Random Writing

An Adventure

He saw her only twice. Once when he passed her on the street and the next that night on the news.

*****

It is a beautiful day- the first in a very long time. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, even the usually grumpy receptionist at the hotel has a smile on her face.

A small boy skips down the stairs, a grin stretching across his face and a toy clutched in his small, pudgy hands. He grins at the young woman sitting in the lobby reading a magazine and calls out "Daddy!" when he catches sight of the man across the room.

The child takes off at a run, his toy falling out of his hand and landing on the floor, forgotten. "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" the boy cries. He flings himself into his father's arms and is lifted off the floor.

"Hey Max!" the boy's father says smiling at his son. "Are you ready to go on an adventure?"

"Daddy look what I can do," the boy says ignoring his father's question and struggling out of his grasp. He runs over to the nearest chair and climbs onto it, standing on the seat and, before the father can do anything to stop him, jumps off and lands on the floor in a crouch, his arms stretched out to either side.

The father walks over to his son and picks him up once again, a smile on his face to disguise his horror at his son's recklessness. "That," he says looking into his son's adoring eyes, "was absolutely amazing."

Max laughs, and then becomes serious. "Daddy are we going to go on an adventure?"

"Absolutely. Are you ready to go?"

"Yep!" Max chirps. Once again he struggles out of his father's grasp and lands on the floor. He immediately takes hold of his dad's hand though and follows him out the door of the hotel.

The pair makes their way along the sidewalk weaving in and out of the sparse traffic on their way to the park a few blocks away. As the father and son cross the threshold of the park, the busy streets around them morphing into the calm serenity of nature, a girl runs up to them holding something out in her hands.

"You dropped this," she says holding out her hand. Sitting in the girl's palm is a small brown teddy bear, the tip of its left ear chewed off and spewing stuffing.

"Teddy!" the little boy cries snatching at the toy. The father places a hand on his son's shoulder and crouches down to his level.

"What do you say, Max?"

Max looks from his bear, to his father, to the girl standing a little ways off. "Thanks," he mumbles quietly.

The father stands and takes hold of the boy's hand again. "Thank you," he says to the girl. "You have no idea what I would have gone through later when he discovered that old thing was missing." He smiles softly.

The girl smiles back. "It's no problem, sir," she says before turning tail and practically fleeing down the road back the way she came.

"Come on, Max," the man says. "Let's go play."

Later that night, back at his house, which is much nicer than the shabby apartment the boy was staying at with his mother, the man sits on the couch, his son curled up on the couch beside him, his head cradled in his dad's lap and his teddy bear clutched tightly in his sleeping hands. The TV flashes quietly in the background, not really there for entertainment but more for comfort in order to convince Max to quiet down and go to sleep. But, when a familiar face flashes across the screen, the man cannot help but turn up the volume.

"Earlier this evening," the newscaster says, "a young girl was seen climbing out the window of an apartment complex on Maine Street where it was later found a series of occupants, all living on the third floor, had been murdered. Please turn your attention to this video captured by a passerby on the street below."

There is a brief flash of blackness on the screen, then a grainy video, obviously from a cell phone camera, pops up onto the television.

A teenage girl with blonde hair rushes down the street, a black hood pulled up over her head and a backpack slung over her shoulders. She pushes aside anyone in her way in her hurry to get wherever she is going. When the camera focuses on her face, the man realizes it is the same girl her saw earlier that day. The girl who brought back Max's bear.

The girl turns down an alley adjacent to the very same building where the man had picked up his son earlier that day and disappears for a time before the camera catches up to her.

She is crouched against the wall, a small gun clutched in her hands. Turning around, she aims the gun upwards and shoots, but instead of a bullet firing, a small grappling hook shoots out of the barrel and attaches itself to the roof of the building. The girl tests the sturdiness of the rope before clipping it to her belt and stuffing the used gun back in her bag. Slowly she pulls herself up the wall of the building until she reaches a third floor window where she pushes a small potted plant onto the ground below before carefully pushing the unlocked window upwards and slipping inside. Red curtains flash out of the window with the gust of wind.

The video ends and the newscaster's face reappears. He begins speaking but the man doesn't hear a word of it. He is too busy putting together the facts of what he has just seen.

The girl is a convicted murderer. The building she went into is the same in which his son's mother lives. She lives on the third floor. And the curtains in her window, which overlooks an alley, are red.

She killed Max's mother.