I rushed back toward the window when a brisk wind of blood and death encapsulated me as the French windows flew wide open . I slowly filled my lungs with the scent and knew right away that this was no ordinary murder . It was a fiend on the prowl and left unopposed , it would attack again , bringing more death upon the innocent . Looking down onto the crowd of people roughly fifty yards from my second-floor window , I surveyed every movement . A mother held her child to her bosom ; a man and woman held hands as the female leaned close to the male ’ s chest ; two children shed tears of grief ; a mother and father wept as they clutched their child ’ s lifeless body . The dissonance of traffic and mourning pained my ears , and even more so vexed my heart .
The rambling of an on-coming ambulance screeched louder and louder and soon an African American male and a Hispanic female bolted out of their front seats to get the gurney from the back end . The EMTs hurried to the slain body while one male and two female officers intervened between the grieving parents and their child . The mother wailed , lashing out at the EMTs , her hands tearing at anyone who would touch her child ; the father grabbed her around the waist and struggled to subdue her as he forced himself in front , pushing her back toward the crowd .
All I could think of was Sara pulling and scratching at herself before she died . The flailing of the arms , ripping of the flesh , memories of the damned . Sara ’ s eyes flashed with malevolence as she attacked her mother . Her nails were a mere two centimeters from Mrs . Holstadtler ’ s nose when I reached for her ankle and threw her back onto the bed . The girl writhed with such velocity that I had no choice but to mollify the fit by squeezing her jugular , a
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