I stare at the back windows of Daily Grind and watch everyone’s reflection. The City Paper I’m not reading is gutted open across the blonde table. My right hand is quivering, slightly. I need a bump, and I don’t like that I need a bump. I’m sorry Mary. I tried.

From my pocket, I pull my medicine, a plastic oval shaped and colored like an oversized Tylenol, slap it twice on my hand then palm it. I scratch my chin on my right shoulder and scan the room quickly—no one’s watching—then bloat my chest like I have to sneeze and put my hands to my face. Sniff, sniff, hold. Feel it absorb into my blood and tune in the static in my head. Make a fake sneeze with my mouth, so no one suspects anything, and put my medicine back in my jeans. The synthetic taste of chewed aspirin, snot and white drips down the back of my throat. My hand stops quivering, I can feel the inside of my legs, and I’m getting antsy.

Steam swirls in tiny tornados from my coffee. I scan whatever page of City Paper is open just to give my brain something to do besides think think think think think. About Mary. About The Twins. Where she is, why she won’t call back, how hard They can hit a rib before it breaks and punctures a lung, whether the Sonny Chiba DVD Christian ordered for me has come in yet what Bruce Campbell is doing right now whose hand is on my shoulder my heart breaks half of my ribs in one beat and I bolt to my feet.

My coffee spills Rorschach over the table, my chair scrapes back, hands curl as I turn. My eyes are CD size and the light from outside hurts.

‘Damon, hi. Jesus, are you okay?’ a girl says, her hands palms-out-defensive by her shoulder. She’s over-tanned, with skin the color of cantaloupe flesh.

‘Oh. Yeah. Hi. What’s up—’ Kristine? Corey? What the fuck is her name? ‘—man? Yeah I’m fine. Just tired. Too much coffee, you know?’

She nods her head tentatively. I steal a glimpse over her shoulder, check the room. The same four students are glued to their laptops and oblivious to the world; the wrinkled couple in the corner plays cribbage; the girl behind the counter thumbs coins from the tip jar into her palm while her co-worker is bored, staring blankly out the window and over the harbor.

‘Just making sure,’ she smiles. Her bone fingers, with polished nails the color of old scabs, run themselves over my forearm. I know what she’s about to ask me. ‘I wanted to make sure my boy is okay.’

‘I’m fine,’ I say. I know her name and I can’t think of it, but she’s a leech anyway, so it doesn’t matter. ‘Just drinking coffee,’ gesturing to my brown and wet table. A shark swims mouth-open after a fat man in the coffee Rorschach.

‘Are you going back to your store anytime soon?’ she coos. She licks her lips; her black high-heels slide over the floor closer to me. ‘Or now if you have… you know.’ Her fingers on my ribs now, gripping slightly, kneading, like a preview of what could come.

Yes, I know, you conniving soulless woman. I feel my stash in my pocket, try not to smile.

My lips part to say Sorry the store’s closed when the door opens. Two outlines, like bags of garbage stuffed into expensive trench coats, walk in. I pull the girl—Alicia is her name though I don’t know why I remember it now—in front of me, bend my knees slightly to sink behind her.

I close my eyes, push on my eye sockets with my palms, this isn’t happening, you’ve seen this before, you’re okay, then peel my lids open. A rainbow of stars floats through the coffee shop but the two outlines are gone. They’re gone. Just students and old people and bored minimum-wage workers. Alicia has pulled her body even closer to mine. She smiles down at me. I can almost see her brain cranking through her irises. She thinks she has me. I straighten my legs, feel her hand on my thigh, her fingers in my jean pocket but I could be watching her and someone else and imagining it as me, it feels so far away.

The front door is still closed.

Then the two outlines are at the counter, ordering orange mocha frappacinos. My heart cracks more ribs and I collapse on the chair, pull Alicia down on my lap and sink my face into her neck. She moans quietly, rubs her thigh against my stomach and I peek up and watch Them at the counter. I close my eyes and count to three and hope to God that I’m hallucinating again.

The room slowly seeps in through the slits of my eyelids. I’m fucked.

‘Get up,’ I say to Alicia, throwing my arm around her shoulders and pulling her head close to mine. I can hear her smiling, feel her hand in my back pocket but I try to ignore it. ‘Keep walking and don’t move your head unless I move it for you.’

‘I like this,’ she purrs. ‘It’s sexy. This whole hostage thing. When we get back to the store, I’m going to—’

‘Shut the fuck up,’ I say, peering past her profile and checking the counter. One of Them hits the arm of the other and puts his hand out for money. There’s a bulge in his trench coat, shaped like a ‘Y’ and I’m sure it’s the hedge-clippers and wonder if they’re the same pair. The street looks like it’s from a Hitchcock movie; the door slides farther and farther away, seven strides to the street will take fifteen years.

Alicia’s hormones buzz in my ear. ‘My god, Damon,’ she breathes. ‘You are getting me so…’

They turn towards us and I whisper oh fuck. Their eyes catch mine. I can’t breathe.

I sweep my foot under Alicia’s, knock her onto the ground in front of the door. ‘I’m sorry, Alicia,’ I say and lean my shoulder into the door, explode onto Thames. My head spins quickly to check and there’s no one there but I can feel their breath.

‘Get the fuck out of the way!’ I scream. My feet smack with dull slaps on the concrete.

An old Asian woman barely armpit high can’t understand my screaming and perches in the middle of my sprint. The sky tears open. A deluge of dried spaghetti and dates. Cans of peaches and sauce rain on the sidewalk. The cans barely miss me, spinning on the ball of my foot. The pop and crack of my knee cartilage with rotation. My palm scrapes, soaking up little pebbles in flesh to keep myself from kissing the concrete. To keep the distance between Them and me as far as possible.

A man shaped like a bowling pin in purple, white and black camouflage pants and a shiny Ravens jersey screams at me. Derogatory epithets about every woman in my family. I was born in a test tube. If I cared to die, I would stop and argue with him.

The crowd in front of me pricks their ears to all the yelling and turns to gawk, to be voyeurs. They step back to avoid a collision or my elbow in their neck, and my legs stretch out to a full stride. Three boys with greasy pocked faces, a mustache like crumbled Oreos on two of them, leave their skateboards at their feet, a mangy grey dog meanders without a leash and a suited man finds it a good time to fix his right leg cuff.

I can almost feel Them twisting a corkscrew into one of my ribs.

I hop over the skateboards and almost accidentally kick the dog and turn back to scan the crowd for Them, then step on a lump and I’m looking at the purple and pink waning January sky, papers floating down over me.

‘You fucking prick!’ the Suit screams and scurries to gather his business proposals, vetoed with my size nine stamp. I scramble to my feet and check behind again, the mass of sidewalk gawkers congealing back together, hiding me. Every step catches fire in my soles and pushes needles into my temple. White clouds form in front of my mouth. I can hear my stomach slosh Christian’s whiskey. It’ll help, he said. It’s been a rough couple of days.

Four blocks of sprinting, checking, heaving, choking, swallowing hard and trying not to vomit and I’m at Shakespeare Street. I grab the light pole like a fulcrum and wing around the corner. My right foot slips across gravel and a broken Yuengling bottle. I throw myself into the first alley. There are fences keeping the alley from spilling into the tiny backyards. I slam into the door in the first fence I see. Locked. I push on the next one. Locked. The mouth of the alley yawns, open and empty; there’s no one there. My ears prickle for a split second. Footsteps. They sound heavy but it could be any of the million people in Fell’s today. The next door, locked; I yank on the handle and almost rip it out of the wood. The heavy footsteps are louder. I step back four strides and take a breath before I throw myself into the door to break it down and hide, then stop, realize that if I break down the door they’ll know I’m in there. I sidestep to the next door, put my weight into it and it swings open, unlocked. I dip inside and slam the door and it’s black, a vacuum. I’m going to disappear into nothingness and that’s not such a bad idea. My eyes adjust and I’m not in a black hole or time portal; I’m hiding in a storage shed. I stand on the push lawnmower inside, breathe, try to relax.

‘You’re cool. You’re cool. It’s okay. You’ll be fine. They’re not there.’

I’m talking to myself. Standing, shaking, breathing hard.

A splinter crack in the middle of the door. Tiny bits of outside bleed through. I check the walls in what little light there is for something to grab, to swing and slice or gouge. Nothing. No trowels. No spades. No tiny rakes that look like three fingered skeleton hands. Not even a bulb planter. I bend my knees to peer through the crack in the middle of the door, drag my hand across my forehead and wipe the sweat and pieces of dirt on my jeans. A rat on the other side of the alley scratches through the splinter of outside. I have to wait.

A minute, two minutes, twenty minutes. Everything seems eternal in a black space in a back alley.

Muted heavy footsteps come from the left of the space. I squint my eyes to hear better.

The footsteps get louder.

My lungs take every molecule of oxygen from every shallow breath.

The footsteps disappear. I sigh, scratch my neck.

Then they’re closer.

I perch my hand on my back pocket to steady myself, keep myself from slipping and making a noise. There’s a lump in my pocket. The lump is my switchblade. It takes 30 or 48 or 132 seconds to open the blade without the lock clicking and giving away my hiding spot. I shift again, gently, silently, to the left to scour the sliver of alley between the door and its frame. My eyes narrow, look for a gun, a flathead screwdriver. A broken wine bottle or rusted hedgeclippers.

Their tinted bottle glass shimmers in sunlight.

Fuck.

The footsteps are slower, sound a few feet away. Just imagine they’re Paul. Imagine Paul’s face on their bodies. I’m going to destroy them. I take a steeling breath then explode the door open, my arm cocked at jugular height and ready to slash.

A bum in an army-issued trench coat that was black twelve layers of dirt ago drops his wine bottle with a damp shatter. He curls back and slurs, ‘Moddle fcker, don’ hur me,’ through a bird’s nest beard and the mechanic-stained hands protecting his gnarled face.

I snap my head left and right looking for Them. Alleyway. Trash cans. Recycling bins. Cardboard boxes too large for recycling bins. My arm drops and I take a step back, collapsing on the door leaning the wrong way against the storage space. The bum looks through his fingers and precariously lowers his hands, stumbling half a step.

‘Shit,’ I exhale. ‘I’m really sorry man.’ I dig my hands into my jeans and pull out whatever’s in the pocket, hand $13 to the bum for the inconvenience.

I creep to the mouth of the alley and peek around the corner.

They’re not there.

‘Hanks, mifter,’ the bum hiccups and lurches down the alley.

I cinch the switchblade closed, look around the corner again and walk head-down hurriedly along Shakespeare to South Bethel, veer right towards the corner of Aliceanna and Bethel. Stand for a minute, surveying the faces: a middle-aged woman with cat’s eye glasses and pink Chucks; two bike messengers resting on their crossbars smoking; a pack of seven hipsters pouring out of a café.

Gone, They’ve evaporated.

I turn around and run to 734 South Bethel, and pull out a key before I get to the building, then stab the lock and throw the door open, slam it shut. Three deadbolts click and I vault up the steps, stab another lock and seal myself inside Christian’s apartment. The tattered black couch creaks as I let myself collapse. An iceberg of foam floats on the back cushion.

‘Jesus Christ.’ I grab the pack of Casamirs, shove one in my mouth, light it.

‘Alright. Alright. Alright alright alright.’ I’m talking to myself again. Talking to an empty room with scarlet walls. I’m telling Bela Lugosi, Robert Eugland and Tobe Hooper that I’m okay. They stay quiet in their poster frames. David Bowie gives me a look that says you have it all under control. I nod my head. ‘Thanks, Dave.’

My voice echoes off the hardwood floor and into the linoleum kitchen. ‘Alright, I need to rest. I need to think.’ I take another drag.

‘I need a pen. I need some water.’ I walk to the kitchen and grab a half full glass from the counter, empty it and run clean water over the mouth in the sink, then fill it again. The cold water feels good on my hands. I want to fill the glass and dump it down the back of my neck then over my face. Over and over.

The hands of Beetlejuice clock on the wall point north and south. Christian won’t be home for another two hours. I sit on the couch again, grab a pen from the wooden corner table and a receipt from Muyung’s Dry Cleaners then stub out the cigarette in the glass ashtray I bought Christian for his birthday. It says ‘Jesus Hates It When You Smoke’ in a banner underneath the stylized face of Christ.

‘Alright,’ I say to the room. ‘What do I know?’

I think about everything that’s happened, and make a list on the back of the receipt.

Nicholas Korpon has lived in Baltimore and is currently editing his first novel entitled Stay God.  He can be reached at: nkorpon AT hotmail.com