I've got nothing against God. I think He has good intentions and in the end She is who we believe Them to be. I may not believe in the miracles you're thinking of. But I believe in coincidences so strong, patterns so perfect, Occam's Razor demands a designer.

I never ask my Dad what he thinks about God. He's a deacon at the church we grew up in, so I assume he's a loyal follower, but my brothers and I suspect he only joined for our Mom, and only stays for the promise of seeing her again one day.

Despite him teaching me how to build, fix cars, think for myself, stand up for myself, and how to love everyone, we don't agree on much as adults. But I love him for the dangerously generous, stubbornly brilliant, pun-slinging, drama-loving man that he is. And five years ago, I was, at thirty-five, still Daddy's girl.

He finds out I'm pregnant, and my Dad brings me a dozen long-stemmed red roses, walking straight into the after-school Drama Club where I'm teaching, and without a word, gives me a huge, sniffly, teary hug. I say, "Thanks Dad," touched, but I'm more concerned about revealing my pregnancy to all my teenage students while still in the first trimester.

I tell my students the roses are for Valentine's Day, and one girl said, "I wish my dad got me flowers." When I tell my Dad this, he goes out the next day and buys my students the biggest box of chocolates I've ever seen in my life. We had to turn it sideways to get it through the door. That's the kind of man, the kind of Dad he is.

At 37 weeks, he makes sure he's in town, ready to do anything and everything for his baby girl and her baby. He does his best, but he's seventy, and he's spent the last six years racing to his death, to be with Mom. Cracking jokes, making dinner, running this way and that, always helping someone. But by week 39, he's the one who needs help. "Dad, you've had that headache for three days now, how bad is it? I think you should see a doctor."

"Oh, it's not too bad, maybe an 11 out of 10. I saw the doctor, she gave me some ibuprofen."

"Is it working?"

"No, not really."

"Do you want to go to the hospital?"

"Maybe tomorrow."

The next day, he drives himself to his doctor, who calls and tells me to come right away and take him to the hospital. I squeeze my pumpkin sized belly behind the wheel and drive my Dad's van to the hospital. He holds his eye from the pain and gives me advice on the best side roads to take for the most scenic route.

After days of back and forth, of no answers, just more pain, they finally do a scan of his brain. A stroke. Possibly a bunch of strokes, with his cholesterol levels so high they don't know how he's standing, let alone walking. They can't believe he's talking coherently, he should be in incomprehensible pain. My due date comes and goes and he says, "Hey, maybe you could get a room next to mine."

I visit, and every day he's getting worse. I tell my brothers to get here as soon as they can. My husband brings him my Auntie Estelle's coffee, and he's so grateful he promises half of all he owns as a dowery along with my hand in marriage.

He's talking about the pretty nurses, and I ask if he's seeing someone. "No, whenever I think about another woman, I hear your Mom's voice scolding me. I've been thinking about her a lot." My older brother is supposed to be here by now, but through a series of unfortunate events, an anti-miracle if you will, he won't get to the hospital until the next morning. Dad's getting tired. It's harder for him to get his words out. He rallies briefly, "Tell Aedan I just want him to be happy. Tell Jackson to live in the moment." A moment. "You take good care of me." And he's ready to sleep.

I wake in the middle of the night, worried something might be wrong with the baby. I'm debating whether to call the midwife when the hospital calls me instead. "Your father had an aneurysm. He's unconscious. You should call in the family."

The family gathers around his bedside. We're here. He's not. His body lays there, lifeless but still alive. We talk to him, we sing, we touch him. My niece, Dad's firstborn's firstborn sits on his lap, too young to talk, she pokes him in the eye. He's supposed to make a funny face when she does that. He doesn't do anything. He's not wearing his glasses. He's not in there.

But I feel him. He's in the room with us. His love is so strong I can feel it, like a blanket across my shoulders. His soul feels joyous, light, it doesn't fit in this heavy, useless body, lying there broken. I know he'll never wake up again. I say my goodbyes. I love you, Dad.

This is the not the miracle you were hoping for.

My brothers, our extended family, his church family, surround his body with love every day when they move him to hospice. I'm not able to visit much, I'm almost a week overdue. And then the back pain starts and goes, and starts and goes. Contractions. It's my older brother's birthday. I distract myself by baking a cake, and we celebrate as much as we're able.

It's time to go to the birthing center, where I get benadryl, tylenol, and a pat on the back. I silently scream through a sleepless drugged night of agony, trying not to wake up my husband and mother-in-law, trying to let them sleep. When the sun comes up, I know I need help. We get to the hospital, and the pain is so great, so mind-consuming, I don't even feel the epidural go in. Blessedly, the pain eases, and I sleep. The next 24 hours, my niece's birthday, passes by in waves, waves of discomfort, pain increasing and easing, and then easing less and less. I speak with coherence. I don't scream. I don't cry. I think, I am my father's daughter.

It's been too long on the epidural, the catheter is on fire, it needs to come out, I spike a fever, I'm pushing the pain meds button every time I can. My first nurse is back on duty, and says, "We're doing this today". The baby spikes a fever, the nurse says, "We're going to have to take him to NICU when he's born."

And I start crying. Sobbing. Wailing. Immediately, there's a team of nurses, what's wrong? I can barely get it out, "You're... going... to.. take... my baby... away from me." It's the worse pain I could ever imagine, the thought of being separated from him. And they look at me like I'm crazy. So dramatic. It's about 9am and they induce me. I see my husband get a text, and I know something's happened with my Dad, but he can't tell me yet. I push when I'm told, bearing down, finally letting out some pent up rage, pain, fear.

His head is crowning, and I am being torn apart. All I can do is push. I push so hard I pop a rib. I push so hard my eyesight gets better for two days. My sweet child, eight days late, so big, he's already holding his head up on his own. His fingernails are so long they need to be trimmed. And he speaks, "Ef-wah, ef-wah, ef-wah." God, he is so precious, so perfect. I don't get enough time with him before they take him to be measured, weighed, 21 inches long, 9 and a half pounds.

He is a miracle, but there is more.

I learn it's not over. They reach in to detach the placenta that should have come out by now, they stitch up where he tore through me, and I can feel every stitch go in. They pull out the epidural that wasn't working anyway. I'm too exhausted to cry when my husband confirms what I knew. My Dad passed away, around the time they induced me.

Later, Jackson says, our Dad's soul must have passed my son's, one coming, one going. It's a beautiful image. Later, I'll joke, of course my Dad would take his exit in the most dramatic way possible. I sleep.

Life goes on. There's just so much pain, days of pain. Every minute I'm away from my child is torture, there's a string connecting my heart to his, and it threatens to pull my heart out. I can't walk without horrendous pain, but I must see my baby. He's a giant among the tiny premies, already wearing clothes for 3 month olds. I get kicked out of the hospital before he does, and I beg, I plead for them to let me stay a bit longer. They don't.

Slowly things get better, I learn how to be a mother while mourning my father. I grieve for the grandparents my son will never know. A month goes by. Almost a year.

Aedan is diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. I hear my Dad say, "Tell Aedan, I just want him to be happy."

Jackson marries the mother of his child. She's pregnant with their second. I hear my Dad say, "Tell Jackson to live in the moment."

Inside, I'm resentful, I think about my Dad's last words to me, "You take good care of me." Was it a question? A request? A statement? I've administered his estate, planned his memorial, tried to take care of my brothers. Have I fulfilled his dying wish?

The next day, we release my parents' ashes together, into the ocean near Hawaii, where they were born. As their ti leaf wrapped remains sink to the bottom of the ocean, I feel the threads of their souls unspooling from my chest. The anchor's chain tears out pieces of my heart as it sinks. A snap. And they're gone.

My son is my heart and soul outside my body. My joy and my light. He starts to laugh. It reminds me of my Dad. He starts to walk, and reach, and listen. I realize he's brilliantly and stubbornly intelligent. He starts to talk. He makes jokes, puns. That easy smile, that gentle spirit. It's a joy to raise him, protect him. Care for him.

It takes me years to see it. My Dad's spirit didn't leave us. He wasn't hanging on to life to meet my son. They didn't pass each other like ships in the night. He met my son in the before and after life, and decided to go another round. An old soul in a new baby. Eyes that already know too much. A different person, but the same spirit.

It was a prediction.

"You take good care of me."

A miracle.

(Names changed to protect identities)

When I was in college, I visited New York City for the second time in my life. The first time was with an aunt, an uncle and a couple of cousins, and we did the tourist thing. (One of the dumbest things I ever did, was when we were coming down the elevator from the world trade center, I decided not to pop my ears to see what the experience would be like. When I got to the ground floor, the experience was painful, muffly sounding, and ultimately regrettable.) So this time around in the big apple I was an untethered college student of drinking age, but with no monetary surplus. I was there for a journalism conference; the 101 dalmatians live action remake. Disney was paying for everything so my broke ass survived on room service, the gift basket contents, and the mini bar. When I took a walk outside of the hotel, I went to FAO Schwarz, and then sat down outside of Radio City Music Hall. For a few minutes I watched hundreds of people go by and I became intensely sad. My soft pretzel lost all its flavor. Maybe it was my Midwestern Ohio sensibilities, perhaps it was because I was alone there, but I got the feeling that if I sat outside Radio City Music Hall every single day at the same time every day, I would never see the same person twice. And that depressed me to my core. I think everyone feels a kinship with New York City based on how many movies we’ve seen filmed there or stretching back further in our cellular DNA there’s still some recognition of taking that boat to Ellis island and trying to find one’s fortune and safety in the New World. For me, New York is a nice place to visit, but I don’t think I could ever live there. Millions of people, lonely as hell.

It has been recognized that under high duress organisms push towards the self-destruct button. There is an innate desire for the single cell to make futile, furtive, and false efforts to multiply its forces. This is known as cancer. Similarly, more complex neuro pathophysiological advanced species, with such cellular mis-adaptation, will in such state, pursue prey of a spurious nature so as to try in vain to appease their subverting cells, now in metastatic states, by consuming increasing amounts of Poly.

Polly Wanna Cracker is in fact a primordial cry, originating from the depths of the wing-tip shoe squeaks of timeless thugs, bandits, and pirates of Life treasure (always wanting more!) and in excess of voracity will fracture and implode with explosive ramifications for the World. The repetition of this longwinded chorus, by our Avian friends is nothing more than an illusion of stretching and scaling, of this asylumatic articulation. Going crackers like in One Flew Over The Cuckoos.

In fact, turning frequency knob (hence speed and pitch), this refrain is then more aptly identified as the central nest bomb in mental break- and count-down:

Tick, Tick, Tick....

...which fine-tuned and adjusted one more time is heard clearly now as:

...sick, ...sick, ...sick...

04.30.2023

Why are we eating Plastic? challenge @batmaninwuhan

Ahh yes. Leaves. They are a very delicate natural condition aren’t they?

Did you know that leaves didn’t always change their color?

When I was very young and the world was new, the trees all had the same green color of leaves all the year long.

Each tree had different shapes and sizes of leaves, but the colors always stayed green.

One day a great argument arose as to which species of tree were the most beautiful. The Great Oak said it was the most beautiful because it’s leaves were shaped differently than the Elm and the Alders. Then the Birch spoke up and said it had the most spectacular trunks! Then the Redwoods and Sequoias spoke up saying they were the most beautiful because they were taller and stronger than everyone else.

The arguments got so loud that even the birds couldn’t be heard over their bickering.

So to put an end to all the arguments, Mother Nature called a meeting and told everyone who bore leaves that at the end of summer, during the Autumnal Equinox, she would hold a beauty pageant for all leaf bearing beauties just before the Winter Solstice when everyone takes a long winter nap.

Everyone was encouraged to color their leaves in bright cheerful colors or colors they thought would look good against their trunks.

The winner with the best colored leaves would be announced in spring during Beltane, and would be crowned king or queen for the year.

Well this was such a great idea that all the arguments stopped and everyone concentrated on putting on their best colors!

So that’s why the leaves change every autumn and the way it’s always been from the time I was very young and the world was new.

"I knew that movie was bullshit. Hell, everybody knows that movie is bullshit, but that angsty brunette is cute. Well. Shit, I guess that mopey dope with the perfect hair is a good looking guy, too. Surprisingly, he actually made a decent young Batman."

He works deftly, hands a blur while he rambles a mile a minute.

"Of course, the hero of the story really got shit on. That's the way of it, I guess. The heroes don't get the girls, they get discharge papers, a purple heart, and a partial pension for the rest of their miserable lives. At least Jacob didn't get shuffled off and forgotten by his country and comrades."

He pauses, looks down at his handiwork, and resumes his stream of consciousness.

"Come to think of it, I can't really remember what happened to old Jake. I just know he didn't get the girl, she picked the zombie over the real boy, that much I do know. And my pension aint half bad, honestly. It's not like I'm unable to work side jobs, like this one, yknow? Who woulda thought a nobody Eleven-Bravo like me would have marketable job skills?"

He stops talking long enough to wrap a heavy, rusted chain around the bare metal gurney that sits in the back of the parked ambulance. He makes several passes over his passenger, through the metalwork of the collapsible bed, and back again. He secures it with several padlocks. Everything has the patina of age, wear, and use, but the gear is less than a year old.

"Oh, that's infantry, in case you didn't know. I thought maybe I'd find work with a defense contractor, right? I mean, I did, sorta, but this aint exactly providing security for diplomats or oil executives. Hell, did you even know some of the big boys actually run ops stateside?"

He pauses, checks his passenger, and notices there are still no signs of consciousness.

"Well. Now you do, I guess." He slaps the secured "patient" none-too-gently. "Hey. Wake up, Chocula. Rise and shine."

There is a gasp, a roar, and a tremendous shaking. The man on the gurney comes to consciousness, fully aware and enraged. He flexes, he screams, he hurls curses mixed with wordless fury, but he is bound tightly by thick rope and thicker chains.

"Yeah, I don't know why I bothered with the rope. Practicing for a weekend with the girl, I guess. She said she might be into the whole shibari thing, so I figure, fuck it? Why not, right? What's the worst than can happen? She gets pissed at me for sticking it in the no-no or spinning her around a few times too many? I mean, that's what rope dudes do, amiright?"

The person in chains realizes he can't see. He's wearing a sleeping mask over his eyes, and he tries to rub his face on his shoulders to dislodge it.

"Oh, hey, no. Stop that." There's a sharp pop and continuous crackle of a Taser, cartridge removed, as it is applied to a restrained thigh. The almost-a-man howls in pain. "Yeah, shit hurts, huh? I get it. Hell, you should try riding the lightning with the probes in you. Man, that sucks. But you need to leave the blindfold in place. I'm not down for that glamour trick you fucks do, and, if you see me I can't exactly let you go, right?"

This has an immediate calming effect on the supine detainee.

Rage abated, breathing under control, pain subsiding, the restrained person finally speaks in coherent words. "What is this?"

"My job, slick."

"Work for me, I'll pay you double."

"Yeah? Tell me about your benefits package."

"Good pay, excellent health plan."

"You don't say? Vacation time?"

"Life will be a vacation."

"Now that's a funny word, right there."

"Vacation?"

"Life."

The chatty former soldier opens up the double doors of the ambulance, and with a grunt, he shoves the gurney out onto the pavement. This early in the morning, there's no one else on the open-air top floor of the parking deck. Dawn sunshine bathes both men in the warmth of a new day.

The stainless steel gurney has no mattress because it was burned away dozens of jobs ago; the shibari ropework acts as tinder for the instant bonfire that fills the air with the smell of pork roast and burning hair. The vampire's scream lasts only seconds before vocal chords blister, burst, bloom in flame, and scatter on the wind as ash.

The whole spectacle lasts less than a minute, and rusty, charcoal-covered chains sag and clang to the rolling metal frame and concrete.

He sits on the floor of the ambulance, watching the sun continue its rise while he waits for the metal pieces to cool. A light breeze lifts his spirits and carries away the trash from another day's work.

"God, that movie is such bullshit. Fuckin sparkly vampires and idiots who want to fuck a corpse. Jacob dodged a bullet, that's for sure. Sullen corpse-humpin emo trashchick, goddamn."

When an uninvited stranger with a long beard and a large sack walks in on your Christmas celebration

You eagerly welcome him to join in on your vacation

As you pour him a glass of milk and offer him cookies

He only smiles and removes from his sack eight goodies

But though you expect ¨Ho, ho, ho!¨

He chuckles ¨I´m ready to party for seven nights straight, you know!¨

And just as he hands you a warm plate of knish

A sudden realization hits that he is Jewish!

He sets the menorah upon the mantle

And beckons you to light each and every candle

Then with a smile you take his hand to join you in time

To sing "This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine..."

It's been a miserable few weeks. I think I've seen more blood in the past thirty days than in the rest of my career.

I scrub the back of my hands over my eyes and let out a long sigh. It's another late night. I've been having too many of those lately. Standing up to stretch, my eyes fall onto the board where all my information is pinned up. The guys make fun of me for being so old-fashioned, but having the low-tech stuff makes me feel better. More secure, I guess.

I mean, look at these victims. Some of the brightest minds in modern science, gone just like that. Like they'd never even existed.

Thirty days. Thirty victims.

God, it's driving me crazy.

I pull down two of the photos to compare. Day 16 and Day 23, the crime scenes.

Elias Green. Got his stomach torn open and throat slit. Evidence suggests he was conscious until he died. Blood all over the ugly upholstery.

Scarlett Caldwell. Hung from the ceiling by her wrists and beaten, then suffered a cracked skull on the floor. Heavy internal damage. Our perp took the time to raid her fridge on the way out.

We've got video for all thirty of them.

Normally it'd be our saving grace. Now, I think it's the worst part.

We don't have ID. We've got the top half of a face and hours of useless surveillance. Androgynous body type, slim and wiry. Short dark hair or a hat, maybe. Dark eyes, light skin.

Normally, the top half of a face would be enough. More than enough. We'd have ID within seconds and bada bing, bada boom, our guy gets caught on his way home and we don't have to worry about him anymore. I don't have to work 20 hours of overtime a week because everyone this side of the Mississippi is paranoid they're next.

We've got next to nothing. He's random, unpredictable. He strikes fast, hard, and messy, like he's got a vendetta. He's not worried about leaving signs. I mean, look at Day 4. Joey Brooks, cut up in little pieces and scattered around his own apartment. The carpet had squished under my boots.

I need a drink.

I'm craving shots — it feels like a bad-idea type of night — but I've got bourbon stashed under my desk already.

Where's the thread? What connects them all? I mean, unless the guy has been-

I freeze, already halfway through my pour. I set the bottle down roughly and turn back to the board. Profiles. I need the profiles.

I snatch the short descriptions pinned up next to each victim and lay them out next to each other.

Day 4, Joey Brooks, PhD in Developmental Biology.

Day 9, Olivia Gilmore, doctorate in Neuroscience.

Day 16, Elias Green, doctorate in Robotics and Biotech.

Day 23, Scarlett Caldwell, PhD in Biomedical Engineering.

Doctorate, PhD, PhD, doctorate, doctorate, PhD.

A thread.

No, the beginning of a thread. If our guy has it out for scientists, there were easier, higher-profile targets. I mean, Olivia Gilmore lived in rural Missouri, real catfish country. Well, she lived in New York for a bit, but it was a while ago.

A while ago.

"Ailee?" I ask aloud, activating the AI built into the office. Everyone's got a different activation phrase for her, and she reacts anywhere in the station.

"Yes, Officer?" her smooth voice responds.

"Run a few calculations for me. I want to know how many of these victims lived in NYC from-" I check Gilmore's profile. "-2004 to 2015."

"Right away, Officer," she says. I start pinning the descriptions back onto the corkboard, but I'm not even through five before Ailee's back. "I have found records that several of the victims were present in New York City during the timespan you requested."

"How many?" I press, staring at the board.

"Thirty." I sit down, all my breath leaving me in a whoosh.

We have a thread.

Now, what exactly were they doing in the city that put them on our perp's hit list?

You're so close, my mind whispers.

The door behind me creaks shut. Weird. I always keep it closed.

I whip around to see a slim person with pale skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. They look almost wild.

"You're so close," they whisper again. Their voice is softer than I expected. Higher, too. They'd never spoken in any of the surveillance videos.

"Officer," says Ailee. "I am having some difficulty identifying your visitor."

"Find them. You can find what they've done, I know you can," whispers the murderer who I've been looking for for weeks. I swallow hard, my throat suddenly dry.

"And what is that? What did they do?" I manage to ask. My voice doesn't even tremble.

"Officer, based on visual cues, I recommend you remove yourself from this situation," Ailee says, a little louder.

"Experiment X," mumbles the murderer, almost to themselves. They swayed a little where they stood. "Subsection H-131. Status: Successful. Classified. Highly dangerous. Updated status: Loose."

"What are you saying?" I ask, stepping forward. "What does that mean?"

My movement seems to jolt them into awareness, and before I can say "whoops", they're gone.

"Ailee, did you get what they were saying?" I ask. I slide back into my seat behind my desk and down my poor abandoned bourbon.

"I did, Officer."

"Cross-search that with our victims. What was it, Experiment X, subsection something something..."

"Subsection H-131," she confirms. "I have found sources that possess the names of the victims and the key phrases. I'm afraid that they are behind a firewall. They are labeled as highly classified."

"Can you fix that?" I ask.

"Of course." My tablet pings with an Ailee message, and I pull it up.

"What is this stuff?" I ask under my breath, scrolling through the documents. "Ailee, send this to the chief. Make copies. We can't lose this stuff."

The logo at the top of the document strikes me as vaguely familiar. Slowly, my eyes drift to the corkboard.

Day 1.

Norman Crowell.

Right next to his picture on the board is the logo of his company, Crowell Corps. They make most of the ID tech that goes into surveillance equipment. A decent amount of that equipment, too.

Crowell Corps' logo is front and center on the document. Right above the bold text that reads "Experiment X".

"Ailee, what connection do the victims have to Crowell Corps?" I ask, already dreading the answer.

"It appears the victims were involved with this Experiment X. Many of them were influential in its functioning."

"And what is Experiment X?"

Ailee pulls up one of the documents I didn't get to.

It's a picture of a child.

Gaunt with wide dark eyes and lank dark hair, the child stares into the camera. The picture is labeled "Experiment X 2011".

"From what I have been able to discern, Experiment X was an experiment by Crowell Corps to produce a subject resistant to their identification technology. It was originally started to locate weaknesses in their technology, but as the experiment progressed and a successful trial was obtained, the directors of the experiment suggested using the experiment to further their own agenda. The experiment was trained in combat, but on the date of the test deployment, went rogue and attacked Norman Crowell."

My phone beeps with an incoming message from the Chief. "Detective, whatever this is that you've sent me, it can wait. We've got another victim."

"Twenty bucks says this one's also involved with Experiment X," I murmur.

"All due respect, Officer, but I'm not taking that bet," Ailee replies.

Big Red Jacket, coming out of the car with a cloud of steam. Wouldn’t know if its Donner or Blitzen. Certainly didn’t blitz to get here. Saints never usually do; they like to take their time. Make you wait for hours in a cold parking-lot of an abandoned Sports Authority at the end of a large strip mall. Yet, Christmas came early this year; he was almost on time. My Santa gets in the car, greetings are exchanged, seasonal in fact. He says Merry Christmas, so do I. Ironic cause I know he’s Muslim. I’m Jewish. But today we’re both Christians. And in his brownish backpack that he dragged in with him, nothing but tannenbaums. “Half off for the Holidays?” I ask facetiously.

He laughs, mutters how he’s gotta eat, then pauses and says, “Awe hell. I’ve been paying attention, you’ve been a good homie all year. Why don’t you take an extra dub, you can pick the bag.”

”You sure?” I reply. “You don’t gotta do that.”

”I’m sure man, it’s the holidays, I was already thought about it twice before I pulled up on ya. Ask again and the offer goes with me.”

We dab hands, I say my gratitude, he tells me he’s gotta get back to his “hoes”; we laugh and I let him go. Out of my car he gets back into the cold, pops the trunk, swings in his sack, and slams the door back down. He walks to his driver side, big red jacket gleaming from my headlights, opens the door and surrounds himself in a cloud of steam. Ol Saint Nick gives a wave, hops in his sleigh and off he flies. Back to his workshop, or more deliveries, only he knows.

The color purple is really something unique. It beamed in this new painting. I tilted it slightly, straightening it on the wall. I'd wanted this particular one for months. I couldn't believe he'd actually gotten for me. Leaning into the canvas, I huffed a deep breath in. The wafting smell of acrylic was still there. Boy, it was a beauty. Dark lines and fine details. It had to be my favorite piece. I continued to stare at it in awe.

The door rattled, interrupting my moment. Rolling my eyes into the back of my head and sighing loudly, I headed to the tiny peephole to see who dared to interrupt me. To my surprise, a young woman around my age stood there in a frustrated stance holding her hands on her hips. I paused to take her in. Blonde barrel curls fell below her shoulders, and her jeans sat high on her hips, synching her waist. I narrowed my eyes. Who was she? She lifted her hand and pounded on the door again, startling me. Intrigued, I cracked the door, "Can I help you?" I said sternly.

Without notice, she heaved the door into me, "Are you, Nikki?" She screamed, storming past me, but stopping in front of the painting.

"What?" I said, confused.

She laughed, "You know, that was supposed to be mine!" I looked to see her pointing at my new gift, my painting. Stunned, I had no words. I was unsure of what to do, hoping she'd just leave. She rushed towards me, backing me into the wall.

CRACK

My head ached, and I was slightly dizzy as I came to. She was gone, along with my painting. The door was also still wide open. Slowly, I gathered my bearings and caught my reflection in the mirror above my sofa table. My right eye and cheek glistened a bright red, turning the whole side of my face deep purple. I winced, rubbing the wound. The color purple is really something unique.