It was dark and cold. I didn’t know why I was outside. The sun had set many hours ago behind the sharp, dead, industrially artificial peaks of the skyline. My feet were wet from wetting myself earlier. At first, they were warm. Then, they became cold. This all sounded too familiar.

 As I made my way up the hill with much difficulty, my numb limbs refusing to obey me, I saw a group of boys around my age standing around on a street corner. They were passing a small brown object amongst each other, taking turns placing it near their mouths. Upon thinking, I determined it to be a marijuana joint. They placed their lips around it and filled their lungs with intoxicating smoke. Then they laughed.

They saw me. First only one of them. I made eye-contact with him. His eyes were empty, like the saucer that held the milk for my cat, ****. I needed to hurry. **** was getting hungry. He liked milk. He also liked mice. We had a lot of those. He liked catching them, then slowly licking away their skin while they were still alive, making them die of pain. He’s so cute, ****.

The boy’s eyes were glazed over with a film of jaundice. Hepatitis or not, he spotted me and a smile of foreseen satisfaction spread across his face.

“Hey, look at this stud!” he said to his friends, while pointing at me.

The whole group, like a well trained phalanx in the times of Alexander of Macedon, turned towards me, their eyes no more sharp than something not very sharp at all.

“Yeah, he’s lookin at us. The fuck you lookin at, boy?”

I tried to answer, but a clump of fear clogged my throat, the way a log clogs the Amazon. That would have to be a very large log, since the Amazon is so large. Perhaps the Amazon wasn't the right river to use.

“He ain’t talkin, he think he tough or sumthin. You tough, boy?”

I knew they were going to hit me. I wanted to run, but for some reason, I couldn’t. I just waited for the punches to hit me, the way a woman would await a stoning during the Biblical times, when God walked the Earth.

Then it came.

I woke up on the street, unable to move. Feeling weaker than a man who just took his cousin to prom, I gathered enough strength to move my hand to my face and feel around for the damage. It was worse than Nagasaki the day after.

I heard a voice near by. It was Mr. N***, the owner of the Deli, talking to somebody.

“Those good-for-nothing scumbags! Beating a mute gimp like that! What are they provin?!”

Then I remembered that the reason I couldn’t run was because I have to use a wheelchair to get around, and the reason I couldn’t say anything was because I was a mute. It all made sense to me – I understood it.