Super Meals: Part Nine

Walter woke up to someone kicking him in the shoulder.

“Get up, fucker, this our park!” said the kicker.

He opened one eye and noticed that it was dark. He had no idea how long he’d been lying there, it could have been several hours, or it could have been a few minutes.

(It had only been about an hour, but Walter didn’t have a watch and had lost all track of time in all the excitement over his temporary super strength)

The second thing Walter noticed after taking in the fact that it was fully nighttime, was that there wasn’t just one kicker, but several. They were all backlit from the streetlights surrounding the park and he couldn’t make out any faces, but the voice sounded young to him.

Someone else kicked him, saying “Hey! J’oo hear what my boy jus’ said? Why don’ you get da fuck up ‘fore I kick you some more?”

Walter roused himself, rolling onto his side and trying to stand up, but this was made much more difficult by the fact that his foot was still tangled up in the swings. The group of toughs let him extract himself and stand up before all taking a step closer and closing a circle around him.

Walter rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and tried to shake himself awake, but he didn’t want to risk antagonizing the group surrounding him by even accidentally bumping into one of them. Instead he just asked “What can I do for you gentlemen?”

The one who had kicked him first spoke up, saying “Well, it’s like this. This here is our park when the streetlights come on, and you’re here when you shouldn’t be. So howsabout you give us some money, we’ll call it rent, and then we’ll run your ass outta here and you don’t come back? Sound like a deal, brudder?”

Walter wasn’t a fighter by any means. He wasn’t a hero, either. He was painfully average.

He was also broke.

At least, he didn’t have any cash on him, and he doubted that the goons harassing him carried credit card readers.

(He would have been surprised to find out that two of them did, in fact, have mobile card readers for their phones, but the topic never came up)

So instead, he said “Look, guys, I don’t have any money on me. Sorry. How about you let me have this one and I’ll never let it happen again. I’ll even come back with cash later!”

They all laughed at this, which made Walter laugh and think that he was going to get away with it. He was already looking forward to spinning this into a tale to tell his friends at the bar (he’d sound cooler when he told it later, though), but then the guy who kicked him the second time punched him in the kidney and he collapsed.

The group all took a step back to allow him to fall to his knees, and when he reached out to try and help himself up again, they kicked his hands out from under him and he fell again.

“Y’see, chief, we don’t trust you. Guys like you have a tendency to lie to guys like us, so you’ll unnerstan’ if we don’t take you at your word. How ‘bout we just take your clothes, instead?”

The group chuckled at this, but the mirth was gone now, and it sounded to Walter more like the noise a cat would make when it had a mouse trapped under its paws.

He felt a knot in his stomach, and he thought maybe he could make a fight of it. He ripped his car door off just a few hours ago, after all. Maybe there was something left in the tank?

Walter swung blindly, hoping to catch one of the goons off-guard, but he didn’t know anything about fighting and he missed.

A lot.

Like, the guy he swung at didn’t even realize that Walter had swung at him until Walter had fallen over and his face hit the dirt. But even though Walter missed, the goon didn’t like being swung at, so while the rest of the little gang started laughing harder, he pulled a switchblade from his pocket, flicked it open, and pressed the flat of the blade against the back of Walter’s neck.

“Bitch, you crazy? I oughta scab you for even thinkin’ ‘bout swingin’ on me.” He traced the blade around the side of Walter’s face. “Maybe I put my initials on your face so you remember you don’t do that no more.”

The click of the gun cocking was surprisingly loud. Probably because when you hear that click, suddenly nothing else in the world matters and it demands your whole attention. Everybody froze except the guy with the knife, he had stood straight up and put his hands in front of himself.

Behind him, a woman’s voice said “Surprise, boys, it’s the police.”