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Jan 1, 2018
7 min read

BEAT YOU DOWN: COLLIDER RIDERS MC#1 BY P.MATTERN “I CAME FROM THE WRONG SIDE OF THE TRACKS, BUT I’M THE BAD BOY EVERY GIRL WANTS TO RIDE.” ALL I WANT TO DO IS FIND MY BABY SISTER WHO WAS ABDUCTED AT 13 BY A GANG IN OUR NEIGHBORHOOD. SINCE SHE WAS RIPPED OUT OF MY LIFE I VOWED NOT TO EVER LOVE ANYONE AGAIN. THEN I MET TRILBY AND EVERYTHING CHANGED. CHAPTER ONE-THE END

I’m in the alleyway again, the one on the way home from school. I was different then. My hair was shorter and I still believed that things can change and that not all people were bad. Life had a routine and even though my home life was shit I had a group of teachers at my High School that gave me a lot of support and encouragement. I was good at sports, especially track and field, and the standardized testing showed academic potential. For some reason math had always come easy for me, and I had won some Mathalete awards I always told Skye to wait for me to walk her home from the Junior High. It was a short walk, but since we lived in East Chicago where there has always been a lot of gang activity, it wouldn’t have been safe for her to walk home even if we’d lived right behind the school. She was pretty and innocent, and neither one of those last very long on the grimy streets of our town. I don’t even think she had kissed a boy yet, although she liked one boy in her class. I always teased her about liking boys by telling her I would beat up any boy that tried to date her. She always told me that she would only date boys bigger than me then, so they could beat me up instead. It had seemed to be a regular day, nothing unusual. I had stopped in front of the drug store on the way to get her, put a quarter in and a little plastic container with a giant pink and blue swirled gumball rolled out. We never got many treats, the way our mom and stepfather drank there was barely money for peanut butter and bread, so as I tucked it away in the pocket of my worn jean jacket I felt good because I knew she would like it. When I reached her red brick fronted school she was standing in the front, talking to two other kids who were waiting for a ride. One was a boy with longish blonde hair who was a little taller than her, and one was a Hispanic girl that I recognized as Tia, one of her good friends at the Junior High School. Skye had her back to me, but the boy she was talking with was facing my way and I saw him say something to her. She turned around briefly to wave to me, picked her Hello Kitty backpack up off the ground , exchanged a hug with Tia who waved at me too and then came walking over to the sidewalk kind of skipping. I smiled down at her. She had roses in her cheeks. “Is that the boy I need to beat up?” I teased her, ”Because I think I can take him!” She bumped into me hard from the side on purpose, making me stumble off the sidewalk. “That is Christoff,” she told me,”I like him a lot and he likes me too, so get used to it. I think he is going to ask me on a movie date soon. We both love horror and there is a really cool adaptation of an M. Mattern novel coming out soon, I think it’s called ‘The Spiral’.” I was kind of taken aback. “You can’t go on a date!” I told her,” How old is your boyfriend? Twelve? How are you going to get to the Multiplex Theatres? Is he going to give you a ride on his tricycle?” Skye reached over as we were walking and tried to step on my foot hard, but I managed to jump away in time to avoid getting stomped on. “Obviously you know nothing of young love,” she told me, trying not to laugh, ”It is a tender thing, a once in a lifetime experience. I’m sure you’ve been too busy to take notice but true love does exist, and when it finally taps you on the shoulder, you won’t be able to resist!” Something about what she said registered, although I was inclined to resist taking love advice from my 13 year old sister. I knew a lot of girls at school that either made eyes at me as they were tossing back their long hair, or came up to me to congratulate me on a game, accidently rubbing up against me. They always had hungry eyes, as if they wanted a piece of me, and though being near them gave me a woody I somehow resisted. I wanted to have sex, but I didn’t want a girlfriend, and that is not something most girls would understand or put up with. I knew this, and so I didn’t even try. Fortunately between my after school jobs, trying to keep my grades up and running track I had no spare time to speak of so it wasn’t as much as an issue as you might guess. The fact that we had that discussion on that particular day would come back to haunt me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. We kept walking, and I can’t remember what we talked about after that, probably schoolwork or something. Skye seemed to have a lot more homework than I did at her age. I was thinking it would be nice if Mom was at work when we got home. I hated it when we got home and found her and our step dad fighting. I had always been big and strong for my age, and I could pull them apart. My stepdad was afraid to hit my mom after the time I gave him a black eye when I was 13 and came home and caught him whaling on her. Nowadays when they argued you could see him shoot a look my way, as if remembering that I was stronger than him. The last few blocks before we reached home seemed the longest. The wind had suddenly picked up and the sky above our heads had darkened. I glanced over at Skye, just chatting away about one of her teachers and seemingly oblivious to the weather. I had on a jacket, but all she was wearing was a thin sweater and if the rain came pouring down I didn’t want her to get wet. “Short cut,” I told her, tugging her by the elbow into a nearby alleyway that would cut at least 5 minutes off our trek home. She followed my lead without hesitation. The sky was getting darker now and I could feel the first big drops of rain starting to come down. I figured with the short cut we were taking we would make it home just in time. The wind was blowing our hair into our eyes, and kicking up some of the oddly sandy grime in the alleyway between two apartment buildings. It had gotten darker. We were at the halfway mark when I looked up and noticed 4 or 5 figures congregated at the end of the alleyway. In Hammond, a bunch of guys blocking your way at the end of an alley is never, ever a good thing. If you’re lucky they might let you pass with an insult to you and your mother. Usually they will shake you down for whatever money you happen to have on you. If you’re unlucky they will beat the ever loving shit out of you and leave you for dead. I was weighing my options as I yanked Skye closer to my side. She had seen them too, and had stopped talking. They approached silently, like a pack of feral cats. I recognized their gang insignia as the Kings of Corruption—they were rumored to have ties with organized crime. I instinctively shoved Skye behind me. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I was wishing I had a weapon of some sort, but of course those weren’t allowed in school. “You can go on home Preppie Boy, we want to see what you got behind your back there,” the guy at the center of the group told me. We were both tall, over 6 feet, but he had a build like a WWF fighter. I figured he outweighed me by 50 pounds. “I don’t have any money,” I told him, “Sorry about that. I guess today isn’t your lucky day, because you won’t be talking to my sister either. Not if I have anything to say about it!” I sounded tough, but my heart was still beating out of my chest. I couldn’t see any traffic behind them for some reason. The streets were oddly deserted, I guess because of the impending rain. It didn’t seem like hollering would do any good, especially with the wind picking up. “Oh is that right?” the leader said,” You got a pretty mouth boy. How ‘bout you give me a blow job while your sister watches. She not too young to learn the skills she gonna need in the future, right?” And just like that it was on. I charged the leader, kicking at his bodyguards with my boots. I got one in the solar plexus and he tripped backwards. In my peripheral vision I saw Skye go running past and thought,’ good girl!’ The heavy leader guy tried a knockout punch to my head. I was so distracted by all of them descending upon me at once I only partially blocked it, and it struck my jaw painfully. I went for his right eye and felt satisfaction as my punch landed. Then something struck me from behind, and that was the last I knew. I woke up some time later coughing and hacking on the rain and blood pouring down the back of my throat. My head was pounding and the thunder up above me was making it worse. My sides hurt, as if I’d been kicked, and one of my wrists gave out on my first attempt to get up. I thought it might be sprained. Worst of all Skye was nowhere in sight. ...copyright by p.mattern 2017 alll rights reserved.