Chapter II

I think there may be some subject-verb disagreements or confusion in a few of my sentences, so If you guys could help me out with that...

He took the usual way home: around the drugstore at the corner, over three fences, and into the alleys. Jason squared his shoulders and popped the collar of his leather jacket. He pocketed his hands so one of them could keep the nestling pocket knife company.

By day, the narrow corridors behind every small business in town were harmless trash-heaped, hobo-dwelling passages. As soon as the sun sunk behind the distant mountains, however, the beggars sleeping behind garbage cans are replaced with the crepuscular creatures emerging from underground dens where they were safe from the scorching sun by day. Now they creep out, the experienced ones stalk their prey solitarily and the younger beasts form into packs, marking their territories with crude, shocking, unoriginal graffiti. When the sun was high, people left their garage doors up and windows open, but after dark the nearby neighbors sank into shadows and anything beyond the threshold was evil.
Only hours before, Jason was apart and shunned, feared and hated. Now—in not the dead, but the life of night—he could wander wherever he chose (provided there wasn’t a dog) without pointing fingers and glaring eyes.
He was still avoided by street rats and gangs. The difference was, when muggers and thugs stayed on the other side of the street, it meant respect. That kind of courtesy would have been the swagger of any other night crawler except Jason.
He didn’t know why he got such attention, day or night; it wasn’t as if he liked the nightlife, it just happened to be the only time he felt like he could hold his head high. Jason didn’t like the alleys he frequented either: he couldn’t find his own head out in the open, while the alleys were like the ABC’s to him. However, Jaosn was all too aware of how dirty they were with dead things. Decaying opportunities, lives, families, and animals were the usual decor of this maze morgue. Jason may have strongly disliked this rotting skeleton of the city, even though, oddly, he felt safer there.
Still, confident as he felt, he’d rather avoid the unsavory scenes he was witness to. He used to try to help those poor unfortunates who happen to get caught outside after sundown. But he stopped after a week ago. What happened was this:
There Jason was, meandering between two of his usual haunts, when he happened upon vultures picking at a carcass. Shorter than any of them, he was twice as thick and had no problem shooing the gang off the man. They buzzed off, not even daring to cuss Jason as they ran, and left the balled-up loser still screaming and swatting at absent attackers. The victim was wearing Bermuda shorts, socks with sandals, and a pink t-shirt. He seemed to Jason the average, just-passing-through tourist mistakenly on the look for local nightlife. Stupid, Jason thought.
The man unwrapped his arms from around his balding head, chanced a glance up at the leather jacket that was wearing Jason, and scrambled out of the alley, showing more nerve than his assaulters by threatening Jason with police. Jason thought the man had better run faster and get to his hotel quick or he won’t get much further.
So he didn’t help the poor unfortunates anymore. Except for that boy who tried to get into a gang. In order to join, all applicants had to stab someone in the back and present the bloodied knife to the ringleader. Those stupid gangs are trying to get them younger, Jason had thought at the time, and dirtier. Jason had done the kid a favor by relieving him of his weapon and threatening to knife him unless he went home immediately.
Then there was that girl this afternoon. Why had he even bothered with her? She wasn’t being attacked. And what was with the random hotdog? She hadn’t looked half as starved as some of the urchins in the trashcans. Maybe it was because she didn’t scream. She didn’t point, run, or use pepper spray. No, he thought, it’s those eyes! They were huge! He thought about those green eyes. The girl may have looked healthy and pink, but her eyes looked starved. It was how they looked so hungry that made Jason want to give her something.
He reemerged from the alley into a back parking lot lit by an orange streetlamp. It was mostly empty, but there were a few cars sparsely parked. A white Oldsmobile, a silver Honda by the dumpsters, an army green Nissan with one red door in the corner, and the red Jetta.
That Jetta had sat at the opening of the alley forever, as long as Jason could remember, but it looked brand-spanking-new. There wasn’t a scratch in the blood-red paint, not one bug on the fender, not a chip in the windshield, which was so dark, Jason could only see himself in it. He used to wonder who would leave such a beauty in such a dumpy place; He noticed only two days ago that the Jetta had cinderblocks where wheels should have been.
Tonight he paused as he always did for a few moments to admire its flawlessness, and shake his head sadly at the cinderblocks. He rubbed his bony nose and walked away.
The parking lot belonged to an apartment complex. Jason sauntered across the pavement and clomped up the first set of metal stairs and walked across the landing. He passed the door with the yappy dog, the one that always played loud music, the one with the eviction notice. Up another flight of metal stairs he banged. None of the sleeping neighbors’ lights flicked on. He crossed the third story landing and stopped at number 16. He grabbed the tarnished handle, and turned it as he kicked a peculiar stain on the door, because it was the only way to make it open at all, as he knew from experience.
He’d doing this every night since forever ago: the alley, the parking lot, the Jetta, the stairs, the stain. Everything had been the same for weeks, till now. Now, he was met by two very new, very large, very green eyes.