A Night Painted with the Scars of Hate

Steam clouds emanate from the sewer grates like puffs of smoke spilling from the listless mouths that pass on the street. His nose turns away at the slightest hint of smoke; the smell clings to his clothes like children grasping for toys in displays. Opening the door to a discreet shop along the burgeoning street, he files inside to a world utterly alien to him. His eyes darted around the interior store with its neon signs advertising paraphilia in bright, abnormal colors. The walls must have been wrapped in leather dyed by the night sky. Corvids decorated the walls as if they were suddenly going to attack the puppies on leashes, or those meant to resemble them.

He averts his gaze from them, those on their hands and knees, before wandering the white-streaked floors from heel-draggers; the wax now a dusty, dirty gray. He was an outsider. His shoes were tattered, faux-leather, cheap imports made from the undersized hands of a young girl in a developing country. In the back were symbols of liberation, the same ones that adorned the walls of the students of the local universities. He thought of those who might wander inside for the sake of levity, purchase such paraphernalia, and then jokingly hang it on the wall of their Greek house. Hypocrites. Posers. He scoffs.

A door cracks open, and a young woman with a prominent nose piercing exits, rubbing lotion into her ink-wrapped arms; the designs resembling chicken-scratch as if she had endured a meth-induced trauma-attack.

“New tattoo?”

“Hardly. Just finished healing the other night.”

His gaze shifts to the walls. “Love what you’ve done with the place. Sex dungeon really fits the aesthetic.”

Her eyes are trained on his, and a smirk grows as sharp as a knife. “I’m glad it suits my clientele.” She knocks his elbow with a sucker-punch. “What’s up, squirt?”

He winces before rubbing his shoulder. “My lease is up at the end of the month, and I was wondering if I could crash at your place until I can find one.”

Her eyes lit up like the brightest stars, even with the light pollution in the dead of night. “Of course, little bro, anything for you.”

The weight came off his back like an alcoholic falling off a barstool; air quickly escaping his tattered lungs, breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank god, I really didn’t want to put in an ad.”

“Hey—sometimes you find some good shit on there. People just giving away free shit.”

“Isn’t that kinda sketch?”

“That’s why you carry.”

His face loses all color as if it were pooling to the floor. “Are you carrying a gun?”

She squats to the ground behind a clothes rack and pulls up one of her pant legs to reveal a dagger wrapped in an unstained leather sheath. He follows her behind the rack, his eyes shifting as if they were going to do the deed, and lowering his voice to a hush.

His eyes glance over the serpent-like wavering of the cold, steel blade. “Is that even legal?”

“Of course not,” she says, her tone filled with contentment as if she were overflowing with exhilaration. The thrill of skirting the law at a knife’s edge was more substantial than any high imaginable, knowing that at any given moment, one slip-up might land her behind cold, iron bars, caged with those on petty crimes like animals for slaughter.

“Put that shit away then,” he says, brushing her away before rising from the dirty, concrete floor that resembled a Jackson Pollock painting. “I’ve got to grab my things before I come over.”

She rises from the floor, pushing down her pant leg. Her discolored black jeans looked as if they were thrown in a laundry machine with bleach, brown splotches bleeding into the natural fibers. “Sounds good, little bro.” She embraces him with so much force that he thought this might be the last time they would see each other; her tears of contentment clinging to his cheek.

The bell cracks as the door flies open; the wind brushes inside as he exits. The midday dusk had already set in, but the city’s lights polluted the violet sky. The moon waned low like a stretching Siamese cat, clawing at the stars as though they were mice. A somber silence filled the air as he exhaled a weak puff of dew mixed with saliva; his hands tucked deep in his worn jeans pockets. Should have brought a coat, he thought, sniffling runny snot from his nose.

At the platform, he watched the times race across the line overhead. They flashed intermittently, say for a few LEDs that were slightly delayed. The souls that stood idle before the empty rail line leaned toward the gap as if it were pulling them toward the edge. Some stood closer than others. Perhaps, he thought, they might sprint for the opening doors and plant themselves on one of the craven plastic seats welded to the car, afraid to stand among the strangers. They must be women, he assured himself, but their coats hid their silhouette.

Once the grinding ceased, he watched as the rats filed in, creating a bottleneck which had them pushing and shoving as if there was no tomorrow: the last train for the night.

Shoulder-to-shoulder, shoes stepping on shoes, he was slowly crammed into the car. While sardines may be packed orderly, the passengers resembled the purged stomach contents of a lowly drunkard; baby food browns, and black-eyed peas flowed endlessly with the shifting of the car. His eyes darted around at the utterly mundane, banal off-white of the interior that stood starkly in contrast to the faded bronzes and yellows where they sat. The souls stared deeply at their fluorescent screens. He could not help but stare at their faces, though their wispy souls were being pulled toward the device as if they had their own gravitational pull more potent than the Earth’s. He considered, for a moment, striking up a conversation with the soul beside him, but before he could muster the courage to, he retreated into his hollow hole, afraid of conflict and confrontation.

A shout roared around them, shaking the car as their faces broke from the fluorescent light, and scanning their surroundings like meerkats. He watched as fur coats shuffled toward him. Faces retreated into his side of the car, appropriating what little air rested before them. Suddenly, the roaring turned to screams as they parted toward the interior paneling of the car. In the confusion and panic, shrills of women and children cried of grave horrors. “He’s stabbed ‘em! He’s killing her!”

A young woman pushed through the crowd, and a large blotch of crimson appeared from her bronze jacket like a blood orange squashed under the heel of a juicer’s foot. She held her abdomen as if it were weighing her down immensely. Souls scattered as her essence dripped onto the ash-gray floor. His teeth chattered in his mouth, shut, grinding away at the enamel. He watched her sunlit face wince in pain, grueling over her insides flexing and jerking before collapsing to the floor. No soul came to her side as she pressed her hands deep into her wound. Instead, their attention lay on the persecutor. His eyes raced up to see the assailant, switchblade in hand, espousing his defense before his jury of peers.

“She wouldn’t move—the damn nigress—ain’t right to make me stand. Damn welfare queens don’t deserve the right to sit!”

A well-built man whose graying beard with streaks of racing stripes erupted behind her, interjecting, “Damn cracker, look whatchu done to that poor sister! What that poor woman done to ya?”

An uproar filled the car as the bystander stood at attention before pushing his way through the crowd to face the cracker, switchblade in his calloused hands, slashing the air as if it were a leather whip. This was no crime of passion; instead, it was a crime of hate, the poor woman at the wrong place at the wrong time.

He watched the soft lips of the women muttering to themselves, more than likely in their mother tongue, a final prayer to themselves, gesturing a cross before their chests. He wished he could think of a prayer, perhaps, some safeguard or solace might comfort him in the midst of the chaos. Instead, he thought only of his sister waiting in her apartment for his arrival, within the confines of her four walls, versus the metal paneling of the car. The jutting shrills of iron grinding hot against cold steel rang through the bulbous rivets, triggering flight in the occupants.

As they funneled to the doors, the assailant stood ready to strike as the older man raised his fists. The man’s raven coat shadowed over her; the overhead light shining on her face, illuminating her visage like a bleeding saint before his patrons and followers. Her billowing cries echoed through the car even as they pushed the doors open, jumping the gap as they fell to the platform. Outside, men dressed in navy stood at attention, their hands gripping the billy club tied to their belts, ignorant of the chaos ensuing inside. As the souls inside became sparse, the cracker lunged forward, his hand thrusting the hilt toward the towering man. With his quick footing, the man dodged the potentially fatal blow, crashing to the floor along with the knife. Streaks of rouge ran down the edge of the blade.

Seeing the liberated blade, its tattered hilt wrapped in cloth, resting before his shoes, he quickly pressed his sole against it; the cracker’s eyes filled with anger at a bystander involving themself in their altercation. “Could use a hand o’ here,” the man shouts in the direction of the officers.

“All I could remember after that was seeing their billy clubs striking against the man to separate him from the cracker,” he added. The blinding fluorescent overhead light flickered as gnats crashed into the plastic cover. He looks up to notice the carcass of what must have been a fly, a horse fly perhaps, with how big it was, nestled on the other side of the yellowed plastic cover.

A thumb-of-a-man wearing a pink polo shirt leaned back in his chair. “So the Black guy was just defending that woman?” His head reflected the fluorescent light when he pivoted, shining a glare on my face when he leaned in.

“Yeah, no doubt about it.” My phone rested on the table between us, untouched. “Mind if I check the time?”

The thumb man shook his head and began writing something down. Picking up the cold metal of the anterior, he was reminded that this was all meant to make me uncomfortable, as if he had assaulted that woman. He saw the messages filling his phone, panels of green and blue bubbles overlapping. “How much longer do ya need me? My sister’s expecting me uptown.”

He rolls the onion-skin paper over, covering his notes before grabbing his things. “I think we’re done here.”

He thought for a moment, ultimately, what the point of the interrogation was, blurting out, “Do ya have enough to convict him of a hate crime?” He felt that if anything was to be given to him, he was owed some purview in the case’s outcome.

“Assault with a deadly weapon. Not enough evidence for a hate crime.”

“—Even with everything he said? He attacked a Black woman, and subsequently attacked the Black man defending her.”

The thumb man turned to me as we exited the closet-sized room. “Gonna be hard to prove to a jury of white people that he purposefully attacked them.” The thumb man turned away and continued walking, and he followed behind him. “Besides, the guy’s got a good lawyer. Jury nullification is already on the menu.”

He ceases in the hallway. Men in navy uniforms scurry around him like salmon trudging upstream. They were blinded by the world around them, their goal ingrained in their heads as if it were instinct. Their lives remain unchanged, but what was there to say for her? Might her screams of douleur hollar through the streets?

Or might it go gently in that good night?