McKenzie could have litterally peed her pants as she saw the joyous expression spring onto Tricia's face from the safety of Tricia's bushes. Tricia's eyes scanned the basket with an abundance of energy, her hands sifting over the basket eagerly; Hersey's Kisses and Hugs scattered along the nearly covered red velvet lining. 3 roses, two red and one white, layed in harmony side by side in the oval basket. A large piece of white paper draped over the sweet, considerate contents of the basket and enscribed on it were 5 words, "I'm sorry. I love you."

As if she was born with radar, Tricia's eyes darted to the bushes of hiding, placing the basket gingerly on her steps. Tricia took a few long strides toward the bushes, her smile augmenting when she saw McKenzie peering up innocently at her, a smile honestly shining on her face. Tricia shook her head and the smile dissapeared as if poised to remonstrate about why McKenzie was trespassing on her property, and she was going to at the clap of hands, but that gift basket crushed all hopes at being upset at McKenzie. She finally cracked smiled, subsiding the rising suspence that burned at McKenzie's throat, bent down towards McKenzie, and offered her hand. McKenzie sighed happily, linking her hand with Tricia's as Tricia bent down and settled a well-deserved kiss on McKenzie's lips, a kiss like in storybooks, but with two girls; Ironic, eh?

"Please don't do that to me again," Tricia quietly informed her, brushing her hand across the soft plain of McKenzie's cheek.

"Never again," McKenzie assured her, smiling as if the sun pulsated golden rays through the veins in her lips, sneaking one last kiss in before the both rose from the damp grass. They hugged as if reuniting after 20 years, squeezing as if no organs set immoble in their bodies, the birds surrounding them pleasently with melodious churp and song.

"I'm meeting Luke and Drew in town now for a movie, then ice cream," Tricia informed her, smoothing her lowly placed dark pigtails with a swift movement of her hands, "You wanna come?"

"Of course," McKenzie accepted, linking arms with Tricia as they began to stroll down the small knoll of grass hugging the sidewalk. The sun was setting on the last day they would ever live normally, giving birth to a chilling, malevolent night that would never be forgotten......

"That had to be the most boring movie ever created!" Luke cried, holding his gut from the laughs that shot from his voicebox. His arm draped comfortley around Drew's neck, Drew peering at him with wonder, lights from looming streetlamps glittering his eyes. The streets resembled streets in old Western films, dusty, dry and deserted on the brink of Midnight.

"But Drew Barrymore," McKenzie interjected, her friends barely visable through the dim lighting of overdressed street lamps. "She's a hottie. Phew!" Tricia glared at her offended, her mouth agaped at McKenzie's confession playfully. "You're my number one though, Tric," McKenzie insisted, snuggling closer to Tricia as the dark air harbored invisable snowflakes, pelting McKenzie's exposed stomach in authority.

"The movie wasn't that bad," Drew analogiesed, his eyes walking along the rough terrain of town's sidewalks, "Not as bad as 'Evolution.' That was so unintelligent."

"Oh, please!" Luke begged, scratching his nearly bald head with a large hand, resting his hand around Tricia's waist. "Evolution was 'The Godfather' compared to that...what was it called? 'Cougher in the Sty?'"

"You mean 'Catcher in the Rye,'" Tricia corrected him, their march syncronized as they traveled down the desolate street, the clunking of their shoes the only sound reverberating off the brick buldings and stark allies.

"The book was better," McKenzie assured them, stuffing her hands deep into the warmth of her jean khakis. All 3 friends turned mechanically toward her, bewilderment overtaking their carefree faces. "What?!" McKenzie asked innocently, shrugging as they glided past one of the last allies before Dolly's Dairy. "I read it in school..."

Suddenly, from the corner of McKenzie's eye, she saw someone creep from the darkness of the alley, the person's stride simulating that of a robber's. She whipped around and screamed softly, the glimmer of a freshly-sharpeded knife thrusting toward her friends.

They all turned as the person pounced on Luke like a large vulture, yearning for his blood, both of their broad bodies magnifying silouettes on the brick bulding standing tall next to them. Two more accomplices lurked from the alley with nothing but lethal fists, but just as deadly. McKenzie and Tricia ran for each other, hugging each other like scared sisters at a father's run for the leather belt, their minds frozen like a cheap-ass computer. The 2 guys leaped upon Drew, Drew crumbling to the ground like an unresilient house of cards.

"Stop it!" Tricia screeched, her voice inaudible through the fight brewing at their feet. It was all a blur to the two of them until the first guy rose a battered but kicking Luke to his feet and turned his vile face to the two girls, the street light lightly enhancing the one face they didn't want to see.

"No, you don't," Zach snarled, dropping Luke to the ground like a rag doll and grabbing lthe girls by the arm, his hands like pliers, before either of them could flinch. "I want you to watch," Zach whispered to them, twisted enjoyment highlighting his sardonic voice, his cold blade resting a little to close to comfort by McKenzie's hip, one wrong move possibly landing her in a morge. Fear overtook her body, pumping it with the chilling facts that were displayed in front of her, her heart closing in on cardiac arrest. McKenzie prayed his whisper would be loud enough to travel to someone who could help, someone who cared.

The girls tried desperately to wrench away from Zach's grasp like slippery fish at a fish market as Zach's two friends kicked relentlessly at the fallen Luke and Drew. Blood stained the pavement, bruises welded their bodies, bones cracked like pencils under their thin layers of skin. Moans slowly dribbled to deadly silence as they were put through torture almost worst than death. Every scream that escaped from the girls's closing throats forced Zach's impryable hands to close tighter around their weak arms. Watch this brutal beating was like watching an execution; just a little more electricity would send Luke and Drew floating up to the gates of Heaven.

Miraculously and suspiciously, Zach halted the beatings, his clammy hand releasing the two spectators. McKenzie and Tricia looked at each other briefly, their eyes like magnets, the same through permeating the air between them; how are we going to stop them?

Zach sauntered over to the two boys, his eyes draining the last of their spirit as they looked up weakly. With two well-trained, muscular hands, he dragged them with slight struggle into the alley he and his friends emerged from to finalize his bidding, everyone following. Zach's two friends took his place with the girls, restraining them with powerful, iron grips around their upper ams from escaping or helping. Zach gazed down at Luke moving fraily, clumsily like a drunken fool, coughing beginning to spasm from the bowels of his aching, splitting stomach. Zach's eyes were wild, full of fire and ill-will, his gaze being an instoppable force against armies of the brawniest men if looks could kill. But they can't...thank God. Zach gripped the steak knife in his hand, his brain juggling thoughts that could ruin his life, impulsive hatred seething through his clenched teeth. "You want to fuck guys?" Zach began softly, digging his sneaker into Luke's gut. Luke only gasped, all the screams of excrusiatinng pain exited his body like a natural resource overused by the hands and feet of Zach's accomplises. "You like that? Huh?!" Zach screamed like an animal and releasing his fustration just as savagely, kicks puncturing up and down his brittling body. Tricia whinced away, not able to take this visual tourture that was barely ocular in the dusk of bias fear, away from the only light of hope as McKenzie's eyes stayed glued on Zach, the rabid beast, the cruel, heinous...thing. His eyes were illuminated with blind hatred, red, angry and afraid, a look McKenzie would never forget. 'Please let this be a dream,' her conscience desperately begged as her eyes dried up at the arid, irritating, pathetic actions consisting of Zach's swift kicks and degreating insults, herself powerless to stop him. How she prayed she could rip away from the shackles of ignorance clasped about her arms and rake Zach's eyes out, stealing him forever of his sight, something precious and God-given; but she couldn't. "Fag!" was Zach's final word before he snapped out of his loose reins of sanity and sank the kitchen knife deep in Luke's chest, a breathless release of air shooting Luke's eyes from his sockets. McKenzie's scream shook the 7 wonders of the world, her hands clasped on her blood-drained face as her bellows of cries rised grievenly in pitch and volume with the oozing of blood seeping from his wound and staining his white T-Shirt for all eternity.

"Shut the bitch up!" Zach threatened his friends as he glared up at them, his teeth snarling with vengence as a light from atop the right building flickered on, someone approaching the window to investigate. Like magic, the 3 attackers vanished in the dark, darting over a worn chain-link fence at the opposite end of the alley.

Tricia stood there stoically, involuntary trembling and nail-biting replacing what couldn't be shown in her face and voice. McKenzie dropped to Luke's side, her knees pounding in anguish against the ground, the blood leaking up from his chest like a volcanic eruption, but this eruption only was another cruel action trying to defy Gays' beliefs and tradtions; and it wouldn't be the last...

"Oh my God," McKenzie said shakily, tearing off her green tube top and pressing it desperately on Luke's open wound, hoping he could hold on to life for a few prolonged minuetes, just long enough to save her sanity. Tears couldn't even break free through the cage of fear McKenzie held inside her. Her eyes diverting to Drew who was slowly arising from his deathmat on the cold ground, gave her a sense of brief releif. Kneeling there with only a strapless bra and slashed hope, she began wailing like a mad woman, "Help! Someone help us. Please, oh Please, God. Is anyone out there?!?!?!"