Super?

And I Count My Sins

       It's been too long. I've spent most of the day just aimlessly biking around, waiting for an angel to come and bitch-slap me in the face or something. And to make it even better it's started to drizzle rain, and my bra and jean shorts are appropriately and uncomfortably soaked. I've managed to find the most stereotypical homeless hangout possible- I set up shop under the overhang of an old, closed-town cafe. It's in the rougher part of town, but still not as bad as where I was during my little skirmish with Crimson just a few days ago. The sky has turned a stormy grey, which I find rather suiting. I stash my (or rather, some random stranger's) bike in the boarded-up doorway, and set Delores free on the pavement. She stays close, winding herself through the weeds and around a tall sucker tree sprouting out of the ridiculously overgrown flower-box nearby.
       So. I'm homeless. That's new. This is fun. So fun. Can't you see how happy I am right now? ...Who am I kidding? I'm this close to having another psychotic breakdown like the mildly embarrassing one I had in Walmart. (Walmart of all places...)
       I curl up under the tattered overhang, wondering if I should find some newspapers or a cardboard box so I could fit the part more aptly. The cold, damp pavement soaks through to my skin and makes me shiver. The bandages across my ribs are unraveling slowly, just like my sanity. I don't know if I can deal with this. I just can't. But what else is there to do other than to tough it out? It's not like I have a whole lot of friends I can lean on, or rather- friends that I would like to lean on. Blame it on my pride or something, but I have a little tiny tiny issue with accepting help, if previous incidents weren't indication enough. I've always been able to function on my own, even if functioning counts as frequently sputtering out and dying slowly like my Camry. (Oh, how I wish I had my car at the moment... Sleeping in my car would be so much less pathetic and degrading than this.)
       "Is this because I didn't give my spare change to the homeless people outside of my apartment?" I ask the sky, as if it will give me an answer. Who knows. Maybe it will. The world, at the moment, is definitely screwed up enough for that.
       The sky still doesn't answer, but someone else does. A lolling British voice, male. He's coming down the street from me with a few of his drunken friends. They're chattering like starlings, with illegible jumbles of syllables that must make sense to them in their own special way. Great. I just love dealing with drunk guys. It's almost more fun than getting a root canal.
       "So I said, 'Mate, you may just have a problem,'" British Guy guffaws, and so do his pals. They're coming closer. I briefly wonder if I should cloak myself, but before I can come to a conclusion, they already catch sight of me. Super.
       "Looky what we have here," British-Guy's-friend leers, giving me a not-so-subtle once over. "She homeless? She's awful pretty to be out on the streets on her lonesome."
       "I bet we can find a way to keep her warm, am I right?" British Guy laughs. I don't like his laugh. I don't like his accent. I don't like the way he looks at me, like I'm something to be attained and slowly devoured.
       "Crawl back to hole you came from, assholes," I tell them flatly. I know it's the wrong thing to say, and sure enough, they all burst out in cheers.
       "She's a sassy little thing, ain't she?" Friend #1 sneers. That's when he looks down. And screams. "OhmyGodohmyGodit'saboaconstrictor!" He howls and jumps around like a bag of human Pop Rocks. Faithful Delores is hissing and arched at his feet, fangs bared. I don't think I've ever loved her more.
       "You bleeding idiot, it's just a snake," British Guy says in exasperation. He kicks Delores away like she's nothing more than a paper sack. She flies a few feet before landing coiled on the ground. I watch as she flees into the weeds. I can't exactly blame her.
       "You can't just kick Delores," I snap irritably, like that's the only thing that's wrong with this picture. All three turn to look at me with loose smirks on their smug faces.
       "I can kick more than just your weird little pet, love," he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively. What a creep. It doesn't help his image when he kneels down and grabs my thigh.
       "The last person to touch me like that ended up in the morgue," I tell him, my voice low. He doesn't seem to notice the way my eyes don't lie, or the fact that my hands are clenched into fists. He only sees the hastily-covered wounds and the messy blonde hair and the long-forgotten mascara bleeding from my eyelashes. He only sees a vulnerable girl.
       "Are you telling me you don't like this?" His hands creeps up even higher. I kick out at him, completely forgetting which leg it is I'm trying to kick. I scream at the top of my lungs as a fresh, roiling wave of pain assaults me. Well, at least British Guy isn't touching me anymore.
       "What's the matter, girly? Something wrong with your leg? That's ok, we like toys even if they're broken," Friend #2 speaks up. I can't form legible words in response because my leg is throbbing so badly. Instead a mushed string of curses falls from my lips as I curl in on myself.
       "Not so feisty anymore, now are we?" He has a wild look in his eyes. He reminds me of someone I've been trying to forget for years now. But as hard as I try I will always remember. The way he whispered in my ear. The way his hands were so cold, like he was lifeless. The way his rough hand clamped over my mouth and he laughed. I will never forget his laugh.
       "He's kind of cute," Eileen had whispered to us, her eyes dancing in excitement. "And he's totally checking you out, Maya," she added. We all exploded in a flurry of giggles, like schoolgirls. Because we were. Girls. Kids. Just 15. We decided to celebrate Eileen's sixteenth birthday by sneaking out and going on a road trip to Chicago just after she got her license. I had always wanted a taste of adventure, of rebellion. My parents made my life a living hell with their strict rules and the punishments that would follow if I broke those rules. I was ready to break free of their reins. I was 15 and I thought I owned the world. I thought I owned my world. I couldn't have been more wrong.
       "No way," I giggled back. I was blushing. I thought he was cute too, in a rugged sort of way. When I saw him glance back at me, I ducked my head and inched deeper into our booth, as if I could hide my face behind my empty milkshake glass.
       "You should go for it, girl. We didn't come all this way just for the milkshakes, if you know what I mean," Rosie told me. I had always admired Rosie. She had beautiful, jet-black hair and three piercings in each ear. I thought she was so cool. I thought a lot of things when I was 15 that I learned to be untrue in the harshest way.
       "Slip him your number when we walk out. Here, I have a pen. You can write it on your napkin," Eileen murmurs, her lips playing into a smile. I took the crappy Bic pen from her long fingers, and scribbled my number down on the napkin I had been using as a coaster.
       "Are you sure?" I asked them both. They squealed and made dismissive hand-flaps of encouragement. They didn't know what was about to transpire. They didn't know that what would happen next would change my life forever.
       "Get off of me!" I scream at British Guy and his friends, who are closing in on me like vultures to a carcass. With my good leg and my two working arms, I flail like I'm one of those Windy Men that are placed outside of car dealerships sometimes.
       "Jesus Christ!" Friend #1 yelps as I manage to connect with his nose. His blood pours onto the cement. So much blood.
       "You don't have to do this!" I sobbed when I realized what was happening. When I knew that he didn't just want to make out. When the car door locked. "Please! I have money-"
But he wouldn't listen. It was like he was deaf to my cries.
       "You want this too," his voice is scratchy in my ear, like an old cassette tape. "You gave me your number."
       When it was over, I thought that it was over. That I could go home. But he had another idea.
      "Nobody ever has to know," he said it to himself over and over and over again. He had a Swiss Army pocketknife with him. My brother had one of those. It was rather helpful. But I never knew it could be used to cut the skin of humans in addition to fish. I was 15. And I was just beginning to understand that I didn't know anything.
       "They won't! I promise!" I was begging. It was useless. He was willing to kill me, and he would have. I was waiting for it. I had closed my eyes and I was bracing myself for the blow. The feel of the blade cutting through my neck. Imagining my blood staining the carpet of the car. I was waiting for it all to be over. But it never happened.
       I looked back to see why he was so quiet and I saw a giant smoke-colored hand reaching through the car window and choking his fleshy throat. He was gagging and gasping for breath, his face as red as my eyes were after I had stopped crying.
I was screaming so loud I thought I would shatter the glass. Just like that, the hand disappeared. He dropped against the seats like he was a statue made of stone. I thought he was dead.
       After a few moments of silence, I reached over to feel for his pulse. Then his hand grabbed my face. I punched him blindly, and I didn't even realize that it had connected until he went flying backwards and sailed clean through the windshield and onto the grass outside of the car. He left a trail of broken glass behind him.
       I stared at my hands, uncomprehending. How was I able to do such a thing? I had never been strong. I had always been the pretty one. In Phys Ed, I was always chosen last, not because I was unpopular but because I was the weakest one in my grade. And I didn't want to chip my new coat of nail polish trying to shoot a basketball anyway.       
       Strong had never been associated with my name. So when I killed a man with a single punch, I knew something was wrong. But I never said a word. I gathered my clothes and I left his body in the grass where it belonged.
       "Holy f-" British Guy and his two cronies are cowering before me now. At first I don't quite understand why, but when I crane my head to the side I see it.
       It's Delores, if Delores was on steroids and had been blended with a black mamba. She rises above me, taller than the tallest NBA player ever in existence. Her exposed fangs are about as long as my pinky finger and they gleam a toothpaste-ad white.
       "Delores," I tell my snake calmly, "have you been juicing?"
       The boa doesn't answer me, of course, just winds her way closer to the would-be perpetrators. British Guy turns and flees, knocking his friends down in order to get away quicker. The front of Friend #1's jeans promptly grows a very obvious wet spot before he remembers to run, and Friend #2 screams and stumbles away like a headless chicken. When they're all out of sight, disappeared into the shambles of the street around us, I turn to Delores. My incidental illusion drops immediately and my normal little rosy boa curls up in my lap with a content little hiss.
       "Thanks, Del," I tell her softly.
       "What happened to you, Maya?" Eileen and Rosie are standing outside my door. "We're worried. You never come over anymore-"
       "I don't want to talk to you," I growl to them through the screen door. An orchestra of cicada humming and bullfrog croaking is the soundtrack behind the slow destruction of my childhood. I'm standing barefoot in my white nightgown like a ghost before my two former best friends who don't understand why I've shut them out. But they don't get it. And they never will. So I don't try to help them understand. I do what's easier: I shut the door and walk away.