Chapter Two

Swifty felt his insides melt slightly at the sounds of the carriage growing fainter in the distance, the mumbles of the boys laughter slowly fading into the music and the milk bottles. He let out a sigh of relief, watching the way his breath spun itself out in smoky music in the cool night air. Once again, he had managed to let his guard down. He wasn't a naive boy; he had tasted this city's reputation well enough, every punch to the mouth and every cigarette and every bite of the tough, hard-bitten bread every morning. But every time a faint strain of music caught him, or he saw a couple dancing in one of the fancy dance halls around the city, he allowed himself to breathe for once. Not as a street kid, but as a real person.

He shook his head and adjusted the scarf so his mouth was against the night air once more, pressed the brim of his hat up so he could see the stars. It was a lovely night. Crisp and clean, just as he liked it. But perhaps he was straying too far from his home. Sighing and shaking his head, he made to turn down the next alley and make his way back to the lodging house.

But just before he stepped into the darkness of the lane, he turned and cast one last, longing look along the street he had just walked down. Some windows were still glowing a burnished gold in the darkness, but many of them had been extinguished, empty eye sockets in dead buildings. The street was crooked and narrow, like a village in a fairy tale, and somewhere off in the distance the music was still playing, as though not even the night could put an end to the quiet joy it inspired. Swifty felt his lips twist up into a slight smile, before he ducked his head low and moved into the alley, setting his sights for home.

I will tell you how they dance, that tantalizing 12th street rag.

But he was stopped cold in his tracks by the sound of a light, almost stifled whimper that echoed down the street.

He paused, brows tightening above the sharp bridge of his nose, head twisting backwards. The cry had been so light, so low, he wasn't even sure if he had imagined it or not. He waited a few more moments, listening intently, and heard it again, along with the low scuffs of shoes and a gruff laugh that made his stomach tighten in his body.

He turned and gazed down the alleyway, focusing his sights on the road on the other end. If he ran, now, really quickly, he could get out of the area before any of the trouble started. He was a fast runner. They didn't call him "Swifty" for nothing, and that was a fact. He could be out of the alley in a few strides, down the street in a few more, and on his way to the lodging house before you could blink. And yet...he heard the sound again, the sound of a girl...it was definitely a girl.

"Well, well, well..." A crude voice murmured. "What have we here?" The sound of the tone was familiar. Swifty couldn't be certain, but it sounded like one of the boys on the back of the carriage, the boy who had laughed as they passed. He looked down to the opposite street and tried to make his feet move, but he couldn't seem to make up his own mind. And then, after a moment of hesitation, he cursed his morals to hell and moved towards the mouth of the alley.

He didn't know why he was doing this. New York wasn't the kind of city that looked kindly upon the Good Samaritan. Chances were that if he tried to interfere, he'd probably get his face ground down in the cobblestone as hard as that girl's. But he couldn't help this reckless sense of courage, this sudden obligatory feeling. Something he had to do.

He paused at the mouth of the alley, and waited. There was no sense running right into the thing right off the bat. Maybe the boys would just tease her a while and get going, or maybe she'd drive them off somehow. He waited, pressed against the brick wall behind him, breath bated in his throat. To his chagrin, he noticed that his palms were already slick with a light sweat. He looked longingly once more to the opposite end of the alley. Maybe he should just head back to the lodging house before the affair turned nasty...he didn't owe anybody anything...

"C'mon, ya gook," one of the boys was laughing. "Just give us a look. Ain't never seen no girl wearin' slacks before..."

"Get your hands off me!" The girl interrupted, a faint scuffle following her words. "I said get off!"

Swifty shut his eyes tight. They weren't just going to go away. He could hear another faint scraping sound, and then a sharp snap, so abrupt it made him wince. Skin on skin? No...something snapping...thread...

"Leave me alone!" The girl's voice was shriller, edged with panic. "Get away from me!"

Taking one more deep breath, Swifty bit the inside of his lip hard and stepped out from the mouth of the alley.

The first thing that met his eyes was the girl.

She had her back to him, facing the three thugs in front of her, visibly trembling in the pale moonlight. Swifty glanced her over quickly, and felt his brows furrow over top of his nose once again, felt his mind curl slightly in confusion. He couldn't see past the long, putrid green colored coat she wore, but what he could see was puzzling enough. Peeking out from the hem was not the heavy serge skirt that he always saw on women around this area, but slacks. Just as the boys had said. Stretched around her head was the strangest headgear he had ever seen in his life, almost as though someone had spread a large sock over her hair, which was alarmingly short, bristling out from under the hat in short, spiky strands. But perhaps what was most alarming was the way her jacket was hanging off one shoulder, exposing her skin in the darkness of the night, more skin than he had ever seen a decent garment dare show. There were only two straps to the top she was wearing, one of which was hanging precariously off the arc of her shoulder. She was desperately clutching at the front of her jacket and trying to shift the strap up, but Swifty couldn't see why. It wasn't as though it would have made her any more decent.

He pushed the thought from his head, and let his eyes travel up to the three thugs. Not for the first time, he wished he had just left well enough alone. Each one looked more than capable of pounding him into a grease spot on the sidewalk, not to mention that they all looked mean enough to do it. Their heavyset features were lit up from the glow of the cigarettes that were clamped in their mouths, and he could see the way their eyes were trained intensely on the girl. One of them was closer to her than the others, his hand was reaching out to grab at her coat once more...

"Hey," Swifty said.

His voice sounded shamefully light and uncertain in the wake of the three gruff boys before him, and the girl's shocking unseemliness. The eyes of the thugs all shifted to him, the slight shadow in the background, barely able to hold his ground. He cleared his throat. "Leave her alone."

The girl whirled around, startled, and as her eyes landed on his own, he felt a strange shot of heat run through his body, as a beam of something seemed to shoot between them and fuse their gaze's together. The girl's eyes crumpled, and her brows knotted together, lips parting slightly as though she was about to speak. But instead, she shut her mouth hastily, and clutched her crooked coat tighter against her chest, her free hand working furiously to pull it up to her neck once more. Near the collar, there was a button missing, the snapped green threads hanging uselessly down her front.

"What's this?" One of the boys was saying, after the three of them recovered from the initial surprise. "We got someone steppin' in to play the hero?"

Swifty tore his eyes away from the girl and back up to the thugs, one of who was cracking his knuckles threateningly, moving in closer, eyes glinting malevolently. He glanced from the girl, back up to Swifty, and raised one eyebrow.

"Who's she that she's so important to ya, huh?" He questioned, moving in another pace closer. The girl worriedly turned around again, pale fingers clutching the space where the button used to be, holding her coat closed against them. As she moved back, Swifty could feel her arm brush his own, could feel the way she was shaking.

"She's just a girl," Swifty tried to say, but he could feel the words getting caught in his throat. If it weren't for the fact that she was right in front of him, trembling against his skin, he'd turn and run and run and run until he collapsed in front of the lodging house in a sweating, panting heap.

"What's that?" The boy asked. "Speak up, jap."

"She's..." Swifty cleared his throat. "Just leave her alone, okay?"

"Not until she shows us what she's got on underneath that coat a' hers," one of the boys added in, flicking his cigarette away, the red tip arching in a blazing red trail to the gutter. "That's what we wants, ain't it fellas?" The other two boys chuckled gruffly. The girl let out a faint choking sound, and took two stumbling steps backwards, until she was behind Swifty completely. Swifty wanted to turn around and tell her to make a run for it, but he didn't want to turn his back on the three boys for even a second.

"Beat it," he told them all, hoping that he sounded a lot stronger than he felt. "Jus' get the hell off this street, a'right?"

He swallowed harshly as the words hung in the air, and then dissolved into nothingness. The three boys turned and shared glances with one another, smiles cracking their sore lips open and harsh amusement filling their eyes. Swifty felt his breath catch in his throat. This wasn't going the way he had planned, but then again, he hadn't really had a plan. He almost wished that he had left the girl to get out of the situation herself, but it was so much more difficult thinking that when the very girl was right behind him, her breath breaking against the back of his neck, her stifled whimpers directly behind his ear. He furrowed his brows, and turned his head slightly towards her, as though to speak, but before he could get the words out, one of the boys had lunged forwards and shoved him square in the chest.

He lost his balance, his arms swinging out forwards and his feet stumbling against the cobblestone. He could feel his shoulder knock against the girl as he went down, making her choke back a yell, could feel the harsh slam of the cement against his flesh as he went down on one arm and rolled onto his back, trying to keep his head off the cobblestone. The stars swung in a dizzying arc above him, and he shut his eyes quickly, feeling his whole body throb in pain.

He could hear someone muttering a curse word above him, and after a second's pause, the sound of footsteps tearing off down the street, the feeling of felt brush quickly against his forehead. The jacket. Without thinking, he twisted over and turned to see the girl running, running faster than he knew a girl could even run, the jacket flapping out behind her in the darkness. He watched her go, eyes trained dully on the back of her shoes, realizing that she was running just as fast as him. He didn't know anyone who could run as fast as he did.

He felt a foot press squarely down against his chest, and before he knew it, his back slammed against the pavement, the back of his head tapping the cobblestone lightly, making him feel dizzy. When he opened his eyes, he could see the dark shadows of one of the goon's faces as he leaned over him, pressing his weight down on his rib cage, making him choke and splutter.

"You're girlfriend's gone," he told him. "You gonna try to chase after her?"

-o-

Lee lived in New York City. She had lived there all her life. When she was in grade seven, she had been followed home by a gang of tough looking boys that smoked cigarettes and whispered to one another in words that she couldn't make out. When she was in grade eight, she had watched some of her friends fall into the vices of drugs and alcohol. When she was in grade nine, a girl in her class had been mugged and killed a few weeks after her fourteenth birthday. Lee was no stranger to darkness, corruption, she was no stranger to fear.

But she could honestly say that she had never been more frightened in her life.

The blinding pain, the sucking feeling beneath her feet, the way she had been thrown across what seemed like an infinite void, the feeling of her shoes slamming against the cobblestone and her body curving over as she nearly collapsed. When she had straightened, her tenement was before her, as crumbling and familiar as it had ever been. But something was different. In the few seconds she'd had to let her eyes dart frantically up and down the street, the few seconds she had to press her hands to her head and catch her balance, she could feel that something was wrong. The distant, underground rumble of the subways was missing, the air was heavy with ash instead of gasoline, and the street seemed darker, as though every light in New York city had flickered and left her alone. Underneath the strains of the music that had faded out of existence, she could hear a strange, thick clopping sound that reminded her of old movies and parades...

There was a carriage on the street behind her.

She ran now, dizziness threatening to make her collapse, her breath clawing in and out of her lungs and her heart beating at the inside of her chest like a trapped, frenzied creature. Every neuron in her body burned and tingled under her skin, and she longed to collapse on one of the stoops, but her fear forced her only to run faster, until she was nearly crying from exhaustion and confusion, until the three thugs and that strange boy were naught but dark shapes in the distance.

She fell to her knees in the middle of the street, her palms smashing against the hard cobblestone.

Who were those boys? She hadn't taken the time to study them in the darkness, the way they had been studying her had nearly paralyzed her. And when he had snapped the button off the coat...she felt a tremor of fear shake at her spine, and she shut her eyes tight, breath still ripping from her body with fear. But the way they had been dressed...suspenders and baggy shirts. No jeans, no khakis, no sweatpants...strange, straight legged pants that would have been dress pants had they not been so patched and ragged. Caps that she had seen her grandfather wear sometimes, one of them was wearing a bowler hat, like the ones they had worn in that musical about the thirties...

A strange, irrational fear began to beat deep in her body, faster than her heart, sicker than blood through her veins. Feeling her pulse run faster, she jerked her head up and studied the street. At first, it seemed almost the same, but a sick realization washed over her as she caught the shape of the street lamps, saw the way the windows burned a oily gold as opposed to a harsh electric blue, saw that there were potholes and cracks in the sidewalk that had never been there before...

She staggered to her feet and spun on the spot, tripping over her own shoes and the unfamiliar rough street beneath her feet. Where was all the litter? Where were the numerous posters and bills that had been slicked up on the lamp posts? And the lamp posts! They were ornate, the tops straight and peaked, with candles burning through the glass panes! Why was there no canned laughter from a late night sitcom floating through the windows, and how come she could no longer hear the grind of far off traffic, the pulse of late night rock music from some kind of party?

She began to run again, not as fast as she had run from the thugs, but a jerky, stumbling run that nearly sent her toppling over more than once. She could barely keep her feet on the ground, as her eyes darted from one side of the street to the other. A few years ago, they had torn down some of the tenements that could barely stand, and had rebuilt period looking clapboard houses. Charming things, with vegetable gardens out front and gable windows.

They were gone.

The realization staggered her, making her press her back up against a tenement, heart pounding in fear. They were gone. The tenements were there, the ones they had torn down, except these one's weren't decrepit and frail. They were sturdy looking and new, the bricks still relatively unstained from soot, the doors and windows clean and unspoiled. A strange dizziness overtook her, seeing the houses that she knew so well suddenly lost. This couldn't be Christopher street, that's all. She had turned onto a different street, one where they had preserved the heritage look...built new lamp posts...laid down cobblestone...

But it had been her house! The stoop that Amadeus had dropped her off was her own. He wouldn't have dropped her off if it had been someone else's, he knew where she lived.

Amadeus! Her head whipped around the direction she had come, as though expecting to see him loping towards her with that old familiar walk, smiling in his crooked way, his book of quotes in his long, tapering fingers. But of course, there was nothing, just a stretch of blank, unfamiliar street and the four figures in the distance. Was it possible that Amadeus was still here? Could she chase after him, catch him before he reached his own house? No...she would have to pass the thugs again.

She revolved slowly on the spot, taking in the street, feeling her heart pound faster and faster in her throat. She was choking, not on the dust and ash in the air, but a slow, sick discovery that didn't even make sense. She must have turned onto some other street when she was running. That carriage must have been on it's way to some kind of turn of the century mock-up. It was a bad head-ache, bad case of the cramps, she was just dizzy from her first real kiss...

But the boys had been real. The houses were gone. The tenements were in front of her, solid and all too vivid to be dismissed as a mere hallucination. This was Christopher street. But it wasn't the Christopher street that she knew.

There was a thick crunching sound in the distance, and a sudden scream rent through the night, echoing down the street and making her gasp, pressing her fingers up against her mouth in horror. Her head whipped back the direction that she had run from, and in an instant, she knew that it was the four boys that she had left behind. She could see nothing, the darkness was thick and consuming, but the sound seemed to speak for itself. She waited for a multitude of lights to flick on...real electric lights...waited for people to hear the screams and call up the police, waited for perfectly normal looking people in perfectly normal looking clothes to peer out their windows to see what the commotion was about. But there was nothing. The horrible sounds were followed by a brief scuffling noise, and then another scream, quieter this time, but too horrible to ever be forgotten. It dwindled in the air for a moment, before someone shouted something, and a brief clanging noise echoed down the road.

The scream was cut off. Silenced. As though it had never been.

Lee didn't realize how hard she was biting down on her fingers until she tasted the thick flavor of blood on her tongue. In horror, she pulled her fingers away and saw the deep red crescents slashed against the pads. It made her feel sick. Silently, she moved into the nearest alley, and crouched behind a garbage can, feeling her throat tighten. There was no bright, flourescent graffiti, no large green trash dumpsters, no empty cases of KFC or cans of beer. There were crates, and bundles of paper, dark shards of broken glass, and a few empty bottles that were rectangular and old fashioned, the kind you'd see in a vaudeville play. This wasn't the Christopher street she knew. There was something deadly wrong.

-o-

How long she waited in the alley, she did not know. The thoughts that were sliding around the edges of her mind were twisted and entirely unbelievable. Time travel. Time didn't have any concept any more, she could have been waiting weeks in the alley without a thought. But she waited. She waited until the three boys passed, their silhouettes outlined by the red glare of their cigarettes, muttering to one another. She didn't even try to hear what they were saying. She thought, sickly, that she didn't want to know.

She waited until she could hear the soft scraping sounds of their footsteps no longer, and pushed herself to her feet. Before she could think about what she was doing, she crept out of the alley and turned back onto Christopher street. She felt the sick swing of dizziness in her stomach when she saw that the new houses were gone, shook the feeling off, and turned back the direction from where she came.

Her suspicions proved correct. She could just make out, in the dim light cast from the old fashioned lamps, that there was a crumpled form on the sidewalk, not moving, just lying there staring up at the stars. She took a deep, shuddering breath, her insides tight with fear and a queasy feeling of culpability. She didn't know where she was. And, despite her disbelief at the concept, she didn't know when she was. And so far, the only person who had treated her with something close to care was the boy who had stepped out and saved her from the three thugs.

And she had run from him.

She hesitated before beginning the long walk to where he lay, wondering if he would be angry at her for leaving him all on his own like that. Her insides squirmed hot with guilt, and feeling a sudden outburst of panic, she began to ran, her shaky legs barely supporting her. The sudden realization that she was completely alone seemed to take her by frightening force, and she felt almost that if she didn't get to this boy in good time, he would disappear before her eyes, just like those houses, like the street...

She had to find out where she was. And he was her best bet.

She ran until she could make out his shape against the cobblestone, until she was ten feet away, five feet away, one foot away...

She skidded to a halt overtop of him and dropped to her knees, eyes running over the length of his body. There was a thick bruise developing on his temple, peering out from under his thin black hair, swollen and putrid against the paleness of his skin. His shirt was crooked, as though he had been wrenched upwards by the collar, and there was a thick tear along the hem, which was jaggedly torn away from the waistline of his pants. His scarf had been flung aside against her tenement. And his legs...his right leg...

Lee felt a thick sensation swarm up in her throat, and she had to press her fist against her lips and shut her eyes tight to keep from vomiting. It was mangled. Completely mangled. From mid-thigh down, it's shape was jagged and cracked, blood pooling underneath it and staining the rough material of his pants. The thick smell of torn flesh and gore seemed to flood her senses, and she swallowed with difficulty, quickly averting her eyes to his face again and letting out a shuddery breath. She had seen a lot worse in action movies of her time, but nothing compared to seeing it first hand...knowing that she could have prevented it...

"Please..." she whispered, her voice on the edge of sobs. "Please wake up..."

Hesitantly, she reached out and brushed a fingertip against his face, starting when she saw the dark smear of blood that she left. In horror, she brought her fingers up to her face and examined them, studying the thick gashes where her teeth had bitten into and broken the skin. She didn't know what she wanted to do more, cry or throw up, but she forced herself to calmness, to placidity.

If anything else, she told herself. You have to get a grip. Don't panic. Just don't panic.

Moving with a new sense of purpose, she reached over and shook him gently, hearing the way his body scuffed against the pavement. She knew he was alive, she could see his chest rising and falling quite normally under his old fashioned shirt, and felt his flesh warm against her own bloody fingers. So he was just knocked out...she glanced once more at the bruise on his temple, and shuffled closer.

"Wake up..." she whispered. "Wake up, please..."

Swifty's mind felt as though it was being brought up from some dark, dank underground place...from the depths of the Hudson river...the muddy waters slowly spilling off of it in waterfalls, the light of day filtering down and making him cringe...

Wake up...please, please be okay...

Okay? He was perfectly fine. He tried to open his lips to say something, but no words came, no feeling, no sensations to prove that he was still a part of his body.

Lee studied his face carefully. His eyes were twitching, and his lips tightened slightly, as though he was trying to speak. Feeling slight glimmerings of hope, she shook him slightly harder, watching his face intently.

Swifty could feel his shoulders jerking up and down as he slowly returned to his body, could feel a small, thin pair of hands clenched tight over his shoulder blades, could feel the cool breath of someone against his skin...a thick burning sensation seemed to tear up and down his body, making him twitch, making his eyes clamp tighter and tighter as it grew more and more intense...

A burst of pain ripped up his body as his eyes shot open and he parted his lips to moan.

Lee could have died with joy as his eyes opened, his pupils contracting harshly and his breath coming out in a groan of agony. He was awake, awake and gasping for breath on the cobblestone beneath her. Hastily, she smoothed his hair back from his face and pressed her hands lightly against his forehead.

"Shh..." she whispered, her own voice trembling with fright and exhileration. "Don't worry..."

"What's happening?" Swifty managed, through clenched teeth. "Who are you?"

"Listen, you need to tell me what year it is," Lee said, as softly as she could, trying not to grab at the boy and shake him until he choked out the answer. "Please, it's important..."

"The year?" The boy asked in bewilderment. Lee stared down at him in dismay. His eyes were blank and wandering, alighting on his surroundings with the puzzled, curious gaze of a lost stranger. Lee felt her heart sag with disappointment.

"Concentrate!" She pleaded. "The year! What year is it?"

"The year?" The boy repeated. Lee nodded, grinding her back teeth together, eyes trained on his face until they burned. He finally looked at her, catching her gaze in his own. The bruise was darkening on his temple, making him look pale underneath it's thick, black fingers. He opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off as his breath caught in his throat and his eyes clamped shut.

"My leg!" He gasped through his tight jaw. "It...god, it hurts..."

Lee didn't even risk glancing down at his mutilated limb, and in a burning way, didn't want him to either. Hastily, she reached up and began to undo the buttons of her coat, trembling as an icy wind swept down the street and caught at the flaps.

"Just don't move," she told him, feeling as though she wanted to cry. "You're hurt."

"It hurts..." Swifty repeated, his eyes still shut tight, as though he too was reluctant to see what condition he was in. Lee quickly shimmied out of her coat and draped it over him, goose bumps immediately bunching up over her shoulders and forearms, her jaw clenching in the coldness of the night. All she wore underneath was a tank top and a pair of jeans with too many holes in them to provide her any sort of warmth.

"I have to go home," Swifty was saying. "I have to get back..."

"Where do you live?" Lee asked harshly, bending over him so they were almost nose to nose. Swifty let his eyes flicker open, and he regarded her in a blurry, vague way, as though he could barely see her.

"The lodging house," he croaked.

"What's the address?" Lee pressed, hoping he'd at least be able to give her that information. She didn't want to sit here on the cold street and try to talk him out of his delirium, it would get her no wehre. She needed to find someone with a clear head on his or her shoulders, someone who could listen to her and...help her back? Back where? Where was she?

Swifty whispered a street name, his eyes fluttering open and shut, like a doll that you could tip back and make sleep. Lee ran over a mental map of her city in her mind, and instantly knew where he was talking about. And she realized, with a sigh of relief, that it wasn't that far from Christopher street at all. The idea of it being so close made her feel slightly more at ease, perhaps she wasn't as lost as she thought she was. Maybe all of this was just the works of her over active imagination. And yet...

Hoping against hope that what she thought to herself was the farthest from the truth, she slid her arms under the boys back.

"I'm going to help you stand," she whispered to him. "I'm taking you home,"

-o-

Keza - Me? Big dose of angst? Blame Thomas Mann, my friend, he must have had his panties on too tight when he wrote that. Ha! Violence love. Don't worry. You're not the only one. I LOVE AWKWARD MOMENTS. And I hate flawless romance. Yay for realism! Aw, Kez, that's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me, about my writing growing with me. Thanks so much!

Mondie - SHE LIVES! Charlotte Bronte? I DON'T KNOW WHO THAT IS! BUT IT'S STILL AWESOME! Oh man, it's just like old times. -reminisces- Check this shit out. Not even a month later, and I'm posting. For the same story. Impossible, you say? Nothing is impossible. Thanks for the review, hon. Here's yer knife!