I live in a pretty bad part of town; my parents do what they can, but this is the best neighborhood they could afford within the county. They don’t want to yank me out of school when I’m finally beginning to make friends again, and I’m grateful for that.

But … on my way home from school friday, I saw some guys standing around near the shake place on 11th. I thought they were just bullies from school, yelling things at me laughing, but when I looked at their faces, I saw something much more cold. These were no ordinary bullies, these were pros.

I didn’t know for sure it at the time, but I asked my dad when I got home if there were any gangs in our town. My dad used to be sort of a harder guy, he had some tough times in his youth, and since he grew up nearby I thought he would probably know.

“Dad, I saw some bad guys outside of the shake place on my way home from school today. They were holding knives and one of them looked like he had a couple teeth missing. I didn’t recognize them from junior high, do you think they were from the high school, or part of a gang? Are there a lot of gangs around here?”

My dad is usually a friendly, quiet type of person. He’ll speak his mind most of the time, no matter what he’s talking about, even if it’s embarassing or scary. After I asked him about the gangs he opened his eyes over wide and his mouth hung open slightly. He sat there in his chair for a long moment, then snapped back to reality and shook his head.

“There used to be. There were gang wars all the time. I was in one called ‘Red Stripes.’ We were the top of the town. I got this scar on my cheeck from a gang war we won agaisnt our biggest rivals my first year of high school. We were the top of the whole town, for two glorious years … then … the ‘Hibbens’ came.”

“The Hibbens?” I asked.

“No one knew who they were. They didn’t go to school, they didn’t have families. They didn’t even seem to live anywhere … I’m still not sure how they survive.

“It was small stuff at first. Our scout got into a nasty fight with one of their guys late after a party. He was in the hospital for a couple weeks. Then a couple of our guys got really drunk and decided to go hunt down the guys who messed up our scout. We didn’t hear from them the rest of the weekend, and they weren’t at school the next monday. The cops found two bodies with over a hundred stab wounds each in the river on Wednesday, no trace of the murderers. We knew then that we were all washed up.

“We had a short war over the next few weeks, but most of us were afraid to even face the Hibbens. They were all so … so … evil! They were demons with their knives, even when they were up against heat! I never heard about a single one of them going down, or even losing a fight. Eventually our leader struck up a truce with them, promised to dismantle our gang and convince the other gangs to do the same. The Hibbens didn’t want to be the top of the gangs; they wanted to be the only gang. After the Red Stripes went down I got out of gangs and went on to college, where I met your mother and started a new life. Ever since we moved back I’ve been looking for traces of the Hibbens, and have been relieved every time I couldn’t find one. Now that you tell me about these guys, I’m afraid my worst fear might finally be awakening.

“The Hibbens are the only gang left in Portsville, so they can fight and kill whoever they want. Complete power. I want you to stay away from them anytime you see them, you could’ve been killed today.”

My Dad stayed in his chair looking out the window for a few minutes, and I just stayed sitting in front of him. He was trapped inside himself and his past, or at least that’s what mom said. I don’t walk that way home from school anymore and I just hope that The Hibbens don’t do anything that makes my Dad want to move away, I like it here. Still, the thought of being attacked by Hibbens almost keeps me awake at night.