What's The Worst... Chapter 16

He continued charging, stumbling almost blindly forwards. Away from the location of the initial fracas, he appeared as nothing more than a deeply anti-social young man in a hurry to be elsewhere. Those that saw him coming tried to avoid his course, those that didn’t reacted indignantly to being shoved aside but by then he’d moved on.

He heard nothing of their voices; he only heard the laughing all around him and the shrieking, swooping and diving across his path. Both getting louder...

He could feel himself getting hotter again; the exertion of racing through the crowd taking its toll on his body, his muscles and his breathing. So many people, everyone in his way, all trying to slow his progress, his escape from what had happened. In his mind he started to shout, “Outta my way”... “Get outta my way”...

With each internalised shout his anger started to rise again.

He stumbled over a grate around one of the trees decorating the pedestrian area. Cursing, he crashed into a couple of big guys who were stood with their backs toward him. They looked the sort of guys who would spend a lot of time discussing loud bikes and louder music whilst slugging back beer after beer...

As he bounced off the larger one, the other turned toward him, “Fuck dude, that ain’t cool.”

The boy looked up, flung his right arm from across his chest to his right as though brushing something aside, at the top of his voice he screamed, “GET OUTTA MY WAY!!!”

The darkness swirled around him and surged forward; he could feel it flow through him, burning cold piercing his core, driving forward...

The two big guys both cried out as the coldest of forces crashed into their bodies, forcing them apart in separate and opposite directions. Both were winded as they were lifted off their feet, sideways and backward, and dumped down onto the pavement on their backs, each still feeling the burning of the cold in their chests and hearing the howling screaming in their ears.

Neither felt inclined to struggle back to his feet and challenge the scrawny kid with an attitude problem.

The boy recovered and stumbled on, veering back toward the centre of the street and the denser crowds, his chest aching and his lungs burning.