The Story (unedited, please forgive me!)

As I said, this is not quite edited to my standard.... I'm having a hard time reading it. Perhaps I can get some feedback to get me started again with it?? Thanks! I'm not sure of the ending.... I may change it a bit. But, tell me what you think!

You walk. A normal day at work has left you tired, but content with life. It was one of those days where everything went fine and you're looking forward to a peaceful evening with dinner and perhaps a movie with your friends afterwards. As you near the top of the subway stairs, a cool afternoon wind, filled with the smells of the city outside, sweeps away every trace of sweat and stress that has been clinging to you all through the day. You walk on up, resolutely, with your bag swinging from your back with every passing movement. People flit by, but you don't take so much notice of them as you reach the top of the stairs and take in the scene around you.

All is as it usually is on such summer afternoons. You make an immediate right and start the last leg of your trek home. The sun is going down behind the buildings, casting shadows in red and orange stripes across streets and alleys and giving the impression that time is fleeting and the world is spinning faster than it usually is. As you take one step after the next, steadily you make your way towards the busy avenue in front of you. People dodge by you and you take in each face and expression as they brush past, so immersed in their own lives and immediate troubles. You are nothing to them, yet you are comfortable with it. They care nothing in the world for you as you care nothing in the world for them. They appear in your life for one flash of a moment and then they're gone forever. You will never see them again. Why worry about them?

You reach the avenue with cars honking and people shouting. The end of a long day for so many as the taxis are full and the sidewalks crowded. You veer left, across the street and continue, parallel the larger street. All types of people attract your attention from tattooed young men with their girls standing and talking to one another with lots of animation to young women with their shopping bags and chanel glasses to old women clutching their grocery bags with wisps of white and gray hair coming loose from the knots on their heads. You see the homeless, with their signs propped up and the well-dressed men and women with briefcases either hailing cabs or hastening in their own directions, with their suite-jackets slung over their shoulders or hanging from their arms. The street is dirty with litter strewn here and there around the stalls selling unusual-looking fruits and vegetables of so many colors. The Indian men behind the counters cry out to people as they rush by to take interest in their wares. A dozen more people walk by in less time than it takes you to even judge and categorize them. A couple policemen stroll down the street, keeping a close eye on all that goes on, while looking menacing all at once.

A vendor shouts out something lost in the commotion of the busy street but that sounds a lot like, "ice cream." You pause, considering, for a moment and then backtrack to the stall. You investigate the contents of the freezer, but it all looks unusually slimy and wet, so you turn back to the street outside, while nodding uncomfortably at the irritated cashier. You scuttle out swiftly.

Out of seemingly nowhere, a young girl, dirty and ragged, stands in front of you with a paper cup in her hands. She looks up at you with her dusty face and tired eyes and holds out the paper cup. She cannot be older than six. You pity this poor child, but all you have in your pocket is a ten-dollar bill and a few dimes. You reach into your pocket and grab the dimes and deposit them into her cup. Her face lights up and you see the child that she is supposed to be, beyond the tired eyes and ragged body.

"Where is your mother, little one?" You ask, kindly.

"She's gone." Replied the little girl, uncaringly, as she turns and darts through the people moving by. Your gaze follows her and you see her standing in the middle of a group of older boys, all equally disheveled and dirty in appearance. You suddenly feel a stab of guilt and fear, prodding at your chest cavity. Why? You do not know because you pass these children every day, though you'd never examined them closely until this moment. As you take a step to hasten forward, the foreboding and uncomfortable feeling grows. Every step you take makes it stronger.

Finally, after walking a block, you cannot stand it anymore. You turn to go back and find the little girl. You want to take her to have a proper meal and to find out who exactly these boys are that she is always with. A young child in the midst of such ominous and uncouth youths hardly seemed right to you. Always as you grew up, you were taught to ignore these situations. Don't worry about them unless they're affecting you. This one was affecting you; so much so that you cannot take another step forwards.

You make it back to the spot where you had last seen the little girl and the band of children around her. They were gone. You start walking around, looking through the sea of nameless faces along both sides of the avenue and down the busy streets branching off in all directions without catching a glimpse of any of them. Finally you catch sight of a vaguely familiar young boy's face darting down an alleyway off of a little street. You make haste after him and start down the alleyway.

This no longer seems like a good idea as you take step after step down the alley. The sun has been going down and the red glow is now more of a dusky light, engulfing everything and making the air murky. You hear children's voices in front of you and walk faster, not knowing exactly what you would do once you found the little girl.

Suddenly, a load of rubbish lying across the way from a tipped trashcan catches you unawares. For some reason, your shoulder aches as it hits the ground. You fall hard and strike your head against the edge of something heavy and sharp. The world clouds over and everything goes white.

* * * * *

We now take a step back. We look at a city as the sun goes down. All movements slow and time becomes less hurried once it's dark. As the night goes by, the men and women of the night come out. Those who work night shifts are at work and the rest of the population, who either works day time or don't wish to be out, retire to the space they call their own. Lights flicker on and off and all as the cars that had been previously contributing to the rushing atmosphere of the streets have found a resting place either outside the city or on streets in parking places or, nestled tightly and safely in garages both above and below ground. The story of the normal day is over. It's a different world out there once the sun goes down and the clock strikes midnight.

* * * * *

You awake with a start. Your head feels like the upper right side is on fire and melting as you blink your eyes. It's very dark out. You touch your face and move your fingers into the area of your scalp that burns and feel the warm and partially clotted open lump. You're feeling nauseous and dizzy and as you try to stand, your legs come out from under you as you fall back to the ground, vomiting the contents of your stomach?-not very much. This happens over and over again for a couple of minutes until you come to a little bit more and can stand. Home. You start in the direction of the avenue so you can find your way home from there.

How did you end up in the situation, anyway? You cannot remember why you were in the alley, though you can remember getting there and falling over the spilled debris. As you walk, you feel a dribble of blood roll down your temple into your eyebrow. Does no body in this desolate wasteland of a city see you? No one offers help. They just watch you for a moment and carry on with their activities. What time is it? You hail a cab and climb in. As the driver asks you what the address is in a thickly-accented and course voice, you suddenly realize you do not remember your address. You reach for your wallet and realize that it is gone along with the rest of the items in your bag. As you climb out of the cab, your head throbs with burning pain and you curse the whole situation. Just your luck, isn't it. You have work tomorrow too.

So, you walk. Everything is strange. Perhaps it's the effect of the head wound, you think, as you start to get nauseous again. You feel the tears in your eyes, starting to brim and you stop and sit on the step closest to you, leading to a red door with the handle just in the middle. There is ivy crawling up the walls and it wraps itself around the black, old bars surrounding the windows. The bars themselves are traditional and really quite charming, but they have been covered with a thick coat of black paint to make them looks new. That paint takes away so much from the antique charm of the building.

You begin to weep. You feel sorry for yourself and the hopelessness of the situation. Suddenly a police car drives by, sirens wailing, and the idea hits you. The police! You stand quickly, forgetting your injury and your head reels and throbs so much that you have to sit down again to collect yourself. Then off you go in the direction of the police car and you're sure to walk nearly in the gutter of the road, to be sure that somebody sees you and has time to stop if they want to help.

Another police car flies by, sirens wailing. Then another and closely after another. Then you count two ambulances and one fire truck speeding by in a serious rush. Why don' they see me? Can't they help me? No one pays any attention to you; not even the people passing by. You walk back onto the sidewalk and try to brush the blood out of your eyebrow and off of your forehead. It seems as if you are going to have to do something about this situation by yourself.

Suddenly overcome with gaseousness, you stop again and sit on a bench that happened to be unoccupied by debris and spilled soda. About ten yards away you see an old man sitting with dark glasses and a cane. Your heart leaps at seeing somebody at such close proximity that is not moving away from you. You stand slowly and carefully and walk towards the man. He makes no movement. You sit at the other end of the bench. He still makes no movement.

"Excuse me, sir. Do you have the time?" You ask him, very politely. He suddenly moves, as if surprised at your sudden appearance so closely and takes a look in your general direction.

"Time is of no importance." He replied in a weary voice.

"But of course it is!" you cried out, louder than you had meant to. "I don't know where I am or how to get back to where I live. The least I can know is how long I have to sort it all out." You are not in the mood to discuss the importance of something so basic as time with an eccentric old man in the dark of the night with a throbbing head injury.

"You have eternity to, as you say, ?'sort it out.' Time is nothing but a delusion that can be manipulated into whatever you want it to be at any moment."

You think about his response. He must be mad. He did not move anymore as he spoke those words as if you stood directly in front of him instead of off to his right. Suddenly, all in one motion, he lifts his hand and removes the tinted shades. You almost let out an audible cry of disbelief and horror. His eyes were gone. Just indents in the shape of half-orbs in place of them.

"I care not for Time and he cares not for me. It's the rest of the world you should worry about instead of Time in the minute world you call your own." He said slowly. "Now if I were you, I would flee this spot and find your home. Once you have a home, a safe place, then you will be able to wrestle with the rest of your world and forget about your worries concerning Time." He replaced his glasses and then sat as still as still as when you had first noticed him.

You crept away sheepishly, forgetting the pain in your head for a moment. You took solace in another doorstep where you could still see the old man through the murkiness of the dark. The streetlights around him gave the whole image of an old man sitting in the middle of a deserted urban street a very haunting and surreal glow?-especially after the words he had spoken to you. You decided that the man must be mad and have lost completely the sense of himself to be out in the middle of the night alone. Where is his family, anyway?

As you contemplate the words he offered, you catch a glimpse of a movement behind the old man. You freeze, sensing danger. A tramp wearing aged, ill-fitting and ragged clothes approaches the old man. Move, old man! Don't you hear the danger? Every single internal alarm of yours is screaming "WARNING". But the old man made no movement. The tramp said something to the old man and the old man responded without moving anything but his lips. He still sat with his hands crossed at the top of the cane, staring straight ahead like a king regally seated on his throne.

The tramp moved suddenly and hit the old man over the head with his filthy arm. The old man recoiled, but sat straight again, swaying slightly and visibly trembling. The tramp, in a fit of fury then yelled something I could not make out and ran around the bench to the point where he stood straight in front of the old man's staring glasses. He spoke again, right into the old man's face and old man, again, replied, stoically.

The tramp paused for another brief moment and then punched the old man right in the chest. There came a sharp crack as the fist connected with the old man's sternum and in the old man's face, you read the pain that came from this hit and the dizziness from the one before. You wanted to cry out, to yell and scream for the tramp to stop, but your head felt like it would explode at any moment and you could not do anything; not even move to run.

The next sequence of movement and sound happened before you could even take it in. One moment the tramp had a knife in his hand and the next, the knife was imbedded in the old man's throat. Then the old man lay on the ground, gasping for air with blood seeping onto the pavement from his neck, as the tramp felt through his pockets. And finally, the tramp could not find anything in the old man's pockets worth anything to him and he aimed a vicious kick at the old man's face, sent his glasses flying, and walked away into another alley.

You suddenly unfroze and rush to the man and kneel at his side. You start panicking and garbling about calling an ambulance and screaming for help and crying all at once. The old man just gasps one long time more and lay still, his mouth slightly agape and his face white. You pick up the broken glasses and gingerly place them back on his face. Even in death, this brave old man should not lose his dignity. But was he brave or was be foolish?

You hear the commotion behind and above you of gasps, screams, and phone calls to 9-1-1. You realize then what situation you are in and you stand and look down at your body. His blood is on the knees of your pants and fingers while your own blood is still in your hair and on your face. You turn and run. No time for questions at this moment. It would be best to avoid it all.

* * * * *

After a couple minutes of blind running in panic, rage, and despair, you stop and take a breath. It feels so nice suddenly to breathe and you breathe harder and harder until you start feeling lightheaded. You stumble again, feeling the burning, throbbing, rushing noise in your ears. You see another doorstep out of the corner of your eye and you throw your body towards it before you hit the cement ground.

As you lay on the doorstep, a miraculous thing happens: your head clears and you can again see straight. The nauseous feeling in the pit of your stomach is gone for a moment. You look around at the place around you and see normal residential buildings with flats inside of them. This is a typical urban apartment building in a decent street of a decently safe area. No one dreams of old men being murdered in the streets here. There is one window across the road that you can see into clearly. You try to avert your gaze, but something about the scene of a woman and her two children sitting around a dinner table quietly did not seem quite right. You look closer. The woman looks nervous, while the little boy, frightened, and the teenage girl, sad as well as scared and lost. Their food is on the table, but no one touches it. The young mother pushes her chair back and stands. She walks to her two children and gathers them both close in a tight embrace. All of them cling to one another and the mother's eyes cloud over with tears and lines appear in her smooth face. She ages ten years in half a second.

Your gaze is torn from the family by the arrival of a staggering man on the street. He is also relatively young and does not walk very straight. He sort of leans to the left and heads in the opposite direction as if to even it out, obviously intoxicated to some degree. As the streetlights shed their tiny beads if light on him, you see a rough man with coarse, rugged features, faintly handsome in a very powerful way. He reminds you of a fighting pit-bull in his bearing and demeanor.

You look again at the family in the window. What makes them so sad? The woman has moved back to her seat at the table and they all start eating very slowly and taking tiny forkfuls of their food. It looks good with the steaming vegetables and dark, rich meat. The little boy knaws on a carrot while the girl just sits solemnly and stares at her portion. Her hair is very blond and she would probably grow up a little more to become a real beauty, but for her tired and despairing facial expression. Though she had food in front of her, her body was gaunt and bare of all the roundness a girl should have at her age. She might be sick, you think to yourself to comfort and justify the girl's appearance and blame it on some probably extenuating circumstances. She could not be more than thirteen years old.

You look back to the man advancing up the alleyway. He has improved his walking, but only barely and tries to straighten his cap. He walks by the apartment building in front of you, missing a glance of you on the doorstep across the way. You feel relieved for a moment until your relief turns to dread as he stops and turns, examining the buildings. He backtracks and walks into the building you have been watching. He curses to himself unintelligibly as he tries to open the door with the wrong key. Then he gets inside and you hear a thud and faraway footsteps. You look back to the window and you see all three of them watching a corner of the room very closely. In your heart, you know what was coming even though your mind refused the very idea of it.

The big man walked into the room, strangely composed as if he was trying to put on the guise of being completely sober. None of the rest of the family was fooled. His wife, presumably, stands and leads him to his seat at the dinner table and then sits beside him. He lets himself be led, watching them all closely. He sits and takes the folded napkin and wipes his grungy forehead with it. How could a man like this have such a beautiful family? He then took his fork and knife in his hands to dig into the meat on the plate before him. The rest of the family does the same. They eat in silence for a couple of minutes.

All is seemingly normal, though awkward, as the family eats until the man gets to the vegetables. He takes a carrot and bites it in two, and then spits it out onto the plate. His wife does not have a chance to react. Suddenly his fist came up and he smacked his wife in the side of the face. She falls from her chair and you can see her no more. The man stands and approaches her from around the table and kneels down to her level. You cannot see his face anymore, but you can still see the children.

The young boy looks terrified and starts to cry, but the girl's face is what catches you attention and tugs at your heartstrings. Her face has gone white and her eyes so wide you can see the white around the pupils. She does not look to be the same girl you saw picking at her food. Suddenly she looks like a valiant princess in a fairytale. She stands quickly and runs at the kneeling man, pushing him and catching him off guard. You lose sight of them both for an instant, but the next thing you see chills your heart.

The man lunges out of view from the window. You hear a girl's scream and you then see the man dragging her back into your view by the hair. He lifts her to the point where she is standing in front of him, held tightly by her hair. The man viciously yanks her around and pulls her and puts his face close to hers and shouts in it. You are no longer watching from your own body. You are in the room, and you see the whole scene vividly. The woman lying on the ground, blood running from an open wound on her cheek and the little boy curled up in the corner, also quietly sobbing. You can see his little body rise and fall and jerk with every intake of breath and suppression of the sobs. And in the middle of it all is the huge man and the young girl.

The man, still holding her with one hand by her hair slaps her viciously across the face. She cannot fall and she cannot stand. Her eyes roll and she clearly cannot see straight. The man pulls her close to him, too closely, and rips at her shirt. She starts to weep, but cannot fight. He gropes at her breasts with his free hand and explores her entire abdomen with his thick and dirty fingers. He squeezes and prods very violently and suddenly releases her as if a different thing drew his attention elsewhere. She falls on the ground and all is still for a moment. She does not move.

The woman had since stood and gone to the little boy in the corner. She has been trying to comfort him and averted both of their gazes from the scene in the middle of the room. The table that the food had been on has been shoved to the side of the room and the food is everywhere. The room is in shambles and you see that everything is broken. You cannot move your body, as you are witnessing the horror within the little room.

The man then walks to the young mother and seizes her by the arm and walks with her to the other side of the room. The little girl stands so you can see her bruised and raw face with her hair framing it wildly like a mane of gold. She shouts and then darts for the direction of the door. You see no movement from anything else except for the boy, crying still with his face in the corner.

Then you see the girl lurching out from the door to the outside world away from her the people she lives with. She runs towards you and then past you. She looks real all of sudden. A real girl that really went through the hell you just saw. She trips over her own feet and crashes onto the ground. You did not imagine this. You jump up, suddenly feeling your body regaining its power. You run to her and kneel in front of her. She looks up and you see the child with despair in her eyes.

"Are you an Angel come to take me and my brother and mother away from this place?" she asks in a very quiet voice, hoarse from yelling.

"No, but I can take you away now to somewhere safe. I saw the whole thing and can help you tell the police." I said, trying to comfort her. Her face fell and she curled up on the sidewalk in sheer misery.

"That won't help. He'll kill us if we go for help. That's what happened to my older brother. I miss him sometimes." She stopped crying and looked dreamy for a second. Then she stopped talking all together and though you tried to persuade her to, she did not say another word. She just buried her face in her arms on the cold pavement and wept. Then a door opened and I heard very heavy footsteps on the sidewalk, slow and plodding.

She looked at me and whispered, "Now go. Hide. If he sees you, he could kill you." You recoiled from these words in the confusion of what she said. Her eyes press you with urgency and you retreat to the gloom behind two overflowing garbage bins.

"Anna, what are you doing out here? This is no place for a girl on the streets like this at night. Come inside and go to bed. It's much too late for you to be up." The rough, cruel voice sounded more like a growling threat than that of a concerned parent. I moved my face further back into the shadows and the girl, cast in silhouette from the man above her by the light of the streetlights, turned and looked up into the face of her tormentor. He seizes her by the arm and lifts her to her feet.

"Let's go, your mother will be worried sick with you out here all alone." She walks beside him back inside, throwing a sorrowful glance back at me as she walked back into her hell with painted walls, warm food; a fickle sanctuary of sorts. Her eyes told the story of fear and despair. Poor girl.

You sneak close to the window and see that all is quiet. There is no movement from any of the three doors leading away from the kitchen-living room space. The only thing left in the room is an illuminated lamp in the corner with the shade knocked askew and the chairs and table jumbled about the room. The carpet is folded and mussed up, as a carpet gets when there have been many sudden jerking steps on it and the only thing that remains that shows you the truth of what had happened is a little smear of blood on the floor from the mother's face.

All is silent, so you turn, resolutely, fully intending to document the entire incident with the police since you don't want to cause further trouble in the demented household. You limp into the night. The cold sidewalk has crept into your knees and through there the rest of your body. Your heart beats hollowly and coldly. You are lost in a city you once knew and loved. How can all of this really be happening?

* * * * *

You have never felt so lost and so alone. The blood in your hair and on your face is dried now and looks like mud. You look like just another person who sleeps in the streets. Your clothes are muddy and you look like you've been through hell and back. As you walk, nobody sees you. You wander through the night aimlessly. After these things you've seen, the world no longer feels real. Time seems to have stopped. You think of the old man as you see every bench. You think of the young girl, Anna, every time you see a lookalike apartment building. Everything passes before your eyes in shapes and blurs except for the people and their eyes.

As the sun rises, you walk along the banks of a river on the boardwalk. You can see and hear the traffic queuing in the distance over an immense bridge that spans the river. Joggers pass by, focused on one thing only: getting to the end of their jog. It all seems to silly and pointless for people to jog and try feebly to take care of their bodies. Just as you think this, a plump woman jogs by in shorts and a shirt that she really should not be wearing, especially so early in the morning. You look away, disgusted and focus instead on the water. It's very dark and murky. Though it is summertime and pleasantly warm, you do not particularly want to jump into the river to clean away the filth from your body. It feels like you have passed through many years since walking out of the subway and feeling the fresh, city breeze on every inch of your skin.

This has all become one big nightmare and you do not know where to turn or go. You are afraid to ask for help of the police and you are afraid to seek help for the young girl and her brother and mother. You feel like nothing. You see your insignificance and the pettiness of your problems in relation to that of so many. This is a hopeless mess. Will I ever get out of it alive? You think about your family and friends and wonder where they are. You wonder if they have missed you. You wonder if it will ever seem right to be with them again. How can you enjoy their company when you know how many others around you do not have anything so close as a loving family? What should I do now?

You stand and walk away from the river. The dawn has cast the world in a grey shroud. You cannot remember the last time you watches the sun rise and the colors change. Why is it that when the sun comes up and the new day starts the colors are so less intense than the purples and reds of the sunset? The city is first bathed in a dark grey, becoming lighter and lighter until a light blue bathes the sky and the white of the clouds cast their own shades of grey. The meager and sick trees rising from the cement sidwalk cast their own shadows with their ill, dark green leaves. They are dying before your eyes and you had never noticed before.

You walk on, seeing the few people, their eyes still muddled with sleep and their bodies waking in the warm, morning air. You pass through an empty park where the people of the night don't even sleep because it is too dangerous. You keep on walking, seeing the robotic movements of the men and women in suits that pass you by as if you don't even hold enough interest to them that they would stop and help you if you dropped dead. What is this world that you had missed for your whole life until this night? What have these people become through the darkness of the nights?

The old man's words were true. "It's the rest of the world you should worry about instead of Time in the minute world you call your own."

Your world is nothing. None of these peoples' worlds are anything more than yours. You reel with the sudden realization and guilt that fills your heart. You dismissed the old man's words as those of nobody. The numbness leaves your body and your head gives you a painful wake-up reminder of the reality that you had seen in the past few hours. You reach up and touch the wound. It is extremely tender and swollen. Still it is damp with wet blood. Head wounds always bleed more that you are ever comfortable with. The wound could be quite superficial and still, if it is on the head, it gushes red blood for longer than a normal wound would, giving the impression of death being closer than usual.

You marvel suddenly that you are still alive though all of the night. You have survived as nobody in a strange world that you do not recognize. The person you were before you tripped and fell is still inside of you, but you have found new meaning in life and in the little things you always took for granted. You feel as if you can relate to people and their sufferings and that this alone is a gift. You see suddenly hope. You feel it flood through you and you make haste in a direction you do not know, a new feeling in your body. Your painful head is secondary to the excitement in your heart. You know the old man will not have died for nothing once you are finished with the world around you. The old man was nobody as well when you met him, yet now he is so much more to one world: yours. All it takes is one conversation to make a difference.

You're walking so deeply in thought and joy that you look around you and again realize the scenery is unfamiliar. You sigh, irritated that you let yourself get lost again. But, you have forgotten all about the work you were supposed to be at today and now have a whole lot of time to yourself until things go back to normal and you figure out who and where your home is, not to mention where you have wandered to. There is no need to know where you are. You will figure it out soon enough anyway. It's a nice change to be somewhere unfamiliar and unbinding, though you are still frightened of it.

The scene around you is lively. Children and young men and women are everywhere. There are school busses in the street and you see caring parents kissing their kids on the foreheads and bidding them to have a good day and learn something new. You're touched by the love these few parents emanate. Their children are embarrassed when their parents hand them their lunch boxes and hug them goodbye. It is just another day at school for them where they will learn nothing important.

You take up a seat on the closest bench on the same block as the school but a ways away so you do not attract attention for being somewhere you do not know. You watch the children of every age and look running into the school, some young without knowledge of the "need" to fit in and some older, trying to be something they are not. You see little boys and girls in cartoon shirts to young women with converse sneakers and bright shirts to show off their growing bodies. You see young men with baseball caps and polos and others with extra large tee shirts and baggy pants, hiding their bodies and souls alike with their "scene".

Your gaze flits to the busses that seem to vomit more and more children through their weary doors. A particularly unfriendly and fierce looking young man steps out after a crowd of little girls, giggling and clutching their lunchboxes and knapsacks. He has straw blond hair and the hungry eyes of a wolf, yet on his face his wears an expression of indifference and grim determination. What a strange way to approach a day at school! You feel sad for the boy as you watch him slink away into the school with his heavy bookbag slung carefully over one shoulder. You look back to the bus and watch several more boys walk off and then a young girl.

She has bright blond hair brushed straight and neat down her back. Her thin figure struggles with the heavy bag of books she carries on her back. She wears a black shirt and a pair of jeans too large for her, held up by a thick leather black belt. Her thin arms are clasped around several notebooks and she has a pen perched behind her ear as if she had just been using it. Her eyes have dark circles, and she stares straight ahead, not even glancing at the ground as she steps off the bus. You recognize her by the bruise high on her cheekbone, cleverly disguised and made much less noticible by makeup. The girl from the apartment building!

She walks slowly into school without taking notice of the noises and movement around her. She is in another world. You want to go after her to see if she remembers you, but you know that you cannot just walk into a public school looking as you do without causing a commotion. You hope someone sees the bruise and asks her about it. You hope someone like a teacher or councellor takes her away from the life she lives. You remember that you want to report the incident to the police. A renewed need to do this rises in your heart and you jump up and approach a crossing guard waiting for the cars to pass and for children to arrive on the other side of the street.

"Excuse me, ma'am. Where can I find the nearest police station?"

The crossing guard looks at you and sizes you up. In crude english she replies, "It's over theah down that street." And she points down the closest street leading away from the school. Your words of gratitude are lost in the rumbling of a cement truck rushing by, honking at nearby cars.

You hasten in the direction she points in. You watch several other young children rushing down the street arguing amongst themselves about being late. Three young boys hissing at eachother, barking about who is to blame for their lateness today. You see a row of marked squad cars across the street and you run to the wooden double doors behind them. A hectic scene of movement, ringing phones, flying papers and shouts meet you. You struggle to the high counter where a woman officer is stationed with her hat on the side of the desk and a pen and pile of papers in front of her. She looks faintly irritated.

"Excuse me, I'd like to report an incident I witnessed last night. Am I in the right place?"

The woman looks at you and purses her lips and narrows her eyes. "What kind of incident would you like to report?"

"A domestic violence case."

She stood and straightened her shoulders. She said, "follow me right this way, please" and you followed her. Many of the other officers and men in plain clothes watch you as you walk by. Suddenly you feel cornered and unsafe as you glance at their grim and unfriendly faces. What ever happened to the officers that you would always say hello to as you walk by and who would smile and reply kindly? These people are nothing of the sort.

The woman leads you to an office, opens the door and signals for you to go inside.

"Our chief is here and he is the one to file proper paperwork."

You walk inside to see an older, burly fellow with a black mustache and ruddy cheeks. He looks almost cheerful as you walk in. He asks you to take a seat and starts rustling papers with his glasses on his nose.

"You want to report a domestic violence case?" he asks you without even looking up into your face.

"Yes, I witnessed it last night at an apartment complex." You continue and explain the entire scene. The man looks up and listens to you. When you finish, he takes out a packet of paperwork and hands it to you.

"Now, I need you to fill in exactly what you just said to me and make sure to write the time, date, and location of where this happened."

"Sir, I don't know where exactly it happened. I've been wandering around all night and--"

"Well then at least try to get the rest of the information down clearly and we'll figure out where exactly it was later. Describe the location at the end of your summary."

"Well I also can't remember the exact time it was. In fact, today is Friday, right?" I ask very tenatively, knowing the reaction before it even arrives. The man stopped rustling through his paperwork and takes his glasses off.

"You mean to say to me that you don't know what time it was last night, where it was or even what day it is today? Today is Thursday and yesterday was Wednesday! How can you possible expect us to take any action on this case if we don't even know when or where it took place?"

You stammer something in reply, which is lost in his continuation of frustration and pure irritation.

"We cannot accept a report like this from someone who looks like they themselves have been victims of a domestic violence case. I'd suggest you find the location and come back with a clearer story of what happened and where. We cannot do anything unless you provide certain basic information. Good day sir!"

He stands and walks to the door, opening it and motions you to leave. As you walk out he directs you towards the door, his cheeks ruddier and his eyes piggier than they had been when you walked into the office at first. The hairs on the back of you neck prickle as you feel the eyes and laughter of every officer in the lobby watching you leave. Suddenly you are very aware of your state or disrepair. You feel dirty and unclean and unfit to say anything at all to anyone.

You take large, long paces back down the block and across the street, heading back to the bench and the school where at least you feel relatively safe and invisible. As you reach the bench, so wrapped up in yoru own anger, you realize that the officer was right. How could he take something seriously when the persom reporting it does not even know the date or place the incident happened? You put your face into your hands as you feel the tears welling up, remembering the face of the young girl as she looked into your face outside of the apartment the night before.

"Are you an Angel? Are you an Angel? Are you an Angel? Are you an Angel? Are you an Angel?"

Her voice replays time after time as you remember the scene over and over again. The tears fall and you feel more invisible and more useless than ever before. The feelings of hope and joy have long since gone and back in your heart is a deep, black void of despair. You wipe your face and glance around, desperate for a street sign of some sort to figure out where you are.

The children have long since gone into the school as you had tried to do something good and kind. The street around you is empty except for passing car and women walking their dogs or pacing by with groceries. Some men in suits with suitcases hustle by with some plan or goal deeply etched into their minds. They have somewhere to go and something to do. You just sit.

You think about where you should go and do next. Maybe you should find another police station further away and report yourself as missing. Perhaps you should throw yourself in front of a passing car and make it someone elses's job to figure out who you and and where you come from. You stand from your bench as the bell rings inside of the school. You hear movement and you freeze, just listening with your eyes closed imagining the young girl walking between classes, out of the hell you had seen her in before.

But the laughing voices suddenly change and you hear pounding of footsteps and shouts and screams. A loud crack comes from within the school. Then you hear another and then another a few seconds later.

You don't even hesitate. You run to the school at full speed, imagining the worst. You jump up the stairs, two by two and dash through the double doors. A scene of complete pandemonium meets your eyes. Boys and girls are dashing from place to place and frightened teachers are screaming for them to go to the closest classrooms and to barricade the doors or to find a way outside. The posters and pictures on the walls are torn and books and bags litter the floor as they rush towards the exit doors. You see the flood of students running from the second floor stairwell. You dash between the tide of terrified faces and crushing bodies and make it up the stairs.

The second floor is empty and you race down, peering into the empty classrooms. No one is there. The hall is empty, but looks like a stampede had just raked it. You hear three more cracks, much nearer now and you hear three thumps and more screaming much closer now. You hurdle a twisted chair and dash up the stairwell at the other end of the hallway. You hear sobbing closer and closer as you jump up stair after stair. The third floor is the scene of a horror movie without special effects.

A young man with straw-colored hair is holding a handgun out in front of him pointing at the student in front of him. Around the hallway lie several unmoving bodies. The closest classroom door's glass is shattered with blood spatter along the rest of it and two small legs protruding from the inside, holding the door open. The young man does not see you for his back is turned and he bears down upon a teacher with a young student hidden behind her. She looks into the boy's face with a white face and wide eyes and her whole body visibly shakes, but she does not move away from the little boy hiding behind her, crying in small gasps.

"Put the gun down. You don't want to do this. You have friends here and they love you." Her glasses and beaded necklance and earrings suddenly seem bigger than her face. Her eyes leak tears and her upper lip quivers, the pink lipstick looking even more unnaturel. She has given up.

You jump in, "Come on, man. Don't do this. Please stop for your own sake as well as all of those around you."

The young man turns to you and points the gun at you instead. His features had been set before and empty when you saw him walk into the school. Now his eyes blaze hate and angel and his face is contorted into that of an especially frightening mask.

"And what do you think you are? An Angel?" he growls at you through clenched and bared teeth, his eyebrows knitted into a fierce glare and his nose wrinkled like that of a wolf about to attack.

"If you think you're an Angel, then I think I am God. Now I choose to get rid of all the filth in this world by starting with its spawn." He bellows at you. He turns back to the teacher and student who had been edging to the nearby door.

"And I choose to start with you!" he screams as he shoots and hits the teacher in the chest with a huge, exploding bang. She gasps without breath and starts to fall slowly, revealing the tear-stained, puffy, petrified face of the boy behind her. He looks at the young man and the gun with open shock and freezes. The young man begins to take aim slowly as if he forgets your presence.

You lose it and shout and lunge all at the same time, "No!"

And all in one second, you dive at the gunman and he turns and fires into your face. The crack fills your head and every crevice in your body rings with its force. You feel the bullet whiz by your cheek and embed itself into your shoulder as you are stopped in mid air and fall to the ground, still facing the young man and the boy. You land hard and the breath is knocked out of you for a second, but in a world of dizziness and exploding pain from your head and entire upper body. Your left arm is pinned below you and your right lies motionless at your side. The world spins.

"Leave him alone… please." You whisper. The young man laughs out loud, throwing his head back in a grotesque movement of triumph and joy, showing the world his pulsing jugular vein.

"You really think I'm finished yet? Well, good news for you. I'm almost done and you can watch it all end as it began." He grins, baring his teeth again, and he lowers the gun and walks to the young boy.

"Come here, my friend. You know I would never hurt you. All I want to do is save you as I'm about to save myself."

The little boy takes his outstretched hand and the young man leads him towards your fallen body. You tense up and the world around you blurs again with a powerful spasm of pain that ripples through your entire being.

"Now close your eyes and squeeze them tight and I will take you to another place where no body can hurt you ever again." Says the young man to the little boy. The little boy closes his eyes and squeezes him, putting his thumb in his mouth and wrinkling up his entire face. The young man puts the gun a little ways from the boy's temple and looks at you.

"This is the only way to save them." He pulls the trigger.

Your scream is lost in the explosion above your head and blood spatters you face like a thousand shards of glass. The little boy's lifeless body falls in front of yours as your head also hits the ground with pain and hopelessness and despair. It's all over now. But you suddenly feel alive again as you hear many heavy steps moving on the floor below you.

The young man cocks his head to one side, itching the side of his head with the short barrel of the gun and looking off in the direction of the stairway. He knows it's all over. You don't know how he is going to react to the sounds below.

"Well, it seems as if my party is at a close now. I've made my point, too bad I won't be around for the reaction." He looks at you again, seeing the renewed life and fight in your eyes.

"Don't do it.." you started to say as he interrupts you one last time, not listening to a word.

"I'll depend on you to tell them all what I've said then since you're the only one who's seen the end. Goodbye." And he places the barrel into his mouth with one swift movement, the eyes no longer angry or dangerous, but full of tears. He pulls the trigger, still looking into your eyes and as his head flies back and his body hits the ground, you catch sight of his real eyes. They're grey. The last crack resounds in the nearly lifeless hallway as does the thump of the weapon on the ground beside him.

You close your eyes and your world spins even more. The last thing you see is the gun beside his outstretched hand with the palm up. The fingers pulse once and then they lie still as blood seeps out from beneath them.

You fade into blackness before you see the police enter from the hallways on each side.

* * * * *

"Hello? Hello? Are you awake? Are you alive?" echoes a voice from the whiteness above.

You start hearing the noises around you of a subdued crowd and the medics working around you. You feel a sharp pain in your left arm and feel the needle slip into your vein. Your eyes flutter and you groan a little bit, feeling the heavy, dense ache from your shoulder and collar-area and the throbbing at your temple. You groan again, opening your eyes. Your head lolls lifelessly to the right, away from the needle and into the ache that had become a burning throb in your shoulder with the movement.

You catch sight of much yellow caution tape and you see a little figure being covered with a while sheet by men in uniforms around the mess of the debris all around the alleway. You only catch a glimpse of the body they hide from view, but one glance is enough to see the pale little dusty, unkept face and muddy outstretched arm in the bloody clothes of the little girl. You remember where you are. You know who you are, but you do not know what happened.

You feel yourself moved swiftly to another hard, flat surface that is not as cold or wet as the one before. The people caring for you are moving quickly and with as little chatter as possible. You feel yourself being stapped in and secured so you could not move again. As you're lifted into the air and carried several meters, nauseousness tears you apart and you begin to vomit. The board you are on is instantly lowered to the ground and tipped to the side so you could vomit onto the pavement instead of inot your own mouth. The wretching persists for a minute and then subsides. As you open your eyes and look around you, you see faces and eyes in the clear sun of the morning, staring at you, frightened and lost.

You see a familiar face of an old man with dark glasses right in front of the crowd, silent, unmoving. Beside him stands a little blond haired girl and her brother, holding on to her hand. She smiles at you, her gaunt body standing tall, but the despair in her eyes still clear as ever. The little boy sucks his thmb and watches you, quietly.

You open your mouth, but no words come out. The board with you moves back into the right position and you are lifted again and carried to the ambulance. You are placed on the stretcher and put into the truck. The hubub around you continues until you feel the truck move and you know you are alone with the two in the back.

The voice who woke you begins to ask you questions, but you do not answer, your mind is spinning in circles around the old man and the young boy and the girl.

"…Do you know what time it is?" asks the woman directly addressed to you.

"Time is of no importance" said the Angel.





The end.