The Right Colors

The street outside the stadium was lousy with color and noise. Under faded awnings, vendors waved bright hats and balloons and strange lumps which glistened with a fine sheen of grease. People crowded into whatever shade they could find, while those left in the sun squinted in the relentless midday sun which had long since burnt away the whisps of morning cloud and left the sky a flawless, fearsome blue. Someone had hooked up a pair of ancient speakers which were playing tinny, crackling renditions of local power ballads. A group of laughing schoolboys momentarily swept through the street, a hurricane of awkward elbows and knees, making adults frown and children stare with frank admiration.

Art watched a fly lazily circle a tray piled high with skewered tenticles; finally it landed, rubbed its tiny legs together, and then pondorously took to the air again after a moment's pause. Art didn't blame it. He felt the same way about skewered tenticles. The vendor, a gaunt woman with skeletal sun-spotted hands, saw him looking and asked him something. He shrugged helplessly. She hobbled towards him and proferred a skewer with a gummy grin. He shook his head but she shuffled closer and jabbed the skewer emphatically in his direction and when Art started to turn away, the old woman curled her lip and muttered something. He didn't undertand the language - not yet, at least - but he was fairly certain it wasn't complimentary.

"Hey! Hey, man! Where you from?" A middle aged man was waving him over. He was sitting with two other men at a table buried under a forest of empty beer bottles. The men all wore singlets which showed off their ropey arms and faded, blurry tattoos.
'America,' Art said.
"What's your name, man?"
"Art."
"Sit down," said the man, who was swaying ever so slightly. "Beer you have."
"Thanks, but I'm meeting my friends."
"Yes! Friends us,' said the man, and Art couldn't help but notice that his teeth were bared in the semblance of a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, which were glazed and bloodshot and seemed to be looking at a point about three inches above Art's left ear.
"Sorry," Art said, and he quickly turned on his heel and started to weave his way deep into the throng of people who were making their way towards the stadium's main gate. He felt like he was sandwiched between the burning heat that rose from the potholed concrete and the heat that beat down from the flawless sky, but he shuffled on, shoulder to shoulder with dozens of strangers with whom he shared rivers of sweat but very little else.

His friends had told them that they would meet him in a side street next to the the fish restaurant with dozens of blood-red lanterns; he saw the opening on his left and ducked into the alleyway's shaded silence with relief. Because he'd leant his head against the warm bricks and closed his eyes, just for a moment, he didn't notice the teenagers until they'd surrounded him. One had put his hand just above Art's shoulder and was leaning in so close that Art could almost taste the rancid coffee on his breath. They all had the soft, half-finished features of boys who hadn't quite made it through puberty and the whispy, half-finished beards of men who thought they had. One had an erruption of angry white tipped acne across his nose; another had braces and an enormous, untamed monobrow.

Art was more puzzled than worried, until one boy spat and said something and drove his first deep into Art's stomach. Art gasped and bent over and was caught under the chin by a bony fist. Another boy screamed, and the rest of them joined in, first with their voices and then with a flurry of fists that drove all the air out of Art's body and left him trying to cover his face while clinging to an abandoned stall for support.

Then, as suddenly as they'd appeared, the boys flung themselves back into the shadows. Art blinked the blood out of his eyes and slid to the ground.

"Oh my god, Art. What the hell happened?"
Art could feel his eyes beginning to swell shut already, and every breath he took was accompanied by a stabbing in his chest. "I don't know, man. Those kids just jumped me."
His friends, whose concerned faces hovered above him in a circle, exchanged long looks.
"Sorry, Art. I guess we forgot how new you are. We should've told you."
"Told me what?"
"You never wear blue, man. Not to a football game. Not in this part of town."

784 words