THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Five - Part Six

As the saying said, hindsight was a wonderful thing, and when the strap of her bag bit into her armpit, Helen Jenkins got herself a nice dose of it herself.

By day, Boscombe Gardens was a beautiful place, a long sweeping chine sloping down to the beach and Boscombe Pier with steep sides and a lot of squirrels. Walking through it after dark – a woman alone – was, and ever would be, a mistake. She knew it when she started making her way down the narrow path from the road, the same way she knew it when she heard the footsteps coming up too fast behind her in the darkness. Now, as hands grabbed her handbag and wrenched, snagging it against her shoulder and failing, at first, to rip it free, she realised that it wasn’t just a mistake. It was a monumental fuck up.

It was all fast jerking movements and blur as they pulled at her to get her to let go of the bag but she could see there were two of them with spiked Mohicans and tattoos, musty clothes and boots. “Give us it, you dozy tart! Let go! Give us it!”

“No!”

One of them kept yanking at the bag strap as she clung on but the other realised it was a smarter play to intercede directly himself and he snatched for her arms, trying to pin her. “Come here!”

“No! Let me go! Help!”

“Nobody’s coming luv; it’s just you and us; so you better let go or else I’ll stick you with this!” He thrust something too close to her face for her to focus on it but she knew it was a blade. “You listening? Let go of the fucking bag!”

She instantly let go and the one clinging to it stumbled backward fast, not expecting her to do what was said. As soon as he was clear of her, Helen saw the man coming down the path. And even though it was still by no means a fair fight; even though her arms were pinned behind her; she still felt instant relief.

This new man was walking slowly down the path toward them, no more than a half a dozen metres behind the thug with her bag. And he was big. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness but she could tell how broad his chest was; how tall he was from head to foot. Neither mugger seemed to have seen him. He didn’t quicken or slow his pace but he kept coming.

“Help!” screamed Helen. “Help me please!”

The one with her bag twisted his neck then span defensively when he saw the approaching man. Neither one of them had clearly prepared for any interference in their assault. He stepped rapidly from one foot to the other, wringing his hands into fists at his waist and now Helen could see the knife.

The men kept coming, getting closer and closer. “What the fuck you looking at fool?” snapped the thug with the bag. “You wanna get involved you’re welcome to. You wanna get involved? You wanna get involved with this?”

The man kept walking. He was almost level with the first thug but he didn’t slow to meet him. He didn’t even look him in the face. He was going to walk right by him. He wasn’t even looking at Helen or the thug pinning her arms back. He was planning to walk past all of them and not do a damn thing!

Then the first thug; the one with her bag; grabbed the man’s arm and said, “Where do you think you’re going mother fucker?”

The man stopped and looked down at the hand on his arm, his face still in shadow. Helen’s eyes closed for a split second in a blink and when they came open again, the thug was gone. There was a massive splintering crash and the fence behind where he had been was gone too, maybe twenty metres back up the slope, concrete posts and all, as though it had been bulldozed down – as though the thug had been bulldozed down and the entire fence in a fraction of a second. There was a great cloud of dust and debris in the air where it had been but the man hadn’t moved. He was still looking down at where the thug had grabbed his arm.

Helen didn’t say a word but a whimper came out of her throat. The second thug who’d grabbed her loosened his grip; murmured an obscenity; took a step back. The man raised his head, looking down the path as he had done before and started moving again, as though nothing had happened. Helen didn’t know what had happened but something definitely had.

The thug was losing it, shambling erratically. He stepped into the man’s path, almost certainly not by conscious design and Helen winced, wanting to call a warning to him – to the thug! But he had a knife out too. He was swinging it in front of him. He was babbling threats and warnings; stepping forward, backing up; tears in his eyes. He didn’t look a day older than seventeen. The man approached him. No. The man was going where he was going. This stupid ignorant kid was just in the way.

“Don’t!” cried Helen as the kid swung forward with his knife toward the man’s chest, stepping right into his forward arc. The turnabout was chilling. She wasn’t calling a warning to the man she’d thought had come to save her but to this ill-brought-up street kid who’d been about to steal from her and God knew what else.

There was another awful moment of stillness as the man stopped walking. His back was to Helen – she couldn’t tell if the knife had penetrated his stomach – but she could see the expression on the thug’s face: the horror and disbelief. Then there was a crack like the sound of a vehicle colliding with a unbroken wall and where the kid had stood there was an explosion of blood and bone and clothes. On the ground; on the fence that remained at either side of the alley; there was suddenly a splash of the thug’s skin and intestines; his brains, his organs; his ribboned muscles. It splattered Helen’s screaming face where she cowered. It covered everything except the man.

Helen toppled onto the floor, arms protecting her face, knees jammed in against her chest, screaming and weeping and muttering prayers. She didn’t show her face for a long time. She didn’t see the man silently wait for the droplets of blood raining from the overhanging leaves to finish falling before he went on his way, continuing on the same path as though he had never been approached at all.