Xander POV
Of all my years of fighting, I do not think I have ever fought an unimportant fight was this one. I did not want to fight today that was why I did the trick but it turned out that these boys were more than willing to put me in a casket than they were to actually take my money all because I had played a trick on them and made them look like a fool which in reality they were.
“You make us look foolish, eh boy?” the loudmouth called out to me raising a middle finger at me. “You think we are dumb? We discovered your little trick!”
“You are dumb!” I spat back at them. “It’s why you discovered it only after it had done its job.”
“Yeah? Then why are you still here?” another one asked.
“Because I’m no little girl,” I said softly and I winked.
This pissed them off the more and it was evident. Once they came in range with me, they did not wait this time to talk or negotiate a better wallet term, they just swung their bats at me in rapid succession the moment they realized that a swing might connect.
I evaded the first effortlessly but was unable to land a blow on his midsection as I had to evade the bath of the second boy. The third one seemed to have more experience or he just got lucky because his swing was aimed at the right spot – my stomach. He wanted to knock me out of breath but even more so, he was aiming a spot that forced me to fight back. It was my midsection so I could not evade by docking nor could I evade by jumping. My only option was to defend with my arms.
I parried his swing with my forearm and was quick enough to get behind him, locking our arms together and using him as a human shield just in time for his comrade to make another swing which connected perfectly well with the boy’s forehead, knocking him out cold.
Once he was down, I saw the flash of fear in all the other boys. Their best fighter was down and he was brought down by their own hands. One of them took a cautious step back. Wise choice, I thought. But the other one was ambitious. He really wanted that wallet and all the money in it even if it required him unknowingly risking his life for it. It was a chance worth taking and I admired his confidence for it. But now I had to put him down and I was not going to do it gently.
The boy charged swinging his bat to the left side of my face I parried with my forearm again and sidestepped him, leaving half his body exposed. Doing all these movements made me realize just how much I had missed this. I got a little carried away and I landed a full power punch on the side of his head and the moment I did that, I realized that I should not have. The boy’s eyes rolled behind his head and he slumped to the ground with a thud. He did not move. My mind went to the worst, had I killed him, if I have then what next?
I turned to the third boy to see him cuddling his knees up to his chest as he sat in a corner, watching what I had done to his hooligan members. He had tears in his eyes and I had already begun to genuinely pity him. It was one thing to watch your mates take a bulk load of beating and end up bloodied, it was another thing to watch them take a few blows and end up unconscious. One made you more conscious of your operations, the other made you afraid to operate as I saw in this boy. He was the youngest of the band no more than 16 if I were to guess. He also was the only one holding a knife aside from his bat. He was the weakest, it only made sense to make him the most armed.
I walked over to him gently to say hi but his reception was just as I expected it to be. He shuffled backwards, rubbing his rump in dirt as he went.
“Calm down, boy,” I said. I placed my hands in the air so that he saw that I meant my surrender.
The boy stopped shuffling and listened to me.
“Is her name really Miss Pussy?” I asked.
The boy nodded his head up and down affirming my question.
“Does she really live here?” I asked.
He nodded his head again.
“OK, we are doing great. Just one more question and I’ll let you drag your homies out of here in peace. What does she do?”
The boy opened his mouth to answer but the answer hung in his throat. He just stared at me with his eyes bulging open, scared to take them away from me for even a second. There was no point interrogating him.
“Alright, you have done well. Thank you. Just get the bodies of your guys out of here. Alright?”
He nodded his head profusely and stood up, running over to one of the boys and tugging at his shirt trying to wake him. He then went to the other and begun dragging him. It was then I saw the shirt the boy was wearing; it was for a bottling factory that was situated in the mainland city.
I called the boy back. “Do you work there?” I asked and he nodded. I took out my wallet and peeled a few notes from it and handed it over to him. “Get yourself something.”
He bowed gracefully and took the money.
Minutes later, I was still standing in front of the door and the boy had successfully dragged his mates away. I got up and placed a knock when I heard a voice shout at me from behind. “Perhaps you are not knocking loud enough!” This time it was a female voice. I placed my hands on my forehead in tiredness. Just how many people did I have to beat up before I got to see the person who possibly held the key to my completion of this mystery?
I turned around with a clenched fist. I was ready to rip apart whoever was coming this time but I halted at who it was. It was her, it was Kathrine McHolland. She looked just as the pictures said she would look except this time she was very lean and looked more unkept.
“Is there a problem?” she asked, pushing past me to unlock her house.
“Err… Miss McHolland…”
She whipped around as if shocked at my presence. Like she had not known that I was there. ”That’s Miss. Pussy to you!” she said almost devilishly.
So that truly was her name. Those hooligans were not lying. But of all the names there is to bear in this world, why Pussy? Then it hit me. It was from her name Kathrine: Kathrine turned to Kat and Kat or cat as they implied it to be here, turned to pussy. What a name. Why did I not think of that before?
“Come on in,” Kathrine finally invited me in.
I walked into the house to a stench of drugs and alcohol so condensed that it threatened to pass me out. So this was what they did here in this place. Splash alcohol and conjure drugs. I began to wonder how she had gotten to this point. I had never known her but I was sure that once upon a time she was never like this. Not only was it a fact that no one was born a drug addict, but she was also once married to Methis father and with the way Methis behaved, it was clear that she was brought up in a good home not one where the stepmother abused drugs, besides, I could never see a reality were Methis father opted to marry someone like Kathrine as she was now in this state. It just didn’t make sense.
I watched as Kathrine walked up and down her small living room, packing papers, clearing used syringes, thrashing wrappers of drugs and condoms which got me thinking, what the hell has this woman done with herself all her life?
Perhaps it was the divorce. Had she fallen into clinical depression and had attempted to cope with it through drugs? Did she search for help from the wrong substances or people? All these were possibilities. But the main question to be answered was how do I make this woman talk?
“Care for a healthy meal?” she asked.
I did not think that anything coming out of this woman’s can be described as healthy but I was not stupid to say that out loud. “No thank you.” I smiled at her.
“I insist,” she said and I accepted.