Save Me || Jalex

Chapter 1: Alexander William Gaskarth

Alex woke up with a start, blurry chocolate eyes darting around the damp alleyway for the danger that had stirred him. He slumped back against the cold brick wall once he realized it was all in his head and closed his eyes in an attempt to block out the memories. It didn't work. Fucking nightmares. They didn't come often anymore, but when they did, it hurt like hell. The worst parts of his miserable life playing on a loop, and he could never wake up.

Alex could hear the cars driving back and forth on the road the alley connected to. People going to work, taking their kids to the shitty public high school just down the road, going shopping in big fancy cars, and not giving a thought to the less fortunate freezing their asses off in the December cold. He sighed and shakily pushed himself off the ground. It wasn't doing him any good to sit here when he could be trying to get his next meal.

He pulled his thin jacket tighter around him as he exited the alleyway. The sun was just starting to peer over the Baltimore skyline, and maybe Alex would have noticed how beautiful it was if he wasn't so hungry. It had been almost five days since his last meal and he was starting to feel the effects.

He walked the two blocks it took to get to the soup kitchen, praying that they would let him in again. Last week he and some kid got into a fight after he called Alex a cocksucker and they had both gotten thrown out and told not to show their faces there again. Hopefully Zack was volenteering today. Maybe he would let him in. He and Zack had went to highschool together before Alex lived on the streets and they had been pretty close friends. Sometimes Zack would even bring him some of the leftover food from his job at the coffee shop on South Broadway.

The kitchen was a very easy place to miss, a narrow building tucked away between a library and an old antique shop, with only a painted piece of wood hanging above the door boring the title "St. Mary's Catholic Church Soup Kitchen". The building itself was made of faded red bricks and had a bench out front that looked as if it would break if any weight at all was put on it. It might not have looked like much to an outsider, but to Alex it meant food, and that wasn't something he would pass up.

As Alex opened the door, a sudden wave of comforting warmth hit him. He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of soup, slightly tainted with the scent of all the other homeless people around him, but Alex was used to the smell after 5 years of living with it. He walked up to the back of the line and waited to get his food.

Luckily Zack had been volenteering today, and after 10 minutes of waiting in line, Alex had gotten his chicken noodle soup (at least he hoped that was chicken) without any fuss. The hot bowl of soup burned his hands, but it was much more welcome than the numbing cold that they had been feeling earlier. He looked around and spotted a mostly vacant table in the corner of the room that only had two older men playing with a set of old, battered cards. He sat and ate his soup slowly, savoring every warm spoonful until it was all gone. After he had finally finished, he returned his bowl to the woman up front and left the heated kitchen.

It was snowing now, much to Alex's dismay, so he sped up his pace, hoping to reach the alley he usually stayed in before it became a blizzard. As he aproached the entrance to the pathway between the two buildings, he heard voices. The closer he got, the louder they became. He tried to stop at the entrance so he wouldn't interrupt whatever the people were doing, but he slid on a patch of ice and fell around the corner, landing face first in the snow.

Alex felt a pain in his side and he knew that it was going to bruise later. He tried to stand up, but he soon felt someone's boot connect with his stomach, sending him sprawling to the ground again. He looked up at his attacker and knew exactly who it was. Hell, most of the homeless people in Baltimore knew who it was. Brent Wilson.

Brent Wilson was some punk in high school who would beat up random homeless people while one of his friends recorded it so he could brag about how big and bad he was later. He always had 3 other people with him, one holding the camera and two to hold back the victim while Brent punched them until he got bored of it. Alex had never came into contact with him or his group, at least up until now, and he was thankful for that. Most of the people he knew that got attacked by them ended up in bad shape, with only broken ribs and black eyes if they were lucky.

Alex could feel two men grabbing his arms and pulling him up. He tried to fight back, but it was no use. Two strong football players versus one scrawny guy who had barely eaten this week? Alex had no choice but to sit there and take it as Brent punched him and kicked him in the stomach, in the face, and anywhere else he could reach.

When the boys finally finished their assault on Alex, they dropped his arms and he fell forward, coughing up blood onto the clean white snow. Alex tried to crawl a bit farther into the alley, but every time he pulled himself forward black spots filled his vision and he would cough up more blood. He could only make it a few feet, just far enough in that it would be hard for someone to see him before finally passing out for good.

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Okay so I'm really not happy with the end, and I'll probably rewrite it but I'm writing on mobile at the moment and my Wattpad app is glitching out for some reason so it's really hard to type. Anyway, I have you enjoyed and the next chapter will be from Jack's POV, so look out for that :)

Edit: Rewrote the ending a tad. I'll probably edit the chapter more later. Toodles guys :D