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August 28th. It was a muggy evening I sat on my porch
watching the pink moon climb in the lavender sky, having a cigarette and
listening to the crickets chirp. I live
catty corner to a mini mart gas station and I often sit and watch the comings
and goings of the strange people who frequent the place. Every so I often I even walk over and make myself
another strange consumer for someone else’s eyes to behold and wonder at. That night though, as I watched the dark silhouetted
giant of a man with twisted back and limp trudge up the street, I got a bad
feeling.
I kept to my seat though and as he
got closer, it seemed to me that he was angry and up to no good. He entered the store and I still don’t know
what made me do it, but I went and got the revolver out of the nightstand
drawer. Six bullets loaded and hoped to
heaven they wouldn’t be used.
At the front door the screen creaked
excessively loud as I passed; the gun concealed in my clothes, I scanned for
the hunched man. There, by the pay
phone, he had let his large traveler’s pack down to the ground and was fumbling
with the park of cigarettes he had just bought.
I could see his heavy lined face clearer now in the light from the
street lamps though the twilight hung over everything mist like; as I watched
from the shade of my porch, he pulled out an ancient looking watch, checked the
time, scanned the area as if impatient for someone’s arrival. I could have sworn he looked right at me but
he didn’t seem to notice me there. He
checked the time again and snapping it closed fiercely, he began muttering
rather loudly and hoisted the pack on to his twisted shoulders.
He set off at a faster pace this
time and I followed as far behind as I could with out loosing sight of him. I didn’t know what in the dickens I was doing,
or what made me do it, really, but I was too unsettled now just run off like to
bed like a good girl. In the darkening evening
he left the main road through town and took me on small winding streets and
alley ways. When he finally slowed it
was towards an ill lit abandoned park. I
positioned myself behind a large tree trunk and waited with my breath caught
between my lips for fear of being found out.
Why had the stranger come here? Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement
in one of the darkest places in the park. There as if to greet the hunchback, a man
stood out of the darkness, he was less burly but no less repulsive to my
already churning stomach. Maybe this was
who he had missed at the mini mart.
Steady Lizzy girl, I told myself,
no need to go getting yourself killed just yet, but as my eyes adjusted to the
light I saw something else huddled there in the dark and shaking violently, it
was a child, no more than 5. As I stood there in shock too horrified to move,
why was she here? I recognized the little girl, she was one of the town
tragedies, her mother had been killed in an accident and all that was left at
home was a drunken father; I couldn't recall her name. My mind scattered
and clutched at what I should do. I couldn't think. I watched stupefied
as the man I had followed broke into a kind of limping jog towards the other.
It looked to me as though the hunchback was going to try to throttle the other man;
he leaned into it as he ran and stretched out one powerful hand to crush his
neck. But where his hand should have touched the man's neck, it
didn't, it passed right through as though he were a ghost. His arm
followed his hand through his neck and to completely culminate my surprise, his
body followed his arm and passed through the other man's body like a ghostly
wind, leaving it to crumple to the ground. I blinked my eyes but the
hunchback had vanished and I knew with out thinking that the other's soul had
parted from his lifeless body.
I ran to the child as gently as I
could and scooped her up, she smelled of cigarette smoke and needing a bath;
her tiny form shook in my arms and the muddy tears wet my bare arm. I looked down at the man on the ground, his dirty
button down shirt was untucked and his pants were open. How much pain could he inflict? Something else caught my eye, it was the pack
of cigarettes the hunchback had purchased at the store, still unopened.
~~~~~~~~~~
As I eased myself back down to the
step on my porch, the night became as it had been. If it were not for the child washed and settled
into my bed in an old night gown, and the box of cigarettes, I would not have
believed that it had happened. I was
never much of a do gooder, maybe I was just in the right place at the right
time…. or maybe not. Neither, though, was I much of one to place my bets on God,
but I’d heard of beings, Protectors, not of men, Angles, some say, keeping safe
the innocent. And after tonight, I’m willing to believe. As for the girl, well,
I’ll give her this box of cigarettes, and this story, neat typed out, when she’s
older: she’ll believe too.
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