Free Blue Twilight by Jessica Speart

someone to love and make him happy.
    “Then I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning,” I reminded him.
    I watched as Terri strolled off. Then I turned and began to walk toward home.
    I was deep in thought when a chill unexpectedly settled in my bones. I quickly looked up. Just ahead stood Old Saint Mary’s Church, famous for its brick bell tower. The time-piece on the tower’s front reported the hour to be ten o’clock. But it was the inscription chiseled in the bricks below that was darkly menacing: SON , OBSERVE THE TIME AND FLY FROM EVIL .
    It was enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I quickened my pace with the feeling that mischief was afoot, just waiting to pounce.
    As if on cue, the sound of steps swiftly approached from behind. However, I wasn’t prepared for the hand that roughly latched onto my shoulder, nor the object that was thrust into my side.
    “Hey, babe. What’s the rush? You look too good to be all by your lonesome.”
    Something metal bit through my clothes and the worldchanged gears, as everything began to move in slow motion. Even the streetlights flickered and blurred, just like the room lights in Krav Maga class. It was my nightmare all over again, except this time it was far too real. My pulse raced, fearing that the metal object pressing into me was a gun.
    “L e t ’ s f i n d s o m e p l a c e q u i e t a n d d a r k w h e r e n o o n e w i l l b o t h e r u s.”
    The words were drawn out and distorted as they reached my ears, like an old 45 record being played on 33 rpm.
    “J u s t d o n ’t d o a n y t h i n g s t u p i d, a n d y o u w o n ’t g e t h u r t.”
    The man pushed up against me. The rancid smell of his breath turned my stomach as his fingers bit into my skin and steered me toward an alley. At the same time, he removed the metal object from my side and reached for my purse. I glanced down and saw that he held a short bolt in his grip rather than a gun.
    I didn’t stop to think, but acted solely on reflex. Dropping my head forward, I rammed it back as hard as I could, catching my assailant on the nose. His hand flew off my shoulder. I quickly whirled around and threw a punch to his solar plexus, followed by a painful jab against the temple. The next thing my attacker knew, he’d been thrown up against a wall.
    Only then did I get a good look at him. Oh, shit. I was dealing with a street kid who couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old.
    He clutched his chest and struggled for breath, all the while glaring at me like some poor puppy that had been wrongfully kicked. My fear instantly disappeared, replaced by a whopping sense of guilt. More than likely he was a runaway in need of money.
    “Are you all right?” I asked, and took a step toward him.
    “Just stay the hell away from me!” he warned, and ran off as fast as he could.
    Damn it. What the hell else was I supposed to do? I thought. Let him mug me, or possibly worse?
    But no matter how I tried to justify it, there was no escaping that I’d just beaten up a kid—one with a desperate look in his eyes. The incident haunted me the entire way home.
    By the time I walked through the front door, I wanted nothing more than to fall into Santou’s arms and forget what had happened tonight. However, when I got upstairs, the television had been turned off and Jake was no longer in the living room. I tiptoed in and found him fast asleep on the bed. He lay so still that I could have sworn he was dead. Then I saw the two bottles of painkillers uncapped on the nightstand beside him.
    I listened to the sound of his breathing, while holding my own. Each exhalation was painfully slow, each inhalation excruciatingly shallow.
    But that wasn’t all. An empty bottle of scotch lay like a passed-out drunk on the floor, and I knew that his recovery still had a long way to go.

Five
    I awoke to a gray, foggy day, wondering if I’d ever get used to the Bay Area weather. Rolling over, I tried to