"Welly, welly, well my little sister, what brings you to my neck of the woods?" I recognised the voice straight away. I spun on my heel in the opposite direction to where I was heading to find no other than Alex DeLarge striding his way over to me, a smug grin plastered on his face with one of his hands firmly gripping his Britva leaving behind his audience of Droogs who were cackling in the distance. I stepped forward. My head held high despite the rise in stomach bile that was tickling the back of my throat. I was scared and could you blame me? I was confronting a rival gang. A gang that had gained notoriety from perverse acts of extreme violence and rape and here I was, alone with nothing but the switch blade in pocket.
I was actually thankful no-one thought to alert my brother Jack of my plans for the evening because despite being in his fragile state, I still wouldn't give it a second thought that he'd have sent someone to watch over me if he had known and that's something I just didn't need right now. I needed to do this one thing on my own… for Jack. Having one of his thuggish brutes keeping watch over me would have given Alex and his gang something to laugh about for days; I needed them to take me seriously, to see me as a threat not a joke.. But even with that in my mind I still couldn't deny that maybe my stubborn attitude would get the better of me and that's why I was scared. But I had to this; I had to do this for Jack.
Jack and I had been orphaned by our alcoholic mother since we were young and since we had no father we were taken straight into care. We were pin-balled from every type of family you could think of but the outcome was always the same, sent packing straight to the dumping ground. The last couple that had taken us into their humble of ode weren't impressed by either of mine or Jack's lack of respect and threw us out onto the streets. Bit harsh you might think but I do believe the fact that my seventeen year old brother at that time had held a knife to her throat would have anticipated a reaction like that. Being on the streets wasn't as daunting as it sounded though; we made them into our playground. We even ran into other tear away teens that eventually joined us and became our gang members. We stole from the rich and attacked the foolish but not once did we get caught; I guess that's where our arrogance came from. We were doing well until the day we crossed paths with the infamous Alex DeLarge and his gang. Instead of being an actual human being and giving us a fair warning that the next time this was to happen there would be blood shed, he gave his gang a shrill whistle and that was that. The only reason I got out of it without a scratch on me was because I had managed to get out of the way just in time to find a place to hide. Instead of being a one off, they ended up scrapping like this quite a lot, both trying to prove to the other rivalling gang that they were superior.
"Your neck of the woods?" I scoffed. "You see I would have given it thought if I hadn't been in the hospital with Jack all day." Sarcasm dripped from my words and I'm sure my seething expression hadn't gone unnoticed because it had elicited a blatant grin from him.
"Now, now my malenky friend. Why the baddiwad exterior? Pretty little devotchkas such as yourself are meant to be sweetness and light not bitter and dark." He smiled. As he strode towards me, still keeping a fair bit of distance between us I could feel his eyes lingering on my face. "Now tell me, how is old Jackie Boy?"
My cheeks flushed red with anger. Hospitalizing my brother over senseless violence was one thing, but to brag about it, even more so to my face, was another.
The night it happened (last night to be exact) I was sat in the Duke of New York on Amis Avenue, supping casually on my half empty veteran (a rum and cherry brandy mixed drink) silently to myself. I couldn't for the life of me understand what was taking Jack so long. Usually he was back, a bit roughed up from the fight but able to carry on as normal by around 10pm and now it was going on 11.30pm. I tried to not let it worry me, Jack was a big bruiser and he was clearly able to take care of himself but I couldn't help but feeling a little worried something had gone wrong. I thought to myself that if he hadn't come back by the time I finished my drink, I would go back to the snug and go looking for him.
There were a couple of young men not so much older than me stood at the bar, they kept looking and winking over at me on my lonesome. I gave them a little tease, slowing bringing the candied cherry that floated carelessly in my drink to my red lips; Then, giving them a flirty little smile, I would gently kiss the cherry before pulling it away from its stalk with my teeth. Men were so stupid and easy to manipulate. They struck me as the type that had just finished school and thought the world owed them something because they made something of themselves, thinking that because they took pride in their appearance it would balance out the lack of personality and automatically make them irresistible to us girlies. How foolish I thought. They grinned proudly, obviously thinking they had triumphed.
I gulped the remains of my veteran before throwing on my tattered black blazer over my stained white cotton button up blouse. The tie that hung loosely around my neck was burgundy in colour and covered in graffiti which rested just near the waistline of my red tartan skirt that was perhaps a little too short. That was our 'uniform', our dress code to separate us from the rest. It was an ironic statement, who would ever suspect innocent school kids of such terrible crimes? The outfit looked fairly innocent until you came to my footwear, I wore big stocky black boots what all the boys wore. These had the benefit of cracking ribs when in fights with other girls or even the elderly. I slid out of my seat and purposely strutted past the boys at the bar, making sure my to push my assets out ever so slightly, I just knew exactly how to get a male's pulse racing. I was actually contemplating even leaving with one, no not to sleep with him of course, well even if he thought so. But to get him somewhere private and knick every penny he had but of course I had other things on my mind, bigger priorities. Outside I passed a couple of middle aged women puffing away eagerly on their cigarettes as I passed through the cloud of second-hand smoke. My boots made a 'clunking' noise with each step I took, a very intimidating sound in any other situation but never the less I continued down the street hoping that somewhere on my way, I would bump into Jack and everything would be okay but that was only wishful thinking. By the time I found Jack, he was lying unconscious in a puddle of his own blood. He had a fractured cheek bone, broken arm and there was a deep laceration on his chest where I'm assuming Alex's knife penetrated the flesh. I was speechless, tears dripped down my face as I wept beside my brothers unconscious body until I eventually could pull away to go and phone for an ambulance at a near by phone box.
