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There was a car on fire. The smoke billowed up and away, and almost took Jenny’s attention for a moment too long. If she’d paid attention to the smoke for another second, she would have been tackled, pushed to the ground by a homeless man. He was hoping to grab her, to hold on until the end of the riot, until he had dragged her home, until she had no hope and no rights and none of the things her life had summed up to this moment. At least, that’s what she feared. Jenny ran and stopped, ran and stopped. She wanted to get through it best she could, but she could not be helped against witnessing the scene. The riot. The world, changing.
Only 24 hours before, Jenny had sat in her desk at work, her eyes glazing over the details in a meticulous story about arduous politics. Her mind couldn’t have been further from what she should have been focusing on. In hindsight, in the hindsight of every woman and woman-respecting man in the country, the thing to do yesterday was flee the country. But hindsight was only one of the luxuries being fought for in the streets. To Jenny’s eye, though, it wasn’t just women fighting the eager men who wholeheartedly agreed with Obama’s decree. To Jenny’s eye, women fought other women, because some of them believed it, too. To Jenny’s eye, men fought men, as some wanted to protect the world they had against the world as it was evidently going to be. But then again, these battles caught Jenny’s eye in a certain way.
She wasn’t at all sure exactly what was going on, who was fighting who, and how it would all turn out. The only thing she knew was that she needed to get to her friend’s apartment. She needed to hole up for a while, needed to wait the whole bloody thing out.
Denise didn’t live far away, but escaping the clutches of everyone around her proved difficult. On two separate occasions she had kicked off the pilfering hands of untrustworthy men. She didn’t know if they wanted to rape her or protect her from the madness, but she wasn’t taking her chances.
Jenny watched a horrifying scene as she ran. To her left was a corner convenience store, and a woman was trying to escape. All Jenny could see was hands, pairs and pairs of hands, reaching out from inside the store, pulling the poor woman back in. Her clothes in taters, her face filled with nothing but fear, the woman was helpless to escape the maw of uncaring hands.
Jenny cried at the sight of it all. She cried and ran, her boots making no noise against the cacophony of pain, suffering, and resistance. She could see Denise’s apartment complex. Just a few steps away from the door.
A coarse male hand pulled at her hair, holding tight to the ponytail. He pulled her entire body back with just his fist, and she was turned to face him. “Bagged another one, gents!” He proclaimed, smiling a crooked, evil smile, staring at her tits and tightening his grip. He had apparently said this to no one, as nobody replied until a second later, when a small chorus of men in the surrounding area pumped their fists and yelled “Whoo!”
“No!” Jenny screamed. She was so close to safety. The fist tightened around her hair, and it hurt like hell. The man eyed her up and down. He was gruff, ugly, tall and stalky and strong enough to hold her without much of a fight. His eyes were drunken. His other hand easily fought away her attempts at escape. He made little effort to keep her in check.
Jenny began to kick. She tried to land a good shot to the man’s balls, but she could barely reach. His grip was so solid, she began to think beyond fight or flight to the eventuality that maybe he had her, that she was his now to do with what he wanted. She was taken, trapped, and this nightmare would officially begin.
Which is exactly why she was so surprised when his perverted gaze turned to one of pained shock, when his grip loosened and let go, and when his torso curled downward, his body falling to the cement sidewalk. One moment he was seconds from raping her, and another he was dead. Jenny saw the gunshot wound on his back, the smoke from the heat of it. She looked up and saw a woman brandishing a large silver gun. She wore a police uniform and she looked dead serious.
“Run,” she said. “I’ll take care of them.”
Jenny was in shock and could barely move. “Thank...thank…” She muttered.
“Go!!!” The cop screamed. “Get to somewhere safe!”
Jenny obeyed, running up the stairs to Denise’s apartment. The front door of the building had been busted through, but there was nobody in the stairs. She climbed to the third floor and entered the hallway.
Jenny quietly walked toward the hallway, hoping to get to the door without any other altercations. To her surprise, she was in front of Denise’s door before she knew it. She knocked, quietly. She heard no response. On the other end, she could hear breathing, perhaps. Or maybe that was just her own sharp, short breaths.
After knocking twice more and waiting, she decided to do try the knob. The door opened. It creaked, really. At first she heard nothing, and then a small muffle. She walked through the entranceway and into the living room, where she saw her best friend Denise. Jenny gasped at her condition. Tied to a chair by the legs, her arms tied behind her in a way Jenny couldn’t see, gagged with what looked like underwear. Her clothes were ripped, and Jenny could see one of Denise’s breasts. Her head was down, and she breathed slowly through her gagged mouth.
“Oh my God, Denise!” Jenny exclaimed. “What’s happened to you?”
Denise raised her head. Her eyes looked tired, but her expression was one of relief, as if whatever had transpired was over now that Jenny had appeared. She would be saved, and everything would be all right.
Suddenly, however, her eyes widened, and she tried to scream through the muffling of her gag. She tried to jump up and down in her chair. Jenny asked “What is it?” but before she could get it all out, a black hood wrapped around her head. Strong, sturdy hands wrapped around her neck. She couldn’t fight back. Her nails had no effect. She kicked nothing but open air. Within seconds she couldn’t think straight, and only seconds after that she couldn’t breathe. In less than a minute, Jenny was on the ground, her assailant standing over her. He looked towards Denise and smiled. Denise looked down at her friend, and knew that nothing would ever be okay ever again.
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