The Secrets That Iie Beneath

chapter 3:Standing and retaliating

Chapter 3

I force myself to take a deep breath and to swallow the lump in my throat. Ok, this isn’t what we planned but we can work with this. What the hell was I expecting, a passive group of drug abusing teenagers? I close my eyes for what feels like minutes and imagine what my body will do next. What my hands will hit first. Where my legs will do the most damage. Who should I stop first? Or, to re phrase, who would be stupid enough to attack me first?

Before I collect all my thoughts I hear the ruffle of a jacket and turn my body 90 degrees to the right to dodge the first attack.

I lift my leg to the height of my waist and swing it at the boy holding the steel. He quickly takes a few paces back; shocked by my force.  To my left I hear another ruffle and from the corner of my eye see a head. Less a second after my waist kick I use my left forearm to whack the guy in the neck. I push the useless body around, with my arm still thrust upon his pale skin, until I’m facing him. I make a flash and slightly ‘old school’ decision that never fails and hit him in the crotch. This unsurprisingly makes him double over in agony.

Without thinking my elbow drags itself behind me and whacks the young boy in the nose. When my arm releases it feels cold against the air; blood. Good, that’s good. How did I know he was there?

I punch the leader with a clenched fist. This should hurt more than it did but with the adrenaline rushing through my veins I don’t seem to notice. He, unlike the others, doesn’t move. Instead he blasts forward and hits me good in my rib cage. I feel the burn in my limbs and my eyes start to blur.

I grab the side of his neck and push it to the side. I then grab his upper thigh and throw him to the floor. He groans in pain, but before I have time to see if he gets up a fourth boy grabs my arm to keep me still. Stupid. I grab his wrist and turn it behind his back.

 I push him down until I’m squatting. I have to do a low side kick to brush of a boy, this makes me lose my balance enough to loosen my grip. I let go of the tall boy and take a step back.

I don’t see the man behind me and so I get a surprising kick in my lower back. I fly forward almost crushing the boy I pushed down. Bloody hell!

Without warning, they all huddle around me with anger and pain smothering their faces, including the one I almost crushed.

“Well, well, well.” One boy says “look who’s in trouble now.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out a small rectangular box. He places the stick into his mouth and lights it up.

The guy who had the knife clutches his stomach and whispers a few words into the leader’s ear. “Are you kidding me? Maybe she should have finished you off when she had the chance!” The guy replies.

“What? Got to go home to mummy?” I mock. My hands ache from the coarse floor and I have to keep shifting my weight from palm to palm as I look up at the smothering circle.

One of the lads kicks me in my side, hard, in an attempt to ‘shut my trap’ as they so expertly picked from their vocabulary.