"Please, don't hurt me..." I pleaded, sweat emerging from my skin as I sank further onto the ground, wishing that the earth would open up beneath me and suck me in.
"I told you," he grumbled through clenched teeth,"drop the phone, and I won't hurt you. Now, it's too late for ya." I had no time to react before he grabbed a fistful of my hair and began to drag me down the alley, ignoring my cries of pain.
"Stop! Somebody help me!" I screamed, but immediately I was swamped with regret as the man retaliated with a violent kick to my ribs.
"Shut up!" he growled, pointing the blade of the knife at me. I whimpered and slowly got up as he wrapped his hand around my arm. "Come on." He surged forward, barely giving me time to catch up. I stumbled, my feet scraping the damp concrete. "You're not a cripple. Let's go."
"What do you want?" I sobbed, my lips trembling, my arm growing numb from the man's relentless grip on my arm.
He revealed his decaying teeth, several nonexistent, as if they had fallen out. I blamed tobacco as the culprit. The stench was undeniably thick. "I guess you'll just have to find out, girl." I couldn't go with him, but I couldn't run away. He was too strong. I wish I had taken the advantage of those self defense classes that my mom tried to make me attend as a teenager.
"No!" I screamed and kicked him square in the groin. While he was down, I took my chance, sprinting down the dank alley. He roared in pain, but recovered quickly, chasing after me. "Leave me alone!" I thought I had lost him, but the arm wrapped around my throat said otherwise.
I didn't see the knife. I didn't see it gleam in the ominous dark, blindly hiding behind me. But I felt it collide with my thigh, a slash that ran from my hip to just above my knee. I hollered in pain, screaming as I fell to the ground, coveting the bloody carnage that cascaded down my leg. "What's wrong with you?" I cried, my chest heaving as I tried to avoid blacking out, but the world was already beginning to tremble. My knees became wobbly, my head too heavy for my shoulder to bear. I fell forward just as I heard yelling, but not from the man.
"What the hell? Leave her alone!"
"Who do you think you are to say that, boy?"
I heard the sound of knuckles pummeling flesh, and in the corner of my eye, I could see a body slumped against the crumbling meloncholy brick wall, defined by the old paint peeling away that reminded me something of a nightmare.
"Let's get you out of here." I felt myself being lifted up into a pair of strong arms, and that was the last thing I remembered before my world spun into nothingness.
-
My eyes flickered open slowly, falling victim to the painfully bright light above me. Where am I? Am I dead?
My blood felt like lead, my bones too heavy to move as I came out of sedation.
"Don't move. Just rest..." said a calm voice.
"Who... what...?" The owner of the voice seemed to tower several feet above me. I identified brown hair, but my vision was shaking far to much for me to recognize anything else. I definitely didn't know this person.
"My name is Brendon," said the voice, but it sounded hollow, like I was drifting farther and farther away from him. "You must be Joe's sister. I'm a friend, it's okay." I felt an intense but numbing pressure on my left hand, which was later revealed as him gently squeezing my hand reassuringly.
"Wha- What happened......?" I whispered, slowly sitting up as a headache began to cluster near my left temple.
"You've been attacked. I'm not sure what would've happened if I didn't find you."
I squinted, my vision adjusting. "Wait. You look familiar... Are you Brendon Urie?"
He nodded, but now was no time to panic over a celebrity. I nodded slowly in response. "My leg hurts..." I whimpered, my fingers lightly brushing my right thigh.
"You were cut... They were able to stitch it up. It was pretty deep. You lost a fair amount of blood." My head crashed back onto the pillow as a tear trickled from the corner of my eye. And just like I had been hit with a bullet, I started sobbing heavily. "No, don't cry! Um, maybe you should sleep.... I think Joe and the rest of the guys are planning on visiting you this afternoon."
"Oh- Okay...." Soon my eyelids became to heavy to keep open, and Brendon's face became distorted and slowly faded away.
-
I didn't know how long I had been asleep, but it felt too brief to make me feel well rested. The next thing I knew, my eyelid was being roughly opened, a white hot light shining in my eye, a burning sensation burrowing itself deep in my head.
"No concussion," said a woman to someone I couldn't see before promptly disappearing. I said back and focused on the IV needle resting inside my arm, my eyes following the tube to the bag of clear liquid that was slowly being pumped into my bloodstream.
"Melanie? Are you awake?" My head lolled to the side, recognizing Patrick's sweet yet fearful voice.
"Patrick?" I whispered. He smiled and nodded.
"Brendon told me what happened..... How you were attacked..." He bit his lip, his voice cracking. He looked away, for every time he looked at me, his eyes would well up with tears. "Are you okay?"
A smile tugged at my lips. "I'm fine. I'm just gonna have to take it easy while I heal." He nodded and sucked in his bottom lip.
"We shouldn't have let you go alone."
"No, it's.... it was my fault. I got lost and ended up in a bad part of town. I really owe it to Brendon for saving me. That guy could have killed me." Patrick nodded before a wave of silence swept over us. "Um, where are the guys?"
He blinked, as if being woken from a daydream. "Uh... They went to get you get-well present."
"Oh. That's nice of them..." I said behind ad yawn.
"Uh... Can I get you anything? Food? An extra pillow? Water-"
"Patrick. I'm fine. Don't worry. Your company is enough." I became quiet immediately. I didn't mean for those words to come out the way they did.
"Okay. Just let me know if you need anything. I'll be right here." He squeezed my hand, but he never did let go. I'm sure I had drifted off with a smile on my face, his sharp eyes staining my eyelids.
