Breaker by Richard Thomas

day. We are not made for the daylight, for offices, for social settings. We are loners, fractured in so many ways, fate finding us, the hammer descending with finality. And at the same time, we do everything we can to pull it closer, all of it—the danger, chaos, and death. Like a magnet to iron filings, we draw these sharp barbs toward our bared flesh, and yet we’re still surprised when we wake up torn, bleeding, and alone.
    There must be a way to break this cycle of abuse, to change what we are, to evolve. We were both innocent once—can we become innocent again? It doesn’t seem likely. The past is permanent, carved in stone—but the future, that’s still ours to determine. So maybe there’s hope.
    I need a new line of work. The fights pay well, but it’s only a matter of time before I kill somebody, before there is a raid, arrests, and jail. I would not do well in jail. I would survive, but I don’t imagine I’d play nice. Pushing myself farther and farther into the depths of the facility, isolation wrapping around me like a blanket. My size, my face, my hair—the horrors that make me who I am are the same things that would draw one challenger after another until I’d have no choice but to hit, to maim, and ultimately to kill. My sentence would grow, and I’d never see the outside world again. Part of me relishes the idea, but not as long as Stephanie is alive. There are others, like Natalie, or the girl on the train, who benefit from my presence.
    While my heart turned to stone long ago, perhaps somewhere out there is a kindred spirit, a moss to grow and hold together my cracked and dissolving center. I have hope, desire, and remorse. The violence of my past, the memories I’ve pushed down deep, these rotten beams and fractured bricks define my shape and form, but not what’s inside.
    What to do with my skills and experience? Boxer, fighter, bouncer, goon—I put myself in situations where the only way to succeed, the only way to survive, is to use my fists, the rage that simmers inside me for all of eternity boiling to the surface when needed, spilling over now and then, burning friend and foe alike.
    I take a deep breath.
    Where has this all come from? Not just Stephanie, her presence, and her thievery. No. That can’t be it.
    A gaggle of girls wanders in front of the apartment building, chewing gum, laughing, some with headphones on, others with them casually slung around their necks, music seeping out. Each member of the gang, the clique, is playing out her role with a flourish—the goddess, the patron, the innocent, the queen, the orphan, the mother, the jester, and the sage. One speaks, and many laugh, perhaps some taking mental notes, perfume drifting into the air—berries, and vanilla, and something darkly sweet. Most are dressed in gray and black, their boots, their gloves, their hats. A few, such as the jester, break out of the mold with splashes of pink, purple, yellow, or lime green. Arms around shoulders, secrets whispered into one ear, passed to the other, and then the next—
last night, his hands, by the park, never thought he would, never wanted him to, yes you did, will he be there tonight, will he call later, what do you care, you know you do.
    And trailing behind them all, but not by much, right behind these older girls that are not fifteen going on eighteen, but actually eighteen—is Natalie. What’s her role in all of this? I don’t know, but she makes me smile, which makes my face hurt, my skin crack. She is the magician, perhaps, the free spirit, full of life and impulsiveness—the healer, the shaman, the teller of tales. She is wiser than her age, but I see the walls going up, the cage being built around this fluttering bird, not long for this neighborhood, not long for this world, I fear.
    She sees me standing in the window, the only one of the children to notice, to see my ghostly presence haunting the windows—and she waves. I wave back, and then step away from the