Sweet Innocence

The streets were mysterious and whispered danger in my ears, making my body jump at every tiny sound. The cold rain water was rushing down along the sides of the streets and made an obnoxious sound finding its home underneath the surface of the ground. I couldn’t see the lines painted on the cement through the deepness of the black destructible water as I crossed, dragging the body of the lifeless girl behind me, choking her with the collar on her shirt. The lights on the street were all flashing, broken from the strong winds of the storm, reminding me of a railroad sign right before a train crossed. Water rushed up over the curbside, and I measured the height of it in comparison to the fire hydrant; I could barely see the tip of it. My hair was thrown in my face, wet and itchy, when I heaved her limp, fragile body up over the curbside. I could feel my weak arms resisting and wanting to let go. I grabbed her underneath her arms, determined not to release her into the deadly current. A rough, wet item beneath the water caught hold of my legs and pulled my body hard moving with the flowing rain water down off the curb on to the flooded street. I lost my grip on the girl and feared for where her body would end up, wondering if someone else would find her before I did. I felt the side of my body being scraped and attacked and my skin tearing and bleeding from the deadly, rough cement hidden underneath of the terrifying flood. I struggled, holding my breath under the water trying to reach whatever had a hold on my legs, reaching and pulling against the water that held me back against my will. I felt a sharp pain in my legs, making me scream out, filling my lungs with water when my body reached the opening to the sewer. My feet had been pulled so hard up against the small opening that I could have sworn the pressure broke both of my legs. I pushed myself to not think of the pain and focus on how to rescue myself from the fatal position I was in. My incredible desire for a gasp of air was overpowering all of my other senses. I choked on the mucky water again, and my nose burned when I inhaled the deadly liquid. I pulled at my jeans under the water with all of the power I had in my arms, attempting to raise the upper part of my body above the surface. My lungs obsessed over the quick second of clean oxygen, and then they used that same air to scream out into the wet dark night. The girl I had been dragging was standing above me on the curb, her eyes red with blood, staring right into the near-death eyes of my own; her hair was wild and tortured; her naked body was wet from the rain, making the hundreds of scars on her body glimmer in the flashes of the street lights; and her throat was marked with a thin horizontal line that was dripping gallons of blood into the water that my body was still forced to take place in. My lungs were brutally pushed backward into the water again by her forward force. I felt the petite but lethal hand push against my feeble chest and keep me from surfacing again. Panicking, I pulled and pushed at her hand, trying to free it from my shirt. Then the same hand morphed into a larger, stronger one, and it grabbed hold of my shirt, pulling trying to free me from the dark watery hell. The water was strong, and its force wanted to keep me as its prisoner, forcing me to stay with it, gasping for air, making me struggling until it washed away my last breath. I was lifted from the water with one hand and then shuffled to be held by that hand’s arm. The thick rope that was binding my legs was cut free, and it plunged into the sewer, following whatever heavy object it had been tied to so tightly. I heard a light kerplunk as it reached the surface of the water, drowning in its own death. His pale, shaking hands picked me up, cradled me, and stormed through the waters’ corruptive protest, holding me against him; and even though his body was wet from the rain, he felt warm. My cheek lay against his bare chest, and I could hear the quick thumping inside his chest; the sound of it soothed me and made me forget about the girl that had tried to kill me, the girl that I had tried to rescue and found dead.