Boxcutter
Georgy is lying face-up in the dimly lit residential back alley that connects Franklin Avenue and Windsor Boulevard. The dark mid-January sky comes slowly into focus above him. The ringing in his ears fades into silence and now he can hear the white noise of nighttime suburbia, the ambient hum of life itself. For a moment he is mortally confused, utterly lost in time and space, but soon he reorients, takes stock. My name is Georgy Babayan, I am 74 years-old, I’ve been mugged.
Unless his internal clock is failing him along with the rest of his body, it must be a little after 11 p.m. He’s not sure how long he was out for.
Georgy has walked down this alley a thousand times in his life. It cuts through a block of apartment complexes not far from his own home. To the tenants who live on either side of this 350-yard alley, it practically passes for a shared yard, albeit a dingy one, with its overflowing dumpsters and graffitied-up multi-bay garages and hundreds of cigarette butts littering the cracked concrete. It’s one of many paths Georgy can take to the Windsor Market, which he walks to daily for groceries whether he needs them or not. It’s a walk he looks forward to, a reason to leave the house and breathe some fresh air. His sleep schedule has been erratic, and lately the urge to walk has been hitting him late at night. On this particular night, Georgy walked to the Windsor Market for cat food. He’s recently developed a begrudging affection for the strays that’ve made themselves cozy in the backyard of his small bungalow. He can feel the plastic shopping bag of cat food still lying at his feet. He supposes the young man who mugged him must not be a cat owner, then. He’ll be sure to pass this helpful tip along to the police, if he gets that far.
Georgy managed to sneak a glance at his assailant’s face before it all happened. He was remarkably young, maybe sixteen or seventeen. His gaunt, sun-bronzed face showed only the earliest signs of manhood, wisps of facial hair growing in patches over his acne-blemished cheeks. He was small but cut a menacing figure, had a cold determination in his gait and something feral in his beady, black eyes. Georgy knew what was about to happen before the young man even flashed the boxcutter.
He made no effort to put up a fight. That hardly felt like an option. He simply froze up, remained quiet and still as the young man held the boxcutter to his—Georgy’s—throat with one hand and raided his pockets with the other. It only took a few seconds for the young man to rid Georgy of his wallet, cell phone, and wristwatch. At that point Georgy expected the young man to run off, but he didn’t. He simply lingered for a beat, beckoning Georgy to look up and face him for further instructions. When he did, Georgy saw a flicker of something in the young man’s eye that suggested he was yearning for an even cheaper thrill tonight. The young man wanted to cross a line, wanted to test his own capacity for violence and transgression. Georgy braced himself as the young man cocked his fist back. Then, reality receded for a long while, and then Georgy woke up to the sensation of cold concrete nipping at the back of his neck.
He feels around his trouser pockets to confirm his phone was taken, like he remembers. He doesn’t have it in him to scream, let alone stand up, so he is at the mercy of a good samaritan here. All that he can see in his immediate field of vision is the night sky above him, but he has a composite sketch of this alleyway etched in his memory, so he knows that the apartments on either side of him have windows that face the alley—possibly a tenant could spot him down here and come to his rescue. But it’s just as likely, he supposes, that he would be mistaken for a bum. A small blight that will move on or be moved by morning.
He checks in with himself, realizes he’s not feeling any pain at the moment. The irony of this isn’t lost on him. On a normal day, everything hurts: his back, neck, knees, feet. What a strange reprieve this is.
He makes his first attempt to move, and the floodgates are immediately opened—everything hurts. His brain is throbbing in his skull. He feels like he took a bat to the face. There’s a sharp and searing pain in his spine. It’s a mean pain, one that seems to have its own personal grudge with him. He realizes suddenly that he has to vomit and it takes all his strength to turn his head to the side so as to avoid drowning. He empties the contents of his stomach onto the concrete, then turns his head back to face the sky once again.
He tries to draw a deep breath but can’t get any air in through his nose. He realizes it’s stopped up with dried blood. He tries to blow some of it out, but this sends a terrible pain rippling through his entire skull.