Punky Brewster Vs. The Homeless Man

The Homeless Man sneezed, a deep sneeze, like a sneeze from the soul or maybe even deeper, and a hot glop of tuna mucous splattered Punky’s face. It was thick like paste, gooey like glue, and the glop stuck her eyelashes together, began to drip slow down over her nostrils and across her lips. She made spit to keep from swallowing, tried to scrape the gloop off by rubbing her face into the homeless man’s neck. She felt his beard stubble scratch against her soft freckled face.

It had been seven hours since the homeless man had abducted Punky from the toy store, duct taping her wrists and ankles together and dragging her by her hair down Wabash Avenue to the alley behind the Chinese restaurant. She wasn’t sure what he had wanted with her- she had no food or money. So far he had only urinated- forcing her to watch- and then laid on top of her to take a nap, pinning her down against the hard pavement, making her his mattress. Punky was stuck.

The spot the homeless man had chosen for their nap was in the puddle where he had made hot foul, and Punky could feel the back of her sweatshirt wet with his liquid shame. Her hair was matted with strands of discarded lo mein and clumps of egg foo young. She could feel the hobo unconscious above her, heavy, his hot breath on her neck, his skin covered in oil and human rash. She knew this was her best chance to get away.

Punky’s eyes wandered to the pile of trash at the foot of the garbage can beside her. There among the rats and pork-fried rice was a shard of shattered glass from a broken window pane.

‘If I can just reach it,’ she thought, ‘I could sever his jugular vein while he’s sleeping.’

Punky shifted slow beneath the sleeping street creature, inching her way to the jagged glass. She could already visualize the puncture, she could already taste the hot blood that would sluice out of his throat like a dam breaking bold, the taste of foreign copper on her tongue, her cheeks stain with tainted plasma, her senses befouled, her-

(cont. on page 43)