Man Up

He laid under her stool where he had fallen. His eyes looked up at her through their swollen and bloodied lids. He had fought well, but there were too many. That’s what happens when you piss off Lysander Constantino, as she well knew.

She had “belonged” to Lysander for a while, several years ago. She used the term “belong” because it had not been a consensual relationship. It had been a time of nightmares. Without asking for permission he had pushed his way into her apartment, taking her when he would, animal-like, rough, hard and fast. Some couldn’t help her, others wouldn’t. Lysander was a huge man, Greek, with curly hair, flat lips, and dull eyes. Once he had stripped her naked and done it to her brutally on the floor of her apartment in front of his Greek cronies, just to show them that he could, to show them his control over her, to make her fear, and to make them fear him. She had been afraid to ask for help. She didn’t know anyone as strong as he was, or as powerful, so she had bent to his will and she had suffered.

Lysander had grown bored of her and moved on, but she still saw him around the neighborhood. He still looked at her and smiled that horrible, knowing smile that terrified her yet. She saw him with younger girls and she saw their fear... it was easy to see it when you knew it, the rounded eyes, the huddled walk, the ridiculous clothes he made them wear that he thought were sexy. When she saw him she always felt an intense desire to run. To run fast. To run anywhere. She felt that desire now, but the man under her stool was looking at her through his swollen slits of eyes... and he was smiling. “How,” she wondered, “could he manage a smile after a beating like that?”

Knowing what it would get her, she wet her napkin and climbed from the stool. Her body trembled with fear as she crouched beside the beaten man and wiped the blood from his face. She heard the devil yell behind her, but she continued to wipe. She heard him coming, but did not turn her head. She closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see it coming. The man’s hand found hers. He rose from the floor, pulling her behind him with the hand. Even in her fear she noticed the hand’s warmth, and its strength. It was a hand that touched hers very differently than did those of Lysander Constantino.

Like two bears the men met, howling and pawing. Lysander looked to use his great size and strength to batter the man, while the stranger was smaller, but much faster. The stranger’s blows rained on Lysander Constantino’s head and torso until Lysander was chopped down like a tree, to lie still and dead on the ground. She watched it all in wonder. She had never seen such savagery, and did not know that men were capable of it. She wanted to turn her eyes from it, but she did not... she could not. It was fascinating and terrifying and shocking to see. She had watched it the same way those men had looked at her that night as they watched Lysander overpower her and have his way.

When it was over the stranger looked at her with wild eyes through heaving breaths. His clothes were bloody and torn, just as his skin was. Once more, through the blood and around his swollen lips, he smiled at her. He took a whiskey bottle from an abandoned table and took a long pull before staggering to the door, and then he was gone.

No one tried to stop him. No word broke the silence. Men gathered around what was left of Lysander Constanino, a bad man. Finally a voice asked the question, “What started it?”

A finger from the crowd pointed at her. “Lysander called that woman a whore.”

This time she followed that intense desire to run... to run, and to run fast. But this time she ran with a different kind of fear. This time she ran not from a man, but to a man.