The meanest Flood

stairs, and then suddenly someone throws a switch and the lights come on. All of the old man’s relatives and friends are there. There is a table heaving with food and drink and the children have balloons, the women are dressed in their finest clothes and the men are holding up glasses and smiling.
    Marilyn was in two minds. Part of her thought that something like the TV advert would happen, that the magician would work his magic and obliterate the darkness with spiritual light. And another part of her knew that he was no longer there. That he had abandoned her to the darkness. The only light available was the light she could bring to the situation from within herself.
    Danny had left her here so that she could grow. In a way it was an initiation, a rite of passage in a dark and dingy passage in the heart of Leeds in the middle of the night. If she could come through this she would be nearer to her love. There were certain steps to be taken before they could be together. This alley was one of those steps. It was a threshold, but one at which she would not flinch.
    At the end of the passage she followed the wall. There were high, wooden garden gates separated by a few feet of continuing brick wall. She increased her pace now, sensing that she was returning the way she had come. A cat spat and scattered a pile of wet leaves and Marilyn barely flinched at the sound. The magician had given her something easy as a starter. He was leading her gently into his world of transformations. Damp leaves and darkness, a crumbling wall and a spitting cat. You’ll have to do better than this, Danny, she said to herself as she turned the corner which led back to the lights of the street. I’ve been into your darkness and I wasn’t afraid. Not much, anyway.
    There was a man on the street, watching her emerge from the alley. He had his legs apart and he was swaying. Big man with a long, open raincoat with epaulettes, blue jeans and long greasy hair in a widow’s peak.
    ‘Y’lost’ darlin’?’ he said, moving his lips as if they were part of an engineering experiment.
    Marilyn shook her head. She looked up and down North Lane, wondering where Danny was. She wasn’t lost but she was confused. Could it be that this drunk was part of the test? Was the presence of this man with his flapping raincoat and slurred words an extension of the darkness of the passage? Or was the test over and this real life, real danger?
    The man lurched over the road towards her. ‘C’m’ere and give us a kiss,’ he said, attempting to mask his desperation with levity. ‘“Only the lonely, dum, dum, dum, dummy do waa”. Sing you a fucking song, girl.’
    He fell forward, pinning her against a garden fence, his huge hands on her shoulders, his breath like the waste pipe from a brewery. Close up his eyes were bloodshot, the veins in the white desert around his pupils overflowing their ruptured banks and spewing tiny falls of crimson plasma.
    Marilyn watched the man’s foul mouth come down on hers, his wet lips and thick tongue. At the same time he wormed his hand inside her coat and kneaded her breast while his crotch was pushed up against her. He was so tall that Marilyn’s head only reached halfway up his chest. She found his balls and squeezed and twisted with all her strength, feeling the man reel away from her, head snapped back in a gesture of pain and bewilderment.
    He drew back his hand and clenched it into a fist, aiming at her head. In the fraction of a second that remained to her, Marilyn realized that if she allowed him to hit her she would be unable to stop him from raping her. She gave a final twist to his balls, pulling down and to the right while ducking away under his left arm.
    And she ran. Within seconds she had put enough distance between her attacker and herself to take a look over her shoulder. He was slumped on the pavement, supported by his head and knees, and showed no intention of giving chase.
    Marilyn kept running, up to the top of North Lane and past the Taps, back to the side street where she had parked the car. She flashed the remote to open the doors and locked them behind her, sitting trembling behind the steering wheel, her eyes nailed to the street corner in case the man had decided to come after her.
    The clock on the dashboard ticked away for half an hour. Marilyn’s breathing returned to normal. She rationalized what had happened. She’d had a close run-in with a drunk but she’d handled the situation