“Fine day!”  he puffed a cloud as he spoke with the stem between his yellowed teeth.

  George approached an intersection where a fine woman of seventy or so waited to cross.  She seemed fearful of making the treacherous journey.  George walked up beside her, extended an arm, as any gentleman would, and suggested, “Shall we?”  It was as if he were at the ball asking for this dance.  The white-haired woman obliged and the two set off across the street.  George glided with such grace to cause the bitty to smile, then to blush!  Soon he presented her to the other side, bowed and said, “Thank you, my dear.  That was lovely.”  He had cut his rug and was to return to the other side of the bustling intersection.

  “What a gentleman!”  The old woman whispered excitedly to herself, proud that she had the opportunity to be escorted by such the gallant man.  Her initial judgement of him from his appearance and lingering smell of alcohol dissolved as she thought of a time long ago when she would have received such treatment from a courtier.  Such a handsome, scruffy man.

  He waited for the sign to return to the little walking man.  The sign only showed this briefly in comparison to the lengthy time he would wait staring at the hand that required him to stay put. A younger man approached. George noted that he walked quickly and only looked up from his handheld gadget every few steps, then braced himself with a hand against the light post anticipating the man would collide with him.  Only a few steps from George, the dark-haired “boy” of twenty or so step-turned to the curb, looked up briefly, and stepped from the curb to the street.  He seemed unaware of the quiet little import that was speeding toward him. George reacted much faster than he was used to and grabbed the trench-coat of the gadget-wielding youngster and redirected him to the sidewalk.  The momentum of the event caused the old man to slip from the curb and fall to his knees on the edge of the street.  Tires screeched as the driver of the tiny silver car hammered the brakes.  The anti-lock system caused the subcompact to skid erratically until…

THUD!

“AAAHHHG!”

CRUNCH!

CRUNCH!

“AAHHG! OH GOD!”

ERT.

CRUNCH.

  “Oh, my legs!  Ahhg!  Oh God, my legs!”  George wished that everything stop, but the commotion drew a crowd immediately and there were people all around him. They tried to move him from the street, but he screamed in agony at the slightest movement.  He pulled a flask from his inside pocket and drank the contents in one gulp.

  A hundred people, or so, encircled the scene.  Some gasped at the two men laying bleeding on the street corner.

  “Where is he?”  George yelped as he tried to see through the crowd.

  “Who?”  A bystander asked as she tried to comfort the broken old man.

  “The young man in the trench coat!”  He groaned a reply.

  “What…”  the young woman began to question, but was interrupted by a stream of blood that flowed toward her from the sidewalk.

The crowd divided, avoiding the crimson flow, and George could see the young man lying on the sidewalk bleeding from his neck.  George’s pain disappeared for a moment as he saw the dark-haired boy gasp for his last breaths through the river of blood that flowed from his injuries.  As the scene became clearer to George, he saw the broken storefront window and the shattered glass that covered the walkway.  He saw the boy’s face, cut and bleeding, shards of glass protruding from the wounds.  Some pieces had fallen and impaled the poor guy after he fell to the concrete.  It was gruesome and George knew he was responsible. He watched as the “boy” died suffocating on his own blood.  The “boy” watched a crowd of panicked onlookers do nothing, but panic as he bled and suffocated to his death.

  “Aaagh!” The pain returned to George as someone tried to straighten his legs.  He noted that the man who was doing the torturing appeared to be a medic before passing out from the pain and loss of his own blood.

   TO BE CONTINUED…

Link to Episode 2: