feet once more, angry. The rapist drops the broken piece of glass he was using as a make-shift knife and begins to run.

Not that easy. You're not getting away that easy. He hurls another nail-file sized knife at the perpetrator, this time hitting his back, causing him to collapse to the ground.

"You fucking mother fu...!!!" It was over.

Kyle ripped the knife out of the man's back, rolled him over, and kneeled down. After taking off the man's Halloween mask, he begins to stare intently into his eyes. He thought how men like this think they can take everything from someone, how men like this took everything from him. Slowly, he drew the first knife from the man's shoulder, still looking into his eyes.

"Aghhh!! Please!!!" the rapist groaned. The knife was finally retrieved. "Ok, it's over," he murmured between tears and yelps, "justice served superhero, just bring me in."

Kyle almost laughed.

"Do I look like Spider-Man to you?" he questioned. "Well, I have far more interest in teaching you a lesson, than just bringing you in." With muggers, gangs, and drug dealers, Kyle was a little more light, a little less violent; but with rapists and murders, that darkness that he tries to hold back pours out of him like water from a faucet; still, even after the water is restrained once again, it still drips from him, the way blood drips from fists.

"Teach right on," he drunkenly retorted, coughing up blood, "I was no good in school... Oo! Ugh! Ah! Ah! Stop..! Please..!" It was as if Kyle's blood had acted in lieu of him. His fists spoke sentences, it was the only way to articulate his anger. A punch, then another, then another, a broken tooth, a broken jaw... not even God knows when he'll be satisfied.

The Latinx woman got up from behind the garbage can. "Thank... thank you for.. Please, it's over now... don't... it's... don't... don't kill him..." she could only meagerly wimper, standing behind a man in a mask and that man's victim.

After what seemed like hours, Kyle stopped, blood dripping from his hands.

"Call the cops, tell them to call an ambulance, he's breathing, but he's lost a lot of blood." He makes the sign of the cross, and limps out of the alley way. She was crying.