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I see a collision. Hear the sickening thump.
“No! No!” I rush to the baby and scoop her into my arms. Holding her so tight, she starts to bawl, I whimper. “Please. No.”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” A woman storms out of the little girl’s house. Her hot pink robe flaps behind her. Dark blue eyes bore into me with enough force to drill deep into my bones.
I glance up, blinking unsteadily.
The road is empty.
No speeding cars.
No lifeless little body on the ground.
No blood seeping between my toes.
“Who the hell are you?” She wrenches her child from my arms. The chaos that descends next assaults me like someone who had the television on mute and then suddenly turned the volume to 100.
Reality comes rushing back to me.
The child screaming her head off. The tears rolling down her ruddy cheeks. Her arms shaking in fear as she stares at me. The mother cussing me out.
Her hands gesture wildly as she threatens to call the cops on me. I feel the trembling in my own arms as I realize I overreacted.
I didn’t save her. She didn’t need saving.
My chest heaves as I try to breathe, but it feels like my throat’s closed up. The world is spinning. Tilting. Shifting.
“Answer me!” The lady shouts. “Answer me, you psycho!”
Words form in my head, but they can’t make their way out. Something blocks them just before they can touch the air. Something powerful and dark. Something that clings to me like oil. That smells like death.
Guilt. Fear. Panic.
My mouth opens and a gargled sound emerges. I can feel my eyes bulging out of my head and the little girl screams harder, turning into her mother’s neck and hiding from me.
Me.
The monster.
The murderer.
“That’s it. I’m calling the cops.” The woman fumes. She digs into her pocket, her movements janky and urgent. The arms of her robe flap against her bony, white elbows like bird wings.
There’s something ironic about that. About how her graceful her movements are when she’s so loud and frantic.
Explain the situation, Brenna. Don’t just sit there.
“I…” My heart still pounding, I try to grab the words shooting through my brain. “I…”
“Hello?” The woman snaps into her phone. “I think someone just tried to kidnap my daughter—”
A shadow casts over me, the woman, and the little girl. I don’t look up but I can feel the shift in the air. A tension that snaps and crackles.
The mother goes silent.
The little girl stops crying too.
My gaze sweeps over a worn pair of orange steel-toe boots. Heavy jeans scrunched around the ankles. A lean waist. A grey T-shirt fitted snugly over a muscular chest. Golden skin-toned. Sun-kissed, people would say.
