“You need me!” came the deep rumbling voice of the big greasy dumpster diving hairy bear of a caveman as his large calloused hands seized her hips with a radiant heat, and the fetid breath pouring out over his un-brushed teeth preceded the wide face that loomed nearer for what was developing into the last and most disgusting kiss of Donna Herford’s life.

A lonely tear wandered into her mouth, and it tasted of bitterness.

His face loomed closer as his incredibly strong hands locked her hips in place, her back pressed against the cold dumpster, and—with a string of gooey testosterone reeking drool yo-yoing from his big hairy lower lip—he wetly mouthed, “You need me!”

With all of the feminist defiance in her hipster soul Donna opened her mouth to take a bite out of that big quivering lip, and then recoiled, for the right side of the face from mouth to ear not only had that stubbly black hair sticking out—which she just knew had to be glazed with day-old pizza grease—but splinters as well, the splinters from the board Donna had shattered on this man’s face to no effect other than to make him more horrid.

Her mouth open, the tears no longer dripped into it, but rolled off of her streaked cheek to wet her shoulders with her sorrow. Donna, for the first time in her life, was giving up—in to be exact. She was falling listlessly into her own pit of despair and began to view her plight from a detached and protected place; from a remote inner distance where the cruel world and its men could not reach her.

The man seemed to find her nebulous bite and hesitation romantic, and cooed more deeply, “You need me!”

The ringing in her ears had reached such a fever pitch that the tone went dead. She was now deaf; infinitely alone in a world of soul crushing silence.

She let her body go slack, surrendering to this monstrosity from that distant place within where she would feel and hear nothing of the lonely fate of her mere body, of the cobbled together mask that was her social persona: Donna Herford, property management specialist and human resources trouble shooter, was about to suffer rape and possibly death. However, the ‘Hipster Bitch’; that gritty survivor of the world gone mad who the insane men seemed to have a need to hate, she would make it. She felt light like a feather rising up out of her slack body as the man blubbered against her distant and soggy chin, “You need me!”

She saw through a distant and shaded glass the hairy splinter-stuck face, the softened bear-like eyes, the blubbering unhygienic mouth covering hers—then the world clicked into place, like a certain gear tumbled into the forlorn teeth of some other lonely gear stuck still and out of its place.

Time stopped.

The big head stopped pressing forward.

The drooling mouth stopped kissing, and halted the chanting of its lustful mantra.

A metallic click sounded dimly in the distance.

The great hands that held her slim hips eased off.

The eyes recently suffused with lust now beamed a blazing anger, hatred.

The great head, searching within for some mantra she supposed, turned slowly to her right, to the curious mechanical hand that just barely impinged upon her constricted field of vision. A mechanical claw pinched one great ear in its grippers; had it twisted way from the head, painfully emerging in a reddening doughnut twist of flesh and cartilage. The claw was attached to a mechanical arm, which—the dumpster seeping its cold into her back as she followed this intrusion in her death scene back to its source—terminated in an ergonomic polyethylene grip, held in one gloved hand, emerging from a yellow municipal sanitation worker’s rain slicker sleeve.

The person holding the mechanical claw was small, seemingly a slight younger teenager, dressed as a sanitation worker, complete with rubber boots, but with two odd additions. He wore on his head a helmet of the type that handicapped children sometimes wore when they tended toward rambunctious. Beneath that was thoughtfully tied a red scarf, and above the front rim of the helmet rested a set of goggles. The person himself was a soft faced African American of medium complexion who seemed to be in his mid to late 20s.

The dumpster no longer seeped cold into her back but felt warm. A rush of energy poured into her body as she still viewed the two contrasting figures before her, a six and a half foot tall 300 pound monster man, whose ear was painfully in the grip of a five foot tall, 90 pound, sanitation worker?

The giant chanted, “I’ll crush you twerp!”

The mechanical claw, clearly the end of a very well engineered trash picking device, now twisted harshly in the little man’s hand, causing the giant to rumble deeply in his throat and clutch at it as he lurched forward.

In response the little sanitation worker, who looked for all the world like Snoopy pretending to be the Red Baron in a rain coat, skipped back into a fencing stance, his trash-picker held like a sword, his left hand making mime motions as if he were a French carney.

The large man snarled, “I’ll crush you twerp!” and lumbered forward, hands held inward, flexing like monster claws.

Yet the little man showed no fear as he skipped back and pressed a catch on the handle of the tool, which now became a ‘litter sticker’ as the claws retracted and a nail-like point emerged from the end of the rod to menace the giant. The small person again mimed something with his left hand as he posed like one of the Three Musketeers before a faerie tale beast.

I have to do something—yes! Donna thought as her eyes came to light on a loose brick at the base of the dumpster.

The man lunged forward chanting, “I’ll crush you twerp!”

Donna heard a hiss and a grunt as she leaped for the brick and was pulled off balance once again, and determined then and there that if she survived this she was either investing in a closet full of athletic bras or getting a mastectomy.

Donna came up clutching the brick in both hands and turned on the big man, only to see his broad back down before her. The goon was kneeling and clutching his throat, facing the little janitor mime, who stood back like a victorious fencer, blowing on the bloody tip of his trash sticker. The goon was beginning to rise as his chant emerged in a rumbling but still recognizable gurgle, “I’ll crush you twerp!”

“Fuck you goon!” screamed an insane banshee whose shrill voice echoed from the alley walls as Donna leaped in with two hands and smashed the brick over the big head, which pitched forward into the pavement before the remnants of the shattered brick fell like dusty rain over the now still body.

There then came a moment of awkward anticipation as Donna said, “Thank you, a, sir,” and made to step around and shake his hand, and was then reminded of her nakedness and the cold and hesitated, crossing her arms and scrunching up her shoulders.

The little sanitation worker, who was wearing a ‘City Works’ rain coat she now noticed, gave a long sweeping bow, flourished his trash picker, held out a ‘wait right there’ mime hand, and stepped over to a curious wagon-like contraption behind a scooter. Commercial restroom trash cans and a tool basket on scooter wheels linked a canvas covered red wagon with a motor scooter into what seemed a child’s idea of a street cleaning vehicle. The small man placed the picker into the basket next to an assortment of neatly arrayed tools, wiped his gloved hands off ritually with a slapping motion, and placed the gloves in a fanny pack strapped to the handle bars of the scooter.

The man then turned, took off his scarf with a flourish, stepped up to her, and reached up over her neck, wrapping the scarf so that the ends covered her. He then took off his yellow rain coat with a flourish—as it seemed this person did everything with ritual flare—and stepped to her side, offering to dress her. Donna slid her arms into the coat, which did fit, and felt herself smile.

A rumbling groan sounded behind them and the helmeted mime signed for her to be silent, and crept over to the wagon, out of which he pulled a gas can and a fire extinguisher. These he put into the trash cans, and having replaced their domelike tops, he reached into the chest pocket of the denim jacket he wore, along with jeans, beneath the coat, and produced a card. He handed the card to her and she examined it:

“Well, good morning Archie Jones, and thank you for—Oh God!”

She began to shake with fright as the big man stirred and crawled to his knees.

Archie grabbed her hand and led her around to the back of the little covered red wagon and helped her climb in. She felt utterly foolish and childlike in one sense, but in another was so glad to have a sane proactive partner at the Banquet of the Insane that the world had become. As the big man got to his feet, holding his bloody head with one hand and his bleeding neck with the other, he growled, “I’ll kill you both!”

But then the scooter came to life and revved and she was wheeled away ridiculously in this little red wagon, like a storybook princess she thought, only not in a pumpkin-shaped carriage.

As the alley echoed with the sound of her rescue and they turned onto a sidewalk she could hear the crazy sounds of a world gone mad: horns honking on a three beat, people chanting angry mantras at each other, a car crashing, a window breaking.