Who Am I? » [Stucky]

9. Not Looking For Trouble

Bucky continued his lazy lingering in town but decided to limit his park visits to a minimum. He was unsure what kind of anthropological horrors he might encounter there after the last time. He just kept to himself and kept himself busy, keeping his head down and remaining unnoticed.

Wandering the streets gave him a small peace of mind as he began to befriend the streets, confiding in the twisting maze of alleys and pathways and roads. He would risk shortcuts across abandoned alleys. He was learning to trust and explore outreaches he never had before. He was growing more gutsy and innovative as the days drifted by, and it felt good.

Sometimes the locations that he chanced would remind him of memories squatting in the unexplored crevices of his mind. He would stumble across somewhere he had been before: he could feel it in the frolicking of his gut, and envision it sometimes. He was piecing himself back together like a disbanded jigsaw. But there was still so much missing, so much that had spiralled beyond his reach like leaves on a breeze; his personality was cracked and scattered and incomplete.

He roamed freely, his mind drifting and his feet shuffling absentmindedly. Occupying his devoid schedule.

One day he rounded a corner that seemed all too familiar.

Sometimes I think you like getting punched.

I had him on the ropes!

There were some ghostly papers, tumbling on the floor, spectral and translucent.

How many times is this? ... Ah, you're from Paramus now. You know it's illegal to lie on your enlistment form. And seriously? Jersey?

Did you get your orders?

The One-o-Seventh... Sergeant James Barnes. Shipping for England first thing tomorrow.

Again the ringing headache overtook him. It was like a fire storm rattling through the empty veins of his mind. He cried out in agony, doubling over and clutching his head, ripping at his ragged tresses with both hands. He collapsed against the wall, writhing in agony, his eyes squeezed tightly shut and his body incapacitated by the extreme pain that was overwashing him.

Just then a lucid voice rung from the other end of the alley, drawing him from his delusion daydream and back to reality.

"Well looky here, boys..." One lone voice drawled in a local Brooklyn accent. "It appears we've got ourselves a tramp."

A chorus of laughs became clear, there were more.

Bucky extracted his wilted head from where it was furled tightly to his perenium and looked up, squinting through his tangled tatty hair. There were five shady silhouettes looming before him, shaded by shadow and lingering in the fumes being excreted from the street. The gaseous waste chugged out by cars and boilers swam around them in a stinking sea of steam.

Even dizzied like he was stood on a round about, he unwound himself, training his rabid ravenous eyes on the troupe; the figures unsharp as if he was looking through a stained camera lens.

One sauntered forwards into the small spotlight that split between the highrise flats either side of them, the apparent ring leader of the entourage. He had a pasty acne marred face and slick spiked up dark hair. He looked to be about seventeen, young and dumb and unaware of who the man before him was. He looked comically dubious with his little make-believe mafia clique.

"What're you doing on our turf?" He snapped, giving Bucky a filthy look as if he were chewing gum stuck to his shoe.

Dishevelled, weak and hardly a challenge, he saw no threat in Bucky.