Cry Wolf?
A short story
The golden glow of the early-morning sun caught the unbroken lens, flashing like a signal lamp. Flickering. Dots and dashes. A code, perhaps. The cracks radiating from the point of impact got her attention though. And the bloodstain. Hell yeah, blood does that. It stops you short, and raises the stakes. A pair of reading glasses dropped in the street, that’s one thing. Spectacles dropped onto the sidewalk, cracked and bloodstained, that’s a whole different story. But what the hell is the story? She had the best vantage point: street level, line of sight. Sure, there was a crowd but they noticed nothing. She was living proof of that. Heads up their asses, walking purposefully to anywhere-but-right-there. Looking down, distracted by their screens while real life played out in plain view. But you’ve got to want to see it. So much easier to escape into their worlds of make-believe. Losers.
[Forget ‘em, Dolores, forget ‘em. We’ve got other fish to fry]
That van. Just up there. Out-of-towners, for sure [you don’t get license plates in the city no more, Dolores, uh, uh]. Squinting against the sun, trying to read it. ‘666’, hell, that’s memorable. Georgia too. It had been a long time since she’d been in Georgia.
Tires scream as the van pulls away, too quickly for innocent business.
She sees him then. “Officer, Officer”, she hollers. He smiles benignly as he always does; kindness laced with sympathy as he stops to listen. “Get serious, O’Connell”, she shouts, “I want to report a crime”.
“That’s the third one this week, Dolores. You’re gonna have to give me a break”.
She fixed him with her serious face, but from her vantage point on the pavement surrounded by her life in seven carrier bags, no one was taking her seriously this or any other day.
Face down on the filthy van floor, blood cut off from all seven of his remaining fingers by the tightness of the riggers’ tape, the man wished he at least had his spectacles. Damn, he must have lost them when they jumped him, whoever ‘they’ are.
Looking forward to the next instalment! 😀