Screaming, I woke up. Instinctively, my hand went to the back of my head. Surprisingly, there was no blood there.
The gang member sleeping next to me angrily slapped me for disturbing him. The slap brought me back to reality. A sigh partly of regret and partly of relief escaped my mouth. I wasn’t a royal queen, rather just a street thief. I lay down again and thinking how real the dream had been, dozed off.
That night our gang busted open a jewelry shop. Unluckily for us, the police was in the area. Before we realized it, they were upon us.
I ran as fast I could. I was at an advantage because it was night time and I knew the streets. After all, I was born and raised on them…..
My mother had died at my birth. Of course, nobody knew who my father was; it is hard to keep track at a brothel. Why my mother had chosen to give me birth is a mystery which I still haven’t solved.
My mother’s friends had more or less brought me up; my real friends, though, had been the streets and the gang I had joined when I was nine years old.
I was now twenty two and was a wanted man in many places. It was a matter of pride for me to see my picture at police stations. It always gave me an unexplainable exhilaration to walk by a police station and look at my picture.
To date, I had never seen the inside of a jail. My friends told me I was lucky, but I told them that it wasn’t luck, but skills that kept me free.
But today I wasn’t feeling so sure about my skills. I had had too much to smoke the previous night and I was feeling quite disoriented.
My foot slipped on the pavement. I fell down and hit my arm heavily against the gutter.
I was still recovering when a police officer came and grabbed me by my neck. There was no hope now. I would be badly beaten and would see the inside of a jail for months or even years.
I cursed him.
The police officer was breathing heavily. After a few minutes, he made me stand up and strip off my clothes; right there on the street! I protested; he gave me a slap and said, “Do as you are told, sewer rat.”
I spat at him.
I felt his baton hit the right side of my skull…
