Gang Wars

Bump in the Night

"'Tis more noble to forgive, and more manly to despise, than to revenge an Injury."

- Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard (1752)

New York City, New York

September 19, 2016

Third Person POV

Barbara E. Weeks came home on the evening of September 19, 2016. It was a cool, September night, the sun had just gone down, and everybody was getting ready for a good night's sleep after a long day at work, or school, or whatever people did after classes in their night life. 

Barbara was really tired: she'd spent the entire day with a study group, cramming her butt off for a chemistry test she had the next day. It was long and exhausting work, and she decided that she needed some time to unwind, and a good night's sleep.

She would get back to it in the morning.

She kicked her shoes off and dropped her backpack and purse off on a couch in the living room of her apartment, before heading to the powder room.

It was then that the hooded intruder decided to make his move.

Emerging from the dark corner of the room, the hooded intruder slowly slinked through the dark corner of the room, and followed her, tiptoeing on the wooden floorboard. In his left hand, he was clutching a plastic bag. 

In the powder room, Barbara showered, brushed her teeth, and cleaned her face. She checked once, twice, thrice-at least four times. She wanted to make sure her face was spotless when she went to bed that night, thanks to a rather obsessive compulsive desire to go to bed as clean as possible. She couldn't stand to go to bed smelling awful; it was something she inherited from her mother, who was every bit of a germaphobe as she was. 

She combed her hair, looked in the mirror one last time to see if she'd missed anything, and then walked to her bedroom.  

That was when she saw the intruder with the plastic bag make his move from directly behind her.

However, unbeknownst to both of them, a third party member had also entered the residence.

Someone who had seen the malicious intent behind the intruder's break-in and was determined to stop it by any means necessary.

New York City, New York

September 19, 2016

 Marcus N. Seal

The hooded man had been seen entering the residence at around 6:45 PM that night, having apparently figured out when Barbara was going to be home. I got to the residence at around 6:40, five minutes earlier, and was about to make an important phone call to my friend Emmett, when I saw the hooded man breaking in. The minute I saw him entering the residence with a plastic bag in his hand, I immediately became suspicious: that bag was much too small to be stealing things with. I thought he was going to rob Barbara's residence when she was away.

But once I saw him waiting in a corner of the apartment, and then sneaking up on Barbara while she was walking to the shower room, and then to her bedroom, I immediately realized what was really happening.

This wasn't a burglary: this was murder!

I lived my whole life believing if one sees something, they should say something. Not me. Saying something doesn't always work out, because it could be too late. You could witness a robbery, and the guy could escape before the cops could get there. You could witness a murder, and the murder victim would be dead before the cops could even catch the guy, let alone save the murder victim's life. 

As I saw the attacker approach, I switched my watch to stopwatch mode, and started the timer.

Right as the assailant slammed the plastic bag over Barbara's head.

It was on.

The good thing is, I'm pretty good at staying silent; I'd mastered the art of tiptoeing and power walking quietly since I was a boy.

Thus explaining why the guy didn't even see me coming until I was upon him.

As the hooded assailant barreled into a small table behind him, I abruptly lunged at him and swung a right hook at the side of his head, where his ear was. 

He stumbled sideways, but still kept his grip on the bag over Barbara's head. Keeping his left hand on the bag, he tried attacking with his right fist. Unfortunately, he missed, firstly because he was still trying to maintain a grip on the bag over Barbara's head, and second because I was quick enough to dodge the blow. I reached behind me, then grabbed a bottle off of a nearby nightstand, and smashed it against his head, the glass shards flying everywhere. Frustratingly, he still clung to the bag. Worse still, the fact that he was wearing a hood meant he was protected from any glass injuries.

Well, any major ones, anyway.

With my teeth clenched, I threw the broken glass shard across the room, managing to slice open part of the man's ski mask and sending blood spurting. The man went down, holding his head, giving me an opportunity to grab his arm, yank it outwards and chop down on it, relishing the sound of bones snapping as he went down screaming.

Suddenly, another hooded and masked assailant appeared, probably the first man's accomplice, or backup guy in case this guy failed to do his job. He swung a left hook at me, but I quickly danced around him, and put him in a headlock, before throwing him to the floor, taking hold of his arm, and breaking it by smashing my knee into it really hard.

A third man ran out, eliciting a look of confusion from me: Was this some kind of death squad? Three guys just to kill one girl? 

Something wasn't right.

Thinking quickly, I kicked out, landing a shot to his groin, then downing him with a rapid neck-snapping maneuver. 

From behind another corner of the room, a fourth man appeared, also dressed the same as the other three: dark clothing, a hood pulled over his masked head. I frowned. Then I beckoned him forward. "Come here."

Before the guy could react, I delivered a series of rapid blows to his face, throat, and sternum, as I walked forward. He started to get up, but I grabbed him by the back of the head, and slammed it into a nearby glass table, effectively knocking him out cold.

I then stopped the stopwatch, looked at the final time, and grinned.

I'd incapacitated four assassins under 30 seconds. 

Only trouble now was, who were these people?

Hmph, that's a new record, I thought to myself as I looked at Barbara, who pulled the bag off her face and took three deep gasps of breath before looking at me. "Marcus?" She stuttered. "What...why...how did you...?"

I said nothing. I only looked at the dead guy, then at the three incapacitated goons writhing in pain on the floor.

I then grabbed the plastic bag from off the floor and looked at it, as if fascinated by it. "It's a cute trick, this weapon." I looked at the man who got punched in the sternum. "How long does it take for someone to die via suffocation?"

He just groaned in pain, unable to speak for a full minute.

Then he said, "What are you?"

"Just a guy who wants to do the right thing," I said, before slamming the sole of my shoe into the guy's head and knocking him out like the other guy.