The Night Vigilante

XIV. Cole

         Cole

            It’s the same dream over and over again.

            It always starts the same, and it always ends the same.

            Every time though, no matter how often it replays over and over again, I can never save her and I can never wake up in time.

            It starts out with her wide eyes staring back at me, ushering me high up the tree when there’s one sharp sounding snap and then-

            She’s falling.

            She’s falling and reaching for me and I am diving forward, reaching for her but all I can see is the sheer panic in her face and the sheer horror in my face reflected off of her eyes before I instinctively grab onto the rope holding her.

            There’s one second of impact when the rope tightens and there’s a snap before she hits the ground.

            The snap of her neck breaking.

~*~

            He lunges forward but I know the drill. Punch, grab twist and duck.

            He hits the ground and I turn to knock out the feet of the next man, latching onto his neck and pulling hard so he hits the ground.

            There’s a blow to my face but I turn around, grabbing onto the other mans face and wrapping my arm around his neck.

            Down. Down. Down.

            I punch for his adam’s apple, the half-strangled sound he emits slightly satisfying.

            My blood boils in my veins, the only image I can see behind my lids is her broken body on the ground, the only sound I can hear the crack of her bones.

            Someone-out of the five attacking me- punches me in the nose hard enough for me to feel the blood but I ignore it, grabbing him round the head and slamming it hard onto my knee.

            Spinning around, I grab onto the other man’s arm, twisting hard enough to hear the snap of a bone and his scream of pain and by the time everything is still enough for me to look around and see them all on the ground, I’m breathing hard, my knuckles bleeding.

            Six bodies lie on the dirty asphalt of the alleyway, the stench of rotting trash pungent.

            Behind me, cars continue to fly by, oblivious to the fight that just went down and for some reason, I wish someone could see this-witness that I wasn’t the bad guy.

            I walk a few steps forward, stepping on the hand of the man trying to reach for his knife.

            I dig the toe of my shoe harder into his foot and he groans, trying to retract his hand as I crouch down beside his head, reaching for the bag behind him.

            “If I catch you again, you’re going to die,” I say lowly, looking him in the eye.

            I can see my masked- reflection in the pupils of his eyes, his face slack with horror as he nods, his face scraping against the floor.

            He instigated the fight I remind myself when I stand up, swinging the bag over my back and walking away.

            I jump onto the dumpster top, latching onto the metal stairs and bringing them down before climbing to the fifteenth floor and dropping the bag of stolen belongings back into the room, the window still open from the attempted stealing.

            Stepping back, there’s a rustle of movement behind the chair and I freeze, poised for whatever hiding to come springing out; instead, a little boy peers around the seat, his eyes wide.

            All around me, the sound of police sirens and bustling city life continue behind me and for a brief second, I wish I could take this little boy away from here, to protect him from the city but I can’t.

            “Are you the superhero my mama talks about?” he whispers quietly, his wide eyes brimmed with innocence, just like hers.

            Bending lower, my head brushing the top of the window, I smile gently at him and nod, wanting myself to believe that his mother really did tell him that I was the hero and not the villain.

            “Make sure you give this back to her,” I tell him, handing him the bag where a miscellaneous bundle of jewelry and cash is inside. “The bad guys are gone.”

            He tentatively leaves the safety of the chair, approaching me carefully to take the bag clumsily into his hands.

            “Thank you,” he says, his voice riddled with a six year old lisp.

            Ruffling his hair, I lean back and stand up, holding up my finger to my lips to tell him to stay quiet about this.

            And when he nods, I am already gone.

~*~

A/N- (next chapter is up)