She lay on the cold pavement unable to feel its uncomfortable hardness against her back. She tried to move but her twisted body would not respond. Her legs were spread and her feet were bent at awkward angles behind the knees. Her bloody underpants had been ripped from her body and now rested on the wet ground just inches from the right side of her horribly mutilated face. Her blue corduroy skirt had been thrown up and over her body so that the hem now covered her mouth.

She could feel tears or something flowing over her face. She tried to call for help.  Through her moving lips passed only silence; the silence one can feel at four o’clock in the morning when unable to sleep. She could not understand why she was unable to scream or move. The only movement came from her eyelids slowly opening and closing.

How could she know that her back was broken? The seventh thoracic vertebrae was twisted like a pretzel. Like a compound fracture it protruded through the skin on her back. She was totally paralyzed.

She stared into the cold starless sky. The night was as black as the inside of a cast-iron skillet. The only sound she heard was the steady splat, splat, splat of the icy rain drops falling on her face.

From somewhere she thought she saw a blur. The blur turned into a shadow. To her left the shadow now became a slow-moving shape. The man peered down at her. He was dirty looking and smelled like one of those dumpsters, found in alley ways behind eateries, filled with rotting food thrown away days before.

The man carried something in his left hand which hung loosely by his side. Slowly and carefully he raised the object. When his hand was about twelve inches from his face she realized the object he carried guardedly was a green labeled pint bottle. She saw him continue to raise the bottle to his mouth. He took a long pull and polished off the last of his Thunderbird wine. He looked angrily at the bottle and tossed it across the street.

As the wine bottle shattered against the sidewalk, the man nudged the woman’s body with his foot. When he moved his foot her body rolled so that she was almost on her back. The movement had pulled her skirt away from her face and now the hem rested just above her petite waist.