Seth and Daya

Saturday morning, at 6:36 AM is a revolutionary moment for Daya Black, and Seth Dalton. It brings timid Daya to a struggle that nearly tears her apart, and rebuilds her as something almost superhuman, and the same very happening strips Seth of what little he as and leaves him feeling weak and animalistic. The first step of a long path was set up on a Friday morning.

For Daya the day began with her alarm playing Colbie Caillat's Bubbly, which slowly pulled her from her Thursday night dreaming, and into the last school day of the week, at 7 AM. Seth’s day began at 6:42 AM in the morning, because he hadn’t actually gone to sleep at all, and that is when the sun rose.

He hadn’t a full nights sleep in almost two months, which has driven his eyes to be plagued by ashy colored bags and angry red veins accompanying the slight yellow tinge of his scleras. He spent the night with a cigarette lighting the ghastly features of his face as he strolled the dark corners of St. Agatha City, Missouri, and made trouble with his best friend, a switchblade with tortoise shell casing and silver sneer that makes quick work of people’s stubbornness.

It wasn’t violence without reason, he justifies it by need. Needs food, needs duct tape to patch his old Converse which are too small and peeling up from the sole, needs more cigarettes or else he’ll start getting strange and fidgety again. He should’ve been getting up at 7 AM, and going to Parkview High School like Daya, but fate threw him out of the public school system at an unfortunate turn, and they let him drop out because he was seventeen at the time, and the loss wasn’t too bad for them because Seth was known to be quite peculiar and surly, not getting along with anyone his age due to his anxious, snappy nature. He shed the anxiety not long after, but his hostility stood firmly in its place.

Daya got dressed in the clothes that seal her into Saturday; she put on a deep blue jeans and pink sweater, and yellow flat shoes that matches the fresh yellow nail polish she applied just yesterday, all of this complimenting her dark brown complexion and sunny attitude. Seth, with no better plans, wore the same black t-shirt that hangs awkwardly from his body, the far too large olive bomber jacket he filched from a stranger, and the same jeans he wore for weeks now, one knee completely blown out and frayed beyond all belief, the tear stretching almost all the away around back, causing that leg to hang down too far and get caught under his shoe sometimes as he walks.

Daya, seventeen, has plans for that night to meet up with her friends. Seth, eighteen, has none besides finishing up with a man he’ll never know the name of, but is in fact called Arthur, who he has pressed against the alley wall of a shoddy Italian place that the man likes to take to his job, as regional manager of a printing company not far away. He won’t be using it again for several weeks after this.

“Listen,” Seth’s whingy growl of a voice annoys and claws at the man’s senses, but thrills his heart into a frightened race as the teenager holds him against the brick wall with just one hand against his throat and that flashing knife “Let’s make this easy, huh?”

And not long after Daya got to school, Arthur was on his way running to his job short on money and time, and Seth was planning what else to do to make ends meet. Food is needed, and cigarettes. He needs to buy water, and he has to bring some things home next time he’s there, if he has the heart to stop by again. By the time Daya has gotten through the last day of school for the week, Seth has made work of another man, and seen to his side job he runs in which he acts as a bookie - harassing the rowdy fellow drop outs, his age and a bit older, in the form of taking bets for their fights and dogging them on.

It is when Daya is walking home from her friend Cherilyn's house that someone pulls her into an alley, and hits her hard enough to knock her out but leave her relatively okay besides her fear that follows her into the darkness of being unconscious. Seth, at this point, is sweaty from walking around the heat characteristic of Missouri, and hungry again but too worried about having food for later to take anything from his stash, so instead he goes to the burned out house he’s been staying in at night where he keeps his things, and tries to sleep.

That night, he haunts the streets, going through cigarettes and pointless daydreams, until he begrudgingly decides to pick his knife back out of his pocket to solve some more financial insecurities, and along the way he looks for prey until not far into six AM that Saturday, when he finds a girl passed out in an alleyway, and feels for a moment, for the first time in a long time, afraid.

Seth clicks his tongue quietly and rhythmically, trying to figure out what to do with the unconscious body of the young African American woman slumped before him. He tilts his head one way, and then another, studying her with sad hazel eyes. She's fully clothed, suggesting no tampering with her body, but she's rumpled and perspiring, and furthermore asleep in an alley with no one around.

"Hey," he breaks the silence very tentatively, and tries to decide who he is in this situation, knowing he came to this place to hurt people, but unsure what to do with someone who may already be hurt "Hey, missy..."

He grimaces, unbecome by his concern, feeling very small in comparison to his persona and his guilt over wanting to take care of someone more fragile than him. He nearly steps towards her, and then represses this, and then finds he can't fight it and is shortly kneeling before the girl, no older than him.

"Miss. Missy," he prods her gently with quiet words, reaching out but then snapping his outstretched fingers into a fist and forcing both hands into his jacket pockets, knowing he wouldn't like to be touched when so vulnerable, and figuring he owes her the same courtesy under his unfortunate care "You drunk...? Or dead?"

She's breathing, slowly, as if asleep. She looks clean, although a bit out of place in an alley on a Saturday morning, and is dressed in a way that suggests she is well off and middle class. Please, he begs no one, let this be the result of a night of drinking with friends, and not of ill consort.

"C'mon, you," he rasps in his very nasal voice, which he whispers with as he eases closer in his crouched position "You sure as Hell don't belong here."

He chews on his thin bottom lip, and clicks quietly again as he thinks, thumbing in his left pocket his cold, silver switchblade. He feels so contradicted, being here for his infernal needs and yet stopping to act out of compassion for a stranger who, if conscious, he would fight willingly for what she has. The clicking stops suddenly as she draws in a shorter burst of breath, eyelids twitching without opening.

"Miss! Hey!" Seth stands up in a gust, taking several clumsy steps backwards, hands flying out his pockets and gesturing wildly for her to stay down though she cannot see him "Mind yourself! Don't move fast or nothin'!"

The girl grimaces, and then whimpers, uncomfortably shifting as she feels suddenly the aching tension in her body, the pained dryness of her throat, and an unctuous smell in the air which tethers her to the rough concrete ground below her.

"Missy! You best not fucking move!" Seth shakes his head, trying to clear it, as the girl's eyes open and flit around without the rest of her moving "Ay, girl! Wake up!"

Suddenly, she jolts upright as her fearful stare focuses on Seth, and she freezes with such intensity that it makes her muscles ache and her heart dart like a panicked animal. Seth raises his chin and testily examines her with now freezing eyes, fists clenched at his side, legs spaced away from each other in a firm stance as he hulks above her despite his meager height.

The girl braces her hands on the ground, muscles packing the energy to run, but realizes how weak and tired her body is, and how trying to gather strength makes it shake, ready to give. Her breath hitches and racks her body as it mounts to hyperventilation, but she can’t make herself stand.

"What are you doin' in my territory?" he stresses the 'i' in territory strangely as he speaks through gritted teeth, hating himself for trying to do something for her and feeling insecure in his sudden and protective hatred of her presence "C'mon you. You ain't supposed to be here, huh? You was out drinking with yer buddies and ended up here, huh?"

The girl, Daya, takes in the details of Seth in sheer terror. This man speaks so harshly, in this grating, nasal voice, with a strange accent lost somewhere in between New Jersey and New York. He looks like a city dwelling vulture, beaky-nosed and sunken eyed, with pale, sallow skin and veins embedded in his neck and forehead that show to her anger but instead reflect his severe anxiety over being caught like this, fearing the confrontation he is causing. Seth can hardly stand the silence, so he takes the opportunity of Daya's stunned motionlessness to pull one of loose cigarettes from his jacket pocket and light it with a black lighter that he pulls from one of his unmatched socks, clenching the cigarette too tight in his teeth as he scours Daya with angst and fury for a reaction.

"I said, whatcha doin' in my territory?" he raises his head again, adam's apple bobbing, and Daya realizes she and him are breathing at almost the same frightened pace.

Seth is not a nervous man. Loud noises don’t scare him, though they used to, and the only thing that can make him flinch is a fist heading towards his face. He’s cut people till red slops down their front, because he is not afraid to use his friend, the switchblade with a shiny cutting end like a wolfish smile, nor has he been afraid to cast fists or stones or swears like atom bombs. But Daya brought him the weakness of having sympathy, and that is the greatest weapon she could have.

"Nothing!" she blurts, shaking her head quickly to try and jar herself to action, and finds dehydration causes her vision to blur in the movement "I'm-I'm sorry, I'm not-"

She gathers herself, stills her breathing in one burst of will, and stands on unsteady legs, her head spinning with such intensity nausea swells through her chest and lungs and beats into her throat like the April heat, but her new stance kicks Seth into a nervous, defensive action, and he rapidly pushes her back down into a seated position.

"I said stay down, dumbass! You should watch yerself, ya hear me?!" he flicks his hands as if trying to rid them of dirty water, and then sucks in on his cigarette, and puffs the smoke out of his large nose as he tries to steady his nerves, blowing it out of both nostrils like a dangerous and testy dragon "Not so fast, ya crazy ass broad. Yer dealin' with me now, yeah? Not your typical ass street dog, or-or mugger, yeah? You better watch yourself, do as I say, or I'll gut you like a tuna fish and then we'll both be sorry."

Daya stares up at Seth in fear, and he looks down at her in surprise over nothing besides his own jumpiness. Had he not exerted any prior care for the stranger, this would be easy. But his empathy is tangled in his work ethic, remembering days where he woke up on the street, nowhere to go, and he sees that in this girl without knowing her situation.

"C'mon, c'mon, you," he suddenly decides he wants this over with, and he reaches down for her, grabbing a great handful of the front of her sweater with his unnaturally long, bony hands, spidery fingers catching both the fabric and her kinky hair, and he pulls her up in a frenzy "Let's finish this, yeah? You want this over fast? Just-just gimme ya shit and I'll let'chu outta here, okay?"

"W-What?" Daya can hardly talk over a parched throat and lungs so dry and quaking they feel full of lacerations, too frozen to move and barely able to speak in her choked voice "I-I don't have anything-"

"Wallet. Phone. Credit cards, fuckin' loose change, a watch–I-I don't give a shit, you hear me? Just gimme yer fuckin' shit and we can both skedaddle, that sound good to you?" he pushes her with that one clenched hand, the knuckles having grown white in the stressed exertion he puts out and both palms sweaty with nerves, pressing her against the brick wall she was once asleep against.

"I was mugged! That's why I was here, I was mugged!" Daya's voice raises in a taught yowl "I don't have anything!"

A worried click leaves Seth's mouth, but indignance drives him firmer against her, holding Daya to the wall with a force growing steely like with anger.

"C'mon, c'mon, broad. You're not making this easy," Seth can't breathe right, air wavers in his throat, and the hand that isn't so tightly balled is shaking, and making its way to his left pocket to seek confidence, and his heart beats just as fast as Daya’s “I don’t wanna have to hurt you. Do you want me to hurt you?”

Daya stares at him with stricken, panicking eyes, which are normally understanding black pools set in a face as dark and warm as a dusk in the summertime, framed by tightly wound umber curls pinned behind ever so slightly pointed ears that made her mother call Daya her ‘little fairy’ growing up.

“I-I don’t want that,” Daya finally says, managing to find some comfort in the fact that she is standing again, but this is shortly stripped away by the flash of light winking out a smirk from the blade of a knife in Seth’s left hand “Oh god, okay!”

Daya wishes the wall would swallow her up, death encased in mortar preferable to one bleeding out in alleyway where her parents may be asked to identify her body, “Please,” she begs Seth wordlessly, her mouth moving without sound coming out, “Please.”

His face has the leer of a predator, hand dancing, holding that crooked smile dangling out behind him, as his nose nearly presses against hers. His thin lips are drawn back over his yellowing teeth, breath holding an air of staleness and danger. The sick thing to Daya is that as he bears upon her he begins to laugh a hissy, whispering crow’s caw of a chuckle that bolsters upwards in volume and pitch to be a hyena’s mad cackle as Seth grapples for the upper hand he feels he doesn’t have.

Listen, he’d like to say, you shouldn’t be here is all. I don’t know what to tell you, Miss, but whatever you were doing in St. Agatha walking alone-- I really don’t know if you were mugged for real or not, but I am sorry. You just shouldn’t be here.

Instead, the knife makes an arc behind his back, and comes to nip Daya and bring about the hot scarlet hidden behind her deep brown skin, a red he knows she and him share, that would end the confrontation even if he wouldn’t ever kill her. But Daya is aware of the sweat from his hand soaking her shirt, feel his bony grasp losing its will to hold her as his grip falters in anticipation of the hit, and can hear the blade whistling through the air. She drops to the ground, breaking Seth’s hand from her sweater, and hears steel hit brick and can see a brief flash as white sparks are birthed from the metal kissing the rough surface of the stone.

“Motherfucker,” Seth growls, stepping back again as his knife raises parallel to his face “You’re a little cunt, Miss! You hear me? You hear me?!”

But Daya doesn’t stop to listen, she turns, at first on all fours, and bolts from the alley into the Saturday morning light, and had she still her phone she would’ve found it to be 6:36 AM.