Alarm

I remember the unmistakable feeling of seeing something we weren't supposed to, a fugitive nightmare cut loose into the night, spilling itself over black asphalt. We peered out through the darkened window down into the street. Thirty men, maybe sixty, had gathered outside, all of them shouting and brandishing weapons. Some held bats and rusted pipes, others had wrapped thick branches in barbed wire. A few of them clutched bricks and stamped their feet. We could hear glass breaking somewhere in the distance, just out of view. Car alarms whooped and screamed, banshees, their flickering lights pulsed like wicked metronomes for the mayhem.

"My knees hurt," she said. "How much longer?"

"I don't know," I told her.

Standing in front of the mob there was a man who wore a mask. It was orange and had a strange insignia drawn on the front. At his feet, painted in argent light from the lamp overhead, was a young girl, no older than 12.  Her hands were tied, mouth gagged. Terror had rendered her still and doe-eyed. and I could see her face was swollen and waterworn with tears. Dried snot and mucus bubbled around her nose, her hair held tight to her head all wet with sweat and worry.

"Bahaadur! Where is all your courage now?! This girl's death is blood on your hands," the man wearing the mask yelled, revealing something sharp and shining.

"Oh my god, he's really going to do it," she said clutching my arm. "Where are the police? Why aren't the police coming?"

We shifted our weight to drop a bit lower, to avoid being seen.

"Bahaadur! Are you ready for a reckoning?" the man outside continued.

I couldn't think. My mind was lost inside a labyrinth made of dead-ends and one-way streets. I couldn't explain to her why the cops wouldn't come, how no one would. I could tell by his voice who the man outside was; that's when I knew the young girl's life was irretrievably lost. I couldn't stop my hands from trembling nor hide my obvious discomfort. My blood ran cold and I shivered dreadfully. I could hear my ice-cube heart crack and pop in my chest.

The orange-faced man grabbed the young girl by her matted hair and sternly pulled her head back. Smiling, he pulled her hair aside, revealing a thin, pale neck.

"If you won't listen to me Bahaadur, maybe you will listen to her," the man said. "You will get to listen to her tell you how it feels to die."

He pulled the gag from the girls mouth and she screamed out: Papaa.