Bruce / Day 16

Bruce was running down the snowy street, screaming, trying not to step on the patches of ice that were everywhere.

It was the street where he lived and he was racing to get home and double-bolt the door.

He was being chased by the PBT, the "Psychopathic Black Tranny."

The PBT had been a track star in high school, so it was good that Bruce had gotten a five minute head start on her when he slipped out the back door of RICKETS. But she was closing fast.

The PBT was wearing leopardskin gloves she had bought at WAL-MART.

She was also wearing a leopard-patterned toque.

Bruce had admired her ensemble earlier in the evening.

She looked like a black Annie Lennox.

She looked good.

Bruce screamed apologies backwards over his shoulder as he ran down the street. But she wasn't having it.

He had known it was her man.

The PBT's man had started it all. Not Bruce. But he couldn't tell the PBT that. It would only mean she would punch him that much harder when she finally caught him, and got him down in the snow.

Which was about to happen.

The PBT ran with telegenic leopard grace.

It's the gloves, Bruce thought.

They make her swift and powerful, he thought, just as she tackled Bruce next to a snowbank that had been piled up by the borough plow at the corner of the block.

He had been taken like a springbok less than a hundred feet from his front door.

I'm sorry. Nothing happened! Ask Sheldon! You don't gotta go all Animal Planet!

Bruce was little. The PBT was over six feet. With those Michael Jordan legs.

I also heard you said I look like Wesley Snipes, the PBT said with an evil Wesley Snipes smile on her face.

By now, she was straddling Bruce's chest and he was having difficulty breathing.

That means I owe you two, the PBT said.

The PBT removed her leopardskin gloves from WAL-MART.

Off came the cubic zirconia.

Please... Bruce said.

Oh chile, too late for Please now, the PBT said.

The worst part is that Bruce couldn't even bring his hands up to shield his face. The PBT had them locked down against the sides of Bruce's body. With those Michael Jordan legs.

911! Someone please call 911!

But the neighbors who liked Bruce enough that they might have actually made a 911 call were all at work or at the strip club or dead.

Only the Kitty Genovese neighbors were home.

And they had a good seat for the show by now.

Fucking Monday, Bruce said. Somehow it made it worse to his mind.

Oh justice come anyday, the PBT said.

And then justice came.