Sucker-punch in the head 😡
A guy sucker-punched me in the head. Right in the left temple. I didn’t even realize what was happening until I heard a loud noise and a smack right between my ears. And then my head rolled sideways and snapped back from the impact. He jumped and fled the bus. For a moment there was complete silence, then someone asked me if I was okay. The bus driver came over, and a bunch of people started talking between themselves about me.
“I’m fine,” I said, the trained response to anything (unless I was bleeding and dying).
“Did you see that? He just hit her!” Said a woman with long pink hair. Or rather, it was pink strands in her blond hair that wasn’t blond naturally. Bleached. She had big funky glasses.
The driver was a large woman with a kind, round face, and tiny braids going down to her uniform collar.
“You want to report it?” she said.
I just stared at her. I don’t think I comprehended what she said. “You wanna report it?” she repeated.
“What’s the point?” I said.
“The cops in this town are shit!” That came from a guy who sat up front. In his twenties. He wore a pink oversize t-shirt and a baseball cap. “This town is SHIT!” He shook his arm, to emphasize it.
“Then why are you here?” I said.
“Just one of those shit towns everyone ends up in.” He shook his head and laughed.
“Look at her! She’s tough! Talking and all.” A bunch of folks were calling to me from behind.
I started piecing together what happened.
Before I got on the bus, I got on the light rail. Sat in the back. Not too far back, closer to the doors. At one stop a guy in a yellow hoodie jumped on. He had a severe look about him, searching with his eyes. He sat in the back row. After a few stops, a woman with long braids around her head started crying. I looked up. A man she was with said something nasty to her.
“Yeah, you cry!” erupted a yell from behind. The yellow hoodie.
And then suddenly there was a fight. Ice flying. And the yellow hoodie jumping off the rail, and an old man in his sixties chasing him and yelling, “I’m a veteran! I’m not putting up with none of this shit! He told me he’d kill me! What is this shit? What is this I fought for this country for? You come back, you scumbag! You come back, boy! You ain’t got nothing on my years, you punk!”
People sat staring at it all, not one of them moved.
I got off at my stop and waited for a good twenty minutes to transfer to the bus. The bus came, I got on and sat in the middle. Got on the phone. And while talking, I noticed the yellow hoodie board the bus. He looked straight at me, recognizing me, and there were these searching eyes again. I kept talking. He sat to the left of me, and this is the moment I’ll never forget. My internal alarm system went off.
It was yelling, “GET AWAY! GET AWAY!” But I ignored it and kept talking on the phone.
Sure enough, when he couldn’t get my attention by staring, the guy yelled. It was a war cry. No words in it, just a shout. At that very moment, fireworks exploded within me.
“GET AWAY NOW!!!”
I ignored it again and made a joke to my friend on the phone, apologizing for someone yelling, saying I was in a public place, saying—
WHACK!!!
Later, when people crowded about me, it struck me that none of them knew what to do. They were all looking to me for help, including the driver. They were asking me questions, but none took any action. They were all scared. And I wasn’t scared, strangely. I was more pissed at myself for ignoring my alarm system. And in the end, I made them all laugh. We joked about all the numbnuts out there, and about growing up in sketchy neighborhoods, and all that. It wasn’t until I got off the bus that the shock set in. No one actually helped. No one did anything to prevent it when the guy yelled. And that included me. I did nothing when he yelled on the light rail before he assaulted that old man. I ignored it just like everyone else ignored it. So how was I different? Just another random target.
But it made me think about writing again. There was a story there. A nice, well-rounded Stephen King type of story about our collective stupidity, and ignorance, and sickness. Pain, and fear, and also hope. Our humanity that is all those things and more. It made me think that I miss it, this artistic commentary on life. And it made me think that I enjoy doing it.
This is the first story I’ve written in almost 2 years. 🥳