Katie was cold. This wasn’t a new thing, as far as she could recall she’d been permanently cold for the last six months. She’d been overjoyed when her dad had got his new job, moving the whole family out of the sleepy and sweaty Florida town she’d been born in up to Chicago had seemed like a dream come true. The city in the late spring was amazing, and it felt like everything home hadn’t been, modern, cosmopolitan, alive. Then the winter came, nothing prepared her for that first cold blast in mid November, and it only got worse from there. It was nearly March now, for God’s sake. She just wanted it to warm up again.

It also wouldn’t have hurt if the people warmed up a little too. When they’d moved Katie had been a bubbly, friendly fourteen year old, but that wasn’t the way big cities worked. No one looked at you, no one talked. She found it debilitating.

As a case in point, she sat on the cross town bus, on her way home from the private high school her dad’s new job was paying for. School was great, the forty five minute bus ride every day was less so, especially when it was usually a completely silent and lonely journey, the most interaction you could reasonably expect was a scowl if you bumped into someone as you passed their seat.

The bus was less busy today than usual, but through the music in her headphones Katie was half aware that there was a conversation going on behind her. The two people talking were making no effort to lower their volume and both of their voices were naturally deep and booming.

Katie clicked the little bulge on her headphone cord, deciding to eavesdrop a little on the conversation right behind her. It was so rare to be able to listen in on people on the bus and she had always thought of herself as a people person.

The two people behind her were obviously both men, and although Katie always prided herself in not succumbing to racism, she immediately intuited they were black from their vocal mannerisms. This wasn’t unusual on her bus route, her journey ran through a number of majority black neighborhoods, not particularly bad ones, but she could go five or six blocks looking out the window on part of her journey and not see a single other white face.

The men were obviously good friends, and were comfortable with each other, as Katie muted her headphones they were both laughing, chuckling at some joke she had just missed. She smiled to herself, she always found the sound of laughter soothing, it was nice knowing people were happy. After their laughter died down the two men fell into a brief comfortable silence. After a moment one started talking again, they talked at a normal volume, unworried about being eavesdropped on as Katie was the only other passenger on the bus with them at the time.

“I’m telling you man, it went down just like that.” Said one, who Katie assumed would have been the older of the two men she remembered walking past her to his seat a few stops back. Trying to picture his face without turning in her seat she struggled. He’d been in his late thirties probably, and he was in workwear, his head had been shaved and he had a beard that was not much more than stubble. Beyond that her mind drew a blank. She remembered his companion better. He’d boarded a stop after his friend and she had looked up at him as he passed her seat. For a second she’d felt like he was eyeing her up, appraising her, but then that fleeting sense was gone. He too had been in work jeans and a heavy jacket, and his head was also clean shaven. He’d had a handsome angular face and was younger, in his late twenties. His strong features were marred, she thought, by a tattoo that crept up from his neck onto the side of his face. She didn’t understand tattoos at all. So permanent.

After his friend scoffed, the older man continued talking.

“You weren’t there fucker,” he said, but the cursing wasn’t angry, more of a playful dig, “the girl must have thought I was some sort of pushover. You know what it’s like, these young girls see a guy at a bar with a little cash and they figure you can be their ATM for the night, before they head home to the boyfriend.” His friend grunted in grudging agreement at this statement.

“So, she thinks she’s playing me along, but I know why she picked me out and after a while she’s forgotten about the free drinks and she’s getting all flustered. I suggest we head out back for a while so she can clear her head.” Katie’s interest was really piqued now, she looked out of the window, wondering how far they were from her stop, whether she would hear the end of this story.

“We get outside and I have her pinned against the wall. At first she’s pretty in to it, but when I start hitching up her skirt she tries to push my hand off. Tells me she’s got a man, she don’t want to do him like that. Well I was too far gone by then to give a fuck about that, I take her little hand, push it in my pants and tell her she should have thought about her man before she made me feel like that. Then she’s telling me no, she can’t do it, but all the time her hand is wrapped around my dick, squeezing it for all she’s worth. She’s still telling me she can’t as I bend her over against the side of the dumpster and feed it in to her tight little pussy. Eventually her tone changes and she’s begging me not to cum inside her, that she’s not on protection and they’re trying to have a baby. Of course, that was all I needed to set me off and I nutted right then. As I left her there I told her if the baby turned out black she could always try telling the boyfriend it was a genetic abnormality.”

The men both laughed again, and Katie’s face twisted in disgust. These two were clearly pigs, laughing about what had essentially been a rape. She gripped the seat in front of her tightly and resisted the urge to turn and glare at them. Then the younger man spoke.

“So what did this bitch look like? I hope you got some hot pussy, not the usual skanks you go for.”

“Oh, she was hot alright, don’t worry ‘bout that. She looked like the little hottie schoolgirl sitting down in front of us, but maybe five years older and with bigger tits.”

Katie stiffened as she heard him mention her and turned to look at the pair of them, immediately realizing her mistake. Now they knew she’d been listening to their whole conversation. The men both glared at her predatorially, flashing insincere smiles as she did her best to look disgusted.

Katie stood as the bus pulled to a halt. It was still minutes from her stop but she needed to be away from these two. She gathered her bag and stalked off, heading in a direction she was pretty sure would lead to her apartment building. A couple of minutes passed and Katie was becoming less and less sure where she was going with every step. Taking her phone out of her pocket she let google maps plot her a route home. She saw she hadn’t been far off and only needed to cut across a couple of streets to be back on course and home within fifteen minutes. She followed the phone’s directions, her head down looking at the screen every couple of seconds. If she had been looking at her surroundings rather than the screen she would never have walked down the dark, grubby alleyway.

Halfway down the alleyway she jumped, feeling a hand on her shoulder. Instinctively she tried to pull away from it and made to break out in to a run, but too slowly. An arm snaked out and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her bodily. When she was placed back down she was confronted by two familiar faces.

“Now where are you trying to run to girl?” The younger man said, his hand still firmly wrapped around her. “we just wanted to talk to you a little” As he talked his older friend had moved around behind her, blocking her way out and on to the street, even if she could have broken his grip.

She gulped nervously, both men were looking her up and down hungrily. She tried to think but her head seemed to be crowded with adrenaline. She could scream but they could silence her pretty quickly. She couldn’t run, they’d already seen to that.

“I. Well, I was just trying to get home, I guess.” She offered, pretty pathetically. “Do you mind?” She made to try and pull away again. The younger man didn’t release his grip.

“Oh no cutie, we don’t mind at all. Why don’t you talk with us a little. What’s your name?” Seeing no other way out of the situation Katie answered.

“I’m Katie, I really need to get going now, my parents will be wondering where I am” Her ambusher smiled, ignoring her implied request to leave.

“Well Katie, I’m Dewey and that’s Lou. It’s real nice to meet you, you’re just as cute as a button, what are you, five foot dead? I bet you don’t even weigh a hundred. How old are you girl?” He asked, his eyes raking up and down her body as he talked.

“Um, thanks I guess.” She said, not wanting to antagonize the man. “I was fifteen last month. Look, it was nice to meet you but I really...” She didn’t get to finish her excuse, as the older man, Lou, interrupted her.

“So what did you think of my story girl?” He asked impatiently. “Your face said you wanted to slap me back there on the bus. That’s not very nice is it?” He asked mockingly.

She was flustered, knocked off guard by his line of questioning.

“Your story? It’s not up to me to say. You can make up any kind of story you want I guess”

“Make up, so you think I was lying huh? Well listen, me and Dewey were thinking maybe it got you excited, perhaps you’d like some of the same treatment.” With this he reached out and his rough hand caressed her face, at the same time his friend’s arm moved up from wrapping around her waist to maul her breast under her school shirt. She panicked, things were rapidly getting out of hand.