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Tougher Than She Looked

James Bates

    She was a poet. She lived alone and often caught her muse by walking the streets of the city she called home.
    Her friends cautioned her, “You need to watch out, Lily. The creeps are out there. Drug dealers, pimps and a hundred different kinds of deviants. You’re no match for any of them.”
    Lily understood. She was a tiny, waif of a girl and had experienced her fair share of run-ins, the most recent a three hundred pound guy with a shaved head and tattoos from here to there. She’d gotten away but he’d been able to nick her on the arm with his knife before she outran him. Never again, she thought to herself.
    She knew it was dangerous on the streets, but she was also compelled to be there, to write her poetry. Tonight was a perfect night for it - the misting rain and colored lights blazing from the dive bars and cheap pay by the hour hotels. She loved the way the red neon danced through the falling rain drops, a city’s soul illuminated in reflected light.
    She hurried out to the street, composing a poem as she went. The rain settles soft, muting hard edges. The streets are washed clean from the filth of the day.
    She walked faster, opening her heart to the city, alive with color, inundating her with more images. Red neon lights up the night, fleeting comfort for the lost and lonely.
    She was on fire with words flowing - a deluge. She was glad she brought her umbrella. She planned to be out for a long time.
    Behind her she didn’t see the big man step from a shadowy doorway. A bald man with tattoos. He chuckled to himself as he fell in behind her, fingering the stiletto in his pocket. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he whispered, wanting her badly, even more so after she’d escaped that first time.
    Oblivious, Lily splashed through puddles, more words forming. Rain is the life blood of the streets, a harmonic heart beat thumping to the sound of thunder. Shadows are friends to those who love the night. They greet you...”
    Suddenly she was grabbed from behind and a tattooed arm crushed down tight on her windpipe, gagging her, choking her. She tried to spin away but couldn’t. Stale breath whispered in her ear, laughing, “You’re all mine.”
    With a surge of energy Lily stabbed the metal tip of her umbrella into his foot, thankful she’d sharpened it to a needle point edge after that last run-in. He screamed and let go, but she didn’t run. Instead, she turned to her attacker, stepped forward and stabbed her umbrella hard, jamming the tip with all her might into his soft belly. Then she stepped back and watched as he fell to the street, blood flowing, her next poem already forming. She was a city girl at home in the streets, and she was tougher than she looked.

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