There was a knock at the door suddenly. It jolted Alfred into action and out of his awkwardness. "You stay here. I'll go check it out."
Mathew nodded. "Okay." He said.
Alfred crept down the stairs and grabbed his baseball bat as he went. The bat was studded with nails from a joke his friends had done with him, he couldn't remember much beyond that though, due to the fact that he'd been drunk when it happened. And hey, it might be a little over the top to arm himself but, with Mathew here and Alfred himself not expecting any visitors to show up, it was better to be safe than sorry.
The silhouettes of two people showed through the glass portion of his door. He opened it up. Thugs, was his first thought. People from Mathew's old gang were here to get him.
"Hello?" he asked the two guys outside.
"Hi," One of them was smoking, the scent was thick, even though they had probably only been standing there for a minute or so. Alfred hated him upon sight. At least he had taken the smoldering stub out to talk. He would have hit him with his bat otherwise. Maybe. "Have you seen a really skinny guy with blond hair and weird ass eyes hanging around here? He's a friend of ours and we're...worried about him." The guy replaced his cigarette in his mouth and breathed out a plume of smoke before Alfred replied, taking his time and speaking slowly.
"I'm sorry but, I can't say that I have."
The thugs nodded. The one without a cigarette spoke this time, he was draped in chains. Such a stupid look. Alright, maybe he was acting a little bit prejudiced against them. He justified it. They were here for Mathew. They had been the ones to hook him on drugs. The drugs that had almost killed him. It was their fault. It was justified.
"Thanks for that. If you see him, tell us, okay?"
Alfred nodded, "Sure."
The two guys turned and walked back down Alfred's concrete pathway that was his trail across his yard up to his house. They turned onto the sidewalk, and immediately turned to go up to the door of the next house. They were doing this systematically.
Alfred shut the door, quickly slamming it and bolting all of the locks into place. The glass panes were a kind of fractured glass, he couldn't see out of them anymore. He didn't need to. They were going door to door looking for Mathew. He wouldn't be safe much longer. If he was to look at this realistically, how long could he really keep Mathew for? How could he possibly save his Panda Hero from the bad guys and give him a better life? This was hopeless, in a way.
"Alfred."
He could hear called down the stairs. Mathew's voice was still so weak. He wanted to reverse their positions. He wanted to be the hero now. Did he even have the right to interfere in his life though?
I have personally never seen a thug in my life. It was only at the end of grade eight that I even realized that people did drugs in Canada, or any other first world country. Where I live has been called a bubble by those that have traveled abroad. Apparently we are very sheltered. I still can't believe that people would intentionally hook others onto drugs or willingly hurt others. It's hard to ignore the evidence now though. The way that I figured out people did drugs in first world countries was by finding a used needle while doing a garbage clean up in the capital city of my province. My Scout leaders had just laughed when I asked if an ambulance had accidentally dropped it. Is it bad that it took me being four months away from high school to realize that?
If I get anything wrong in this story, please correct me.