Story - Not My Fight

Midnight.  It had been a long shift.  The restaurant was packed out that night and I hadn't stopped for five hours.  Hence my dislike of Saturdays.  I was about to realise what an understatement that was.

We left when we'd cleaned up our own section, so it was usually odd ones and twos leaving for half an hour.  I was one of the last.  Stepped out the back door, hearing it clang shut behind me, and breathed in the cool night air.  It might be city centre air, but after the intense heat and steaminess of the kitchen it was like being up Ben Nevis.  As I looked up to the sky, I heard them before looking round.  A grumbling undertone, a questioning, the sound of tension.

At either end of the alley were five or six guys.  Hoodies, trackie bottoms, white trainers.  And, when I looked more intently, knives.  

"Where'd he fukin come frae?"  That from my left.

"Is he one a yous?"  From the right.

"Poofy wee git like that?  You takin the piss man?"

"Aye, looks like one o yous, eh?" 

Both groups took a few steps closer. I tried to remember how to breathe.  Gang fight?  Couldn't be anything else.  We all knew it happened round here, but so far our close had been spared.  At least as far as we knew.  Now they were very much here, and I'd walked out into the middle of it.  My brain fast forwarded through my options.  Didn't take long.

I could bang on the door and hope someone was there to let me back in.  But those blades were only about four metres away now, and they could be on me much quicker than anyone could open up.  Or I could try to talk my way out of it.  There was nowhere to run.  I talked.

"I'm no wi anyone.  Just finished my job for the night, I only want to get to my bed, so if you guys would like to let me pass..."  I looked left.  I looked right.  Passing through didn't look like an available option either.  

"You want him?"  From the left.

"Naw, you have him.  Needs to be oot the way and we can dae the business."  I didn't think being oot the way sound too enticing.

"Come on guys, I'm no a part o this.  You let me get hame and I'll leave you to get on wi... it."

"Is he takin the piss?"  From the right.

"Sounds like it, eh?"  From the left.

"You're deid pal."  Finality, from the right.  The one that talked stepped towards me, blade rising.

Right then the door behind me opened.  Fear turned me into an escape ninja.  Whirled round, shoved poor old Guy back and jumped in, grabbing the door bar behind me and pulling it tight shut.  

"What the...?"  Guy looked up from the floor, looking almost as scared of me as I had been a second before.  I told him the story.  We listened.  Talking.  Only talking.  My sudden appearance and vanishing act seemed to have created allies of a sort.  Eventually the voices ceased and we looked at each other, both sure that we weren't sure if it would be safe to venture that way again. 

We went back through the kitchen into the restaurant.  Only Tony and Bella left.  Our faces told them there had been trouble.  Tony called the police, they came to tell us there was nobody there and no signs of trouble, and they'd start checking round our back way more often.  They even drove me home.  I hoped I wouldn't need any more lifts.