Ten Reasons to Have Hope

You Have a Purpose

Chapter Two

Friday, December 14th, 2018

He works the night shift on Friday nights, just like this one. Alan preferred to walk everywhere, being that he and his two daughters live in an apartment in Chicago. He always suggested to them not walking alone in a city like this, but he was used to it. Alan was the kind of man that suggested to not do a lot of things, but he would do them anyway. He was an average-sized man with brown hair turned gray, a small beard, and a bit of a belly, but that never bothered him.

Tonight was a quiet night. Nothing, in particular, was making any noise. It seemed very quiet to Alan. Almost too quiet. He was expecting to be jumped at any moment now. His hands shook as he stuffed them down into his pocket. He had forgotten to put on gloves this morning before he went to work. He left for work for his last day before taking a two-week vacation to spend Christmas with his two daughters. One of them was seventeen and had a hair loss disease and expressed her emotions with her wigs, and the other was a six-year-old bubbly little girl with skin darker than the most beautiful night sky.

Samantha, his oldest, was a girl that was heavily interested in the '90s. Old guitars, photographs, the whole grunge aesthetic. She lived in denim jackets and flannel shirts. Most of her clothes came from thrift stores that were scattered around Chicago. She was only seventeen, but she was an old soul. Adeline, his little one, was his idea of a princess. Pastel pink, dresses, cotton candy; she was the definition of a unicorn in a human's shell. He smiled thinking about the best things in his life. Those girls were his reason and his life, he would do anything for them. He couldn't wait to take off work to spend two weeks with them. He hadn't taken a vacation like this since he had just adopted Samantha and he felt she needed some time to adjust to her new home. She had been the girl in the adoption home for the longest. She was too old for any new couple to want, and since Alan was single and there was no one to tell him no, he knew she was the one he wanted to take in. Adeline, he adopted because no one else wanted her, and he hadn't figured out why. His lips split into a grin as the excitement filled him. He decided to take a shortcut over a bridge that he knew too well.

It's to get to them quicker, he thought. I need to get to them quicker. Something told Ala that he needed to get to them so he could tell them how he felt about them. He smiled when he thought about them.

Alan turned and walked through an empty alleyway he liked to avoid. The only things in it were dumpsters and the occasional graffiti and vandalism. He walked through, gravel and grass crunching against his shoes. He got a strange feeling that drew him to the bridge. Something told him that he needed to go to that bridge. He needed to see what was there. He began to walk a bit faster.

The alley was dark and very quiet, with only the sounds of bustling city life in the back of his hearing. Water dripped onto the cement ground around him from pipes above his head. He raised his hands to his mouth and blew a puff of warm air onto them, rubbing them together for some heat as he looked up at the strange-looking alleyway. He freed himself from the alley and looked out at the bridge in front of him. He hated seeing that bridge that reminded him of his birth parents and his biological brother. He couldn't remember the names of his so-called parents, but he could remember Andrew like the two spoke just yesterday. Alan secretly wished they had spoken that recently, but of course, they didn't, and Alan had no wish to reconnect with that family. He had his own family now.

He approached the bridge and stepped onto the bricks that ended the paved street and began the bridge, and he stopped dead in his tracks. He got this overwhelming feeling that something just wasn't right. He couldn't explain the way he felt, all he knew was that his bones had turned to rubber and a sense of panic cursed through him. It was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Clouds loomed overhead as it was about to storm. He knew there was going to be a blizzard, and still, he forgot to wear gloves. He heard a scraping noise, like a piece of wood dragging on metal. He listened in closer, then heard someone quietly say, "Son of a bitch" in a hushed tone. He knew that whoever said that was the reason he was getting such a bad feeling. Alan reacted quickly and raced to the source of the sound. He saw a frail man with a bloody knee, who had cut himself on the side of the bridge. The man looked up at him then back down at the river, hoping that Alan hadn't seen him.