Her Therapy Session
Listen up, you ragged sons of bitches this is exactly where I was on a Tuesday so blistering hot it felt like the sun had snorted a line of cocaine and decided to puke napalm all over the skate park. The concrete in that forsaken spot nestled on the ragged edge of the part of the city nobody in their right mind could pronounce was cracked like a junkie’s knuckles and plastered with graffiti tags that looked like Lucifer himself went on a mind-bending trip through a neon paint factory.
It was 3:15 PM when she showed up bare as a confession in front of God, riding a board so battered it looked like it had survived the Fall of Rome.
You could taste that ozone-infused soup of spilled beer, rancid sweat, and sea salt mist before you even stepped out of your car. The air was thick, sticky, and almost sent you into convulsions; it felt like breathing in battery acid mixed with cheap perfume. There was no goddamn reason for her to be here at all, except that she was fucked up on adrenaline and whatever twisted chemical therapy made her feel alive.
Who? A pale slip of a thing, maybe twenty-something, with copper hair tangled like a rat’s nest of bonfire ash. Eyes green enough to drown in, or perhaps that was just the reflection of the community pool three blocks over, chlorinated to hell.
Everybody and I mean every beer soaked street kid slouched on the bleachers, every crackhead filming on a cracked-screen smartphone knew why she was here: to bleed fear out of her system until her veins felt empty.
They all whispered stories: she was the runaway heiress of some crooked developer, or maybe she blew her brains out in a dive bar somewhere because love left her bleeding. None of that shit mattered. The truth was far uglier: she was here to dance with gravity and see if it’d gut her like a fish.
Where? The skate park was a goddamn iron cathedral of abandon, fenced off by chain-link so rusty it looked like it belonged in Dante’s Inferno. The half-pipe was stained with skid marks, lipstick, and spots of old blood that had dried to the color of dried sagebrush. Billboards hung overhead, hawking energy drinks and bogus online casinos—advertisements for a future nobody would ever have. Every surface screamed entropy; it was a holy place for the damned.
I noticed the board she carried: its edges were gouged, and the trucks were bent out of shape, like twisted steel in a junkyard. It looked like shit, but it was her ticket to godhood. How? By shifting her weight so perfectly, it would flick the world aside for a heartbeat. She kicked it once, twice, then strode into the battering heat, sneakers sizzling on the pavement like bacon in a cast-iron skillet.
The moment she dropped in, the world shut up. No shit every dingy hipster with a vape pen, every, and even a lone seagull circling above paused to watch her carve the ramp like a surgeon doing brain surgery with a toaster. You could hear your heartbeat, feel your lungs collapse in envy. The sun pounded her skin until it glowed amber, and sweat beaded on her brow, trickling down like molten metal.
She leaned forward, hips pivoting with the grace of a Djinn unleashed, wheels screeching in protest as they bit into the concrete. Dust exploded in her wake, a filthy pink cloud that tasted of desperation. Somewhere deep in the back, a bass line from a boombox playing Too Short, so low you felt it jam through your spine like a cattle prod. The air reeked of weed and burning meth pipes, as if some junkie poet had dragged his last hit right into her path.
When she pushed off the lip of the ramp, physics threw up its hands and said, “Fuck it,” letting her soar free. Wheels left concrete like lovers abandoning a suicide pact; her vintage sneakers clung to the grip tape as if it were her only friend left in the world. For that suspended moment, she was a goddamn angel of anarchy: hair like copper flame, arms spread wide to embrace oblivion, body arched like a question mark aimed at the void. You could smell the chlorine drifting from the pool, the chemical sting sliding into your nostrils, mixing with the scent of her salty tears that had dried on her cheeks a week ago when a lover ghosted her at 2 AM.
Time slowed. You felt the wind slap your face so hard you wanted to spit out your lungs. Dust and grit shot into your mouth, tasting of rust and regret. There was a metallic tang of her blood, fresh where she’d grazed her thigh on the ramp’s edge, each drop a prayer for pain, an offering to the gods of insanity. You heard the world hold its breath: distant car horns, the hum of a rusted generator, a kid’s muffled scream etched into the strains of a broken melody.
Then she slammed down, wheels cracking concrete like eggshells, knees absorbing the blow with the violence of pistons slamming into pistons. A guttural scream tore from her throat, half orgasm, half death rattle. Blood welled, hot and taste-bud-burning, and she didn’t flinch.
Instead, she grinned a crooked slash of triumph that glinted like broken glass in the sun. Her teeth were stained red, flecks of asphalt stuck to her tongue, and she laughed. Not some girlish giggle, but a raw, throaty howl that rattled your ribcage. She spat a plug of blood and grit onto the ramp as if to damn it and stepped down, heels slapping the ground in a bastard symphony of disregard.
Every inch of her trembled with electric fury like she’d plugged her soul into a live wire and refused to let go. She bent down, ran fingers along the warped wood of her board, nails painted chipped black, and traced a faded sticker of a skull wearing aviators, a mocking grin that looked like it was daring you to catch up.
A snort, wet and filthy, exploded from her nostrils, as though she’d just smelled the punchline to the universe’s cruelest joke. Behind her, the ragtag crowd of skinny punks in old school skate attire, wannabes propped on their TikTok tripods, stood open-mouthed, frozen between awe and vomit. She snapped the board aside and strode toward them, each step a juddering, barefoot punctuation: heel, arch, ball, toe. Feet caked in grime, they flexed against shattered asphalt as if reciting some primal liturgy, the gravel bit into her soles, drawing thin crescents of blood that glared defiance.
She leaned close to the nearest filmer some smug bastard who thought he was gonna make a viral clip and whispered so the mic could swallow every syllable, “Why the fuck are you so scared, little lamb?” The kid nearly pissed himself, fumbling his phone like it was a stick of dynamite. She grinned, half seductive, half predatory, her lips parting to reveal chipped, marble-like teeth stained with nicotine and the residue of crime scenes.
A gust rode in, thick with the scent of burning rubber from the highway just offscreen, hot asphalt smoking in rebellion against the world. You caught the faint trace of whiskey that wafted from a half-hidden flask stashed in her cleavage, something old, something that had lingered too long in barrels and regrets.
She tilted her head back, eyes closed for an instant, and swallowed a lungful of that foul cocktail: sunscald heat, exhaust fumes, tang of her blood, and that honey-sweet whiff of cheap booze. She shuddered, exhaled, a shake that quivered with ecstasy and hunger—hungrier than any god could ever be sated.
In that pregnant silence, when the world’s circuits tripped and even the birds stopped their bullshit squawking, she whispered sharp as a razor’s kiss, “Risk is the fucking price of breathing.” Her voice was a gravel-road sermon, every syllable dripping vitriol and truth. Then, with a single flip of her wrist, she blessed that twisted board, like some pagan priestess anointing sacrificial remains, daring anyone to slip into her shoes.
She spun on that ankle, twisted, and pivoted, disappearing into the shimmering mirage of midday, leaving the onlookers to gape in bewilderment. Some shouted questions “Did she fucking die?” “Was that real?” but no answer came. She was already ghostsmoking down the alley, a living hex of sunburn and bruises, a testament to why the sane never survive her kind of love.
After she’d gone, the skate park exhaled, spitting out dust and broken dreams as if it had just hosted a revolution. The graffiti seemed to pulse, crawling with fresh colors, flaming phantoms celebrating her defiance. The boards lay abandoned, silent witnesses to the brief sacrament: flesh against concrete, spirit against gravity, life brewed strong with danger.
So here’s the dirty truth, fuckers: if you ever find yourself standing on that melted asphalt, feeling the sun high-five your skull, listen close. You might still catch the echo of her words, rattling through the cracked air.
Risk is the price of breathing. And somewhere, beyond the glare of sterile iPhone screens and plastic dreams, she’s still chasing that delicious void, laughing as she rides the razor’s edge between ecstasy and oblivion.
—jspc
Wanton ] Street Artist Crew [
