10.
	Max’s slender shep-coon hand-paws wrapped firmly around the cusp of Guadalupe’s brow with a burst of excessive adrenaline-teeming fury. Estranged and stricken asunder, Max struggled against the kid's well-concealed strength as Lupe began to buck and jerk wild, opting to break free and scream bloody murder. Max gripped the kid's neck, wringing him down into submission, and cupped his palm against the little prick’s lips. Mr. Blackburnadeaux shoved the homicidally-confused goat-prick against the toilet stall’s inner graffiti-laden wall while scratching blindly at his wounded leg, staring with a jittering eye at the fat gnarly blade of cold hard steel jutting out from his thigh, producing an agonizing and throbbing pain beyond comprehension. Max had never felt so vulnerable, but he wouldn’t back down. Not after having come this far in making contact with his designated courier. There’d be plenty of ensuing pain for his newfound amigo, if only Max could find a way to cease his own.
	“OW! Motherfucking BITCH!!!” Max screamed.
	“Puta!” Guadalupe replied. His voice rose even higher than ever before, broke sloppily and cut off, causing Lupe to sound like an anemic diva addicted to clove cigarettes trying to sing softly after enduring a three-hour-long heavy metal performance.
	As the ill-fated couriers argued and fought aggressively inside the grime-stained bathroom stall, the beefy alpha-leader of the weapon-toting extermination crew shut up to listen without issuing another word. The rest of his posse took note and followed suit. A couple hit-furs chuckled aloud, bopping fists and nodding intuitively. Mr. Weasel took a last toke from his tide-stick joint and flicked the roach aside, causing the burnt-down ganja-fag to bounce straight through the stall’s cum-stained glory hole and fly rapidly past Max’s ear, into the rim of the stall's porcelain bowl. Toilet water splashed upward with a faint hiss as the bowl spewed forth a tiny plume of smoke. 
	As far as the gunners were concerned, a kinky couple had burst forth into a heated abusive argument. If rape happened to commence, they’d be ready to video-record the entire debacle with their fancy-ass smartphones to be shared and dispersed amongst the entire raving audience, if Max didn’t remove Lupe’s low-blow shank-blade from the meaty pulp of his thigh. Footsteps clamored toward the stall door. A loud, obnoxiously dull clank! burst forth, echoing into the room with an undeniable presence. The reporting sound of an automatic carbine rifle’s chamber being primed and loaded. Whoever these gentlemen happened to be affiliated with, they were intent on firing off a few rounds for good measure. Max only had a brief moment to offer them a viable distraction. He sucked in as much air as his lungs would tolerate and brought his speaking voice to a falsetto high that caused Lupe to glance at the shep-coon in a funny, unbelieving expression that could’ve been comical at any other time, under easier-going circumstances.
	“Why you always gotta be so hard on me, papi?” Max screeched. He held back every possible urge to bray aloud with laughter at how perfectly ignorant his voice sounded, but it was either speak like a bitch or be gunned down like one. He wasn’t ready to eat any bullets on account of one measly little prick-fucker. “Like I have a choice, bitch?! I saw you eyeing that vato fool bastard all fucking night!” Now he was engaged in an argument… with himself. Lupe still attempted to break free from Max’s grip with no success. Instead, the boy got his head slammed hard into a corner-edge of the stall’s guard-walls. “Please, papi, please! No more! I don’t mean to be lookin’ at that cheetah all struttin’ his shit, ese! I think that fool wants to get me, I dunno, pregnant or somethin’, eh?” Max squealed. He reminded himself of a baby piglet strung out on something both serious and life-threatening, undergoing a major relapse. As humiliating as he sounded, he knew it was either pantomime two voices or die in a filthy pot-scented abandoned lumber warehouse restroom. “Yeah, over my dead fucking body, you filthy loose-ass, trick-ass, hooker cunt!” Max grunted. He was worried that he’d already snuffed out Guadalupe under his death-grip choke-hold until the kid kicked his goat-feet out against the stall door, slamming it wide open.
	Out of sight from outside, Mr. Alpha-leader guffawed aloud, love-tapping the side-panel of the wall a few times, as if he were patting the mane of a prize-winning racing horse.
	“Tell ‘em, bro! Keep that bitch in line! Hahaha!!” The charming leader hollered.
	Max booted Guadalupe out from the bathroom stall with a straining force, kicking his buttocks with both feet and causing the goat-boy to go flinging upward into the air, practically weightless, before kissing hard into the wall’s tiling and crumbling to the floor like a battered rag-doll. The gunners all drew forth their firearms, taking aim at the goat-kid curled up into a fetal position on the ground before them. Meanwhile, Max finally managed to gain the strength (and courage) to yank Lupe’s street-pawned shank-blade free from the stringy flesh of his thigh. He grit his shep-coon teeth and let his eye roll up wildly into his head as he pulled the blade free, causing a spurt of blood to emanate freely from the gouging wound. Max dared not look down at the fresh knife wound, otherwise he’d be apt to faint right where he lay, which simply wouldn’t do. So he pulled his orange eye-patch cloth free from his canine face and used it as a makeshift tourniquet, tying it around the point of impact, gagging at the cloying scent of iron and salt mixed in with the vomit, the ganja, the sex, the drugs, the sin and seduction of the evening. As he wound the cloth tightly around his thigh, tying the ends together under his knee, his eye socket pitched forth a faint esoteric yellow glow that slowly faded into a deep crimson. 
	Patience had become a thing of the past.
	Now all that mattered was survival.