After they left, I stood at the door a moment, my
mind whirling. I needed to get closer to the scene.
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
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