6. Roy
I break into a sprint and tackle the gun wielder from behind, before he can notice me. We both go down and roll a few times, both trying to gain the upper hand. He fires the gun and although it completely misses, ricocheting off the concrete walls of a surrounding building, the noise momentary stuns and deafens me, allowing the gun guy to get the upper hand and roll on top of me. He whips his guns around and shoves his elbow into my throat and I choke as he clumsily reloads his gun.
Adrenaline surges through me and I shove him with all my might. It ends up being a bit too much might, as the force from my push sends him flying into a trashcan. But I have no time to ponder this show of strength, as I see him start to move.
"Ughh." He groans, before jumping up and running at me, firing his gun as he runs. Iron hot pain blades my shoulder and I stumble forward, meeting his arms he tackles me to the ground. His fist materialises in front of my face and BAM, with the pounding of a million pain drums, my vision blurs red. Howling with pain, I push my hands up and blast him away from me. His gun flies away from him in his arc, before he hits the wall with a rough thud.
I swear and wipe a palm-full of blood off my face, while more runs down my chin and drips to the ground. He yells something incomprehensible and runs for his gun, which is lying still on the cobblestone several metres away from both of us. Ignoring the white hot pain in my shoulder, I leap for it and cease it in my hand as I slide along the ground, grazing my knees as the rough ground rips through my jeans. I raise the gun with shaking hands and point it at the face of my attacker.
He freezes, and I slowly walk forward, my vision half blinded by blood.
"Get outta here!" I slur at him, and he takes off, like a startled rabbit, down between the buildings and into the darkness. I stand there, with the gun pointed into the shadows for a minute before I gather my wits to lower it. My hands shake and the gun drops to the ground, sploshing into my blood.
I then spin slowly on my heel and walk off, before the other guy even has a chance to overcome his shock.
"Wait!" he calls after me, "You're injured!" I hear him coming up behind me and I recoil away as he places a hand on my shoulder, luckily not the burning one.
"Ah!" He removes his hand straight away, jumping backwards as I turn back around. "You shocked me!"
I try not to laugh. Why it's so comically funny, I have no idea, but I chuckle anyway. My face is a blood geyser, my shoulder is on fire and I'm laughing?
The man I saved is a lot older than me, with greying black hair, at least in his mid-sixties. He has greying blue eyes and a kind, tight smile. He frowns at my injures, dismissing the electric shock.
"I must thank you, for saving me." I shrug, but he continues. "You need to go to the hospital."
The idea of the hospital scares me, and the idea of my hysterical mother scares me even more. I look down at my shirt, to find the front absolutely drenched with blood. Damn. I liked this shirt, too.
"Kid, your face is covered in blood."
"I guess he punched me really hard." I shrug.
"Come with me, back to my apartment. I'll patch you up, and drive you to the hospital if I have to." He walks in front of me and I follow, not seeing any other choice. Each step I take brings a new step of pain from my shoulder, and I wonder how bad it is. Did the bullet just skim it, or did it go right through?
Luckily, his apartment is only a building or too away, and he is lucky enough to live on the bottom. He leads me into his house, which smells faintly of cigarettes, and pushes me into a chair, before quickly returning with a towel and a damp facecloth.
"How much pain?" He asks, handing me the facecloth.
"My face stings..." I slur, "but my shoulder..."
"Here," he carefully places the towel over the back of the chair. "We better get your shirt off." He reaches to touch me again, but then recoils as straight as his fingers brush my skin.
"Oh, sorry." I mumble. "I'll stop that." I concentrate for a moment, trying to convince myself to not be so electric. I'm in too much pain to concentrate, and I have a distinct feeling that it isn't working. I try harder and bite my lip, turning it numb.
"Kid," he carefully grips the edge of the material and pulls it over my head. It must have worked, as he isn't recoiling away or complaining of electric shock. Either that, or he has a high pain tolerance. "Are you a super?" He asks. I wonder how he came to that conclusion, before realising that after someone shocks you too many times to blame random static electricity, it isn't really that hard to tell. I nod. "Villain?" He asks again, and I shake my head. He gives me a small smile, which is most definitely the most encouragement I've had so far on the choice of my allegiance.
"Your shoulder hasn't be directly hit, like say, bullet right through the middle, but..." He tenderly touches it, and I recoil away with the pain. Well, I recoil as far away as someone can while sitting down.
"But," I prompt, grinding my teeth together with pain.
"It's been badly skimmed. A two centimetre groove, all the way across." He smiles at me. "But I can fix it." My tempted reply is to sarcastically say 'oh can you?' and roll my eyes in frustration. I don't though, because that would be a snarky insult to his hospitality. "Okay kid," his friendly smile doesn't waver as he holds his palm over my shoulder. "This will only hurt for a second, okay?"
I bravely nod and clench the side of the chair as he places his hand on my shoulder. A blinding pain comes over me and I bit the side of my lip in a tremendous attempt to resist the impulse to scream it out. But the pain doesn't last for long and it is soon replaced with a gentle, numbing feeling. It becomes easier to lean back and relax in my seat. I breathe out a sigh in relief, as he removes his hand.
I tenderly touch my shoulder and grin, upon finding it no longer burning with white hot pain.
"You," I breathe in amazement.
"You're not the only super in the apartment." He winks at me and I grin, before using the damp facecloth to wipe the dried blood from my forehead. I wipe the blood from my shoulder and mop up any other spots I can find, before looking up at him in confusion.
"Hold on..." I glace up at him with a perplexed expression. "If you are a super, then why didn't you fight back when..." He winks and grins at me again, and I sigh in slight annoyance, before shrugging it off. Everybody has their reasons and secrets, I suppose.
He holds up my blood stained shirt and I eye it carefully. "This," he declares, "is ruined and has no further use." He balls it up and throws it into the rubbish bin. "Hold on. I have some of my son's old clothes somewhere." He walks off and I think they must be old clothes, if they were once his sons. He returns with a clean smelling button up shirt, which he throws at me. I slip it on in one fluid movement and thank him, which he shrugs off with a simple "least I can do, kiddo."
"The name's Timothy." I tell him. "But Tim for short."
"Roy." He shares with me. "Short for... Roy." We laugh. "Okay, kid. Do you need a ride home? It's the least I can do."
I smile and politely refuse. "It's only a few blocks from here. I can walk, but thank you anyway."
"No, it's getting dark." He smiles at me with the friendly smile of persistence and god dammit it kid, I'm getting my way and there's nothing you can do about it. I shrug and he throws the damp and slightly bloody towels into a laundry basket, before grabbing a set of keys from a small hook beside a simple wooden coat hanger.
He drops me off beside our shop and my mother gives me a stern scolding look as I open the door.
"You. You're late."
"Uh, yeah." I shrug. "I got side-tracked for a bit. Sorry, mum."
"Sorry?" She asks, before reaching for my hair. I flinch away, not wanting to give her a shock and therefore complicate the situation more than it needs to be. "Is that... dried blood in your hair?"
"What? No?" I give her a hopefully realistic look of confusion. "This is red paint..."
"Paint?" She asks, her voice sounding very much unconvinced.
"Yeah, paint." I nod reassuringly, the better to convince the both of us. "Josh and I had a paint fight."
"A paint fight..." Her voice trails off, and her face wears a perplexed expression. "And I suppose that explains why you're wearing a different shirt..."
"Yep," I answer, popping the 'p' with my lips.
She sighs, obviously giving up on my teenage ways. "Well, dinner is ready."
After dinner I head back to my bedroom, but not before tripping over a large black object in the doorway and hitting my head on my dresser. "Ow," I groan, holding my throbbing head while picking myself up and reaching down to grab the object. It's my old Darth Vader mask, one of those ones that change your voice when you wear it. Whatever it's doing lying on the floor instead of being messily stuffed wherever I last put it, I do not know. Actually, I do.
"Amy!" I call.
"What, mortal?" She yells back. I roll my eyes at the 'm' word.
"Were you in my room while I was out?"
"No." She sweetly replies, before I hear her bedroom door slam and the sound of some boy band waffling its way through the walls. I shut my own door and carefully place the mask on top of my over cluttered dresser. I tenderly touch my pounding head and sigh. Some type of healing superpower wouldn't be so useless right now. I groan again, before taking my shoes off, switching the light off and crawling into bed.
ns 15.158.61.12da2
