Touches of Hope

The horrors of reality and the blessings of reality.

One day, when I was looking outside through the small crease of the open window in my apartment, I could see two guys and one woman walking up the steps to the main entrance. The men had black leather jackets on, slick backed hair, and mischievous smirks on their face. The woman was petite and pale, but very beautiful. She had short and slightly blonde curly hair. She had a plaid skirt and a black short-sleeved top.

            I closed my book that I just started, the Catcher in the Rye, and looked outside the crease of my window again. For some reason, I felt like I needed a better look. I heard her laugh. It was a very joyful and high-pitched laugh. The cuteness and innocence of it made me smile and feel happy for her. I will never forget the sound of it. I heard one of the guys say something, “Muthurfucker! Dawmn thin’s locked,” he spat. I could tell that they were wasted; at least the guys.

            The woman looked tired, I could see her face in the overhead light. It was beautiful perfect but exhausted. Fortunately, she wasn’t drunk. I could tell by the way she calmly stood off to the side with the two guys. I looked at her and thought of the sweet beautiful girl I had a crush on in high school named Kate. I never had the courage to go and talk to her, but she did talk to me sometimes. She was always very nice and had a smile on her face.

            I decided to ignore them and go back to my book. Holden Caulfield, the main character, had just agreed to help his boarding school roommate with an English paper. Holden was acting all pissed and upset about this. But nonetheless he helped him because he liked writing and he liked English. When I thought back to my childhood, I could kind of relate to Holden. Holden seems to be lost for a purpose and like a kid who doesn’t fit in with many people. In fact, he doesn’t know who he is and he keeps searching for who he is in the wrong places and with the wrong people. In many ways, I can understand him and I can still relate to him as an adult.

            The woman with the two guys kind of reminded me of one day when Kate did something that surprised us all. She stood up for that one retarded kid who was always getting bullied. The kid’s name was Tanner. He had thick as hell glasses and would randomly yell the dumbest s**t in class. Honestly, looking back, he should have been in a more special class setting. I don’t mean to sound mean or extremely conservative about this, but he just didn’t get any better all four years I was with him in high school and he was very distracting. He was made fun of all the time and probably had a very hellish life in high school.

Anyways, in my senior year, the dumbass jocks were calling him stupid names like f****t, dumb f**k, dillweed, and all sorts of insensitive name-calling. Kate, this real popular and very pretty young lady, saw this going on again and she stood up and slapped one of the dumbasses right in the face.

“Pap!!”

The jock’s head flew sideways and his face turned red with her handprint perfectly imprinted on his face. “Leave him alone you a******s,” she demanded.

The jocks were speechless. Thank God. The silence was golden.

Kate touched Tanner’s shoulder and gave him a little smile. The victim just sat there, looking down. I don’t think he saw the smile and I don’t really know what he was thinking, maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. But I think he finally realized and knew that somebody valued him; someone cared for him. Then things seemed to feel different since that day. I don’t know how to explain it and I don’t know what to say about how they were different. But whenever I looked at him, I felt like I saw a different person than I normally saw.

Kate sat back down with a natural, perfect elegance and posture. She picked up her pencil and started writing again like nothing ha-

A shriek pierced the night air. The scream was quickly cut off and I heard a light thump. I looked back outside through the blinds. I couldn’t see the slick bad boys anymore. And I couldn’t see the blonde woman they were with either. I looked up over at the sidewalk. Nothing. I scanned the field in front of my apartment and I didn’t see anything then either.

“Shuddup, b***h,” said one of the guys. I heard the voice directly under me.

“Lez zee you without your little skirt now you s**t!” said the other guy in a more drunk dialect.

“MMMMM . . . MMMM . . .” the girl cried through something that muffled it.

“Don’t worry,” said the first guy, he kind of sounded like he was from Europe, “After we’re done with you, you won’t ever have to see us again.”

Another muffled cry: “MMMMMMM!!!!!!”

I thought of her laugh and the way it sounded like gold and heaven. I can still hear it now and it terrifies me.

I started to panic. I had no idea what to do. I wanted to yell and call for help, but I told myself it was too late for anyone to be awake, and it was especially to late for anyone to come down and be able to stop them in time to save her.

“Now just be a good little c**t and open up those thighs,” the non-European one sounded like a serpent with a long “s” sound when he said, “thighs.”

For some reason, in the midst of my panic, I thought of Kate again. How glamorous and divine she looked when she sat down in her desk after saving Tanner. Her eyes shined like a bright sunny day at the clear lake. If I could look into Kate’s eyes then I would see my reflection. Never had I seen such a truly pure definition of beauty. Sometimes, I wished that I had stopped the jocks from harassing Tanner so that I could be beam of light in t-

“YOU F*****G B***H! KEEP YOUR LEGS OPEN . . !” The snake yelled in a whisper volume.

And then following that, in a much more mellow murmer, “You know you want it.”

I saw a car drive by my apartment. They slowed down, I couldn’t see the people inside the car, but I could tell that they heard what was going on. And they just drove right on by, kind of in a hurry.

“You know you want it . . .” Echoed in my head. Like the temptation to sin, those words hung in front of me like a sign. And for some reason, that pushed me over the edge. Something I had never felt before came over me as I flipped the blinds over my head and looked outside the window and down the long wall to see a horrific sight that I’ll save you from. “Get away from her! NOW!” I yelled at them.

“Whudda f**k?” The snake said and looked up.

“Oh s**t! Et’s get the f**k out of here!!” The European one yelled.

They both ran off, away from the woman. I looked down and I saw the woman’s skirt thrown off to the side. I could see her bare pale legs in the thin light. I could also see blood.

I grabbed a wet rag that was in the bathroom and ran out of my apartment, downstairs, and outside. I noticed that the overhead light at the entrance of my apartment complex had burnt out. However, I could still see the woman slouched over onto the grass. Her body was weak and powerless. She looked like she was a little girl who lost her mother forever in the dim light of the moon. Alone. Terrified. Scarred. I couldn’t hear if she was crying, but somehow, like our souls were conneced, I (metaphorically, but almost literally) knew her pain and her sorrow and her misery. As soon as I saw her, I felt I physically and mentally changed. I went into a different state of mind. I was a completely different person and I had to be here.

“Hey, I can help you,” I told her.

“Get away from me!” She yelled as she pushed herself up from the ground only to fall back down again. She looked much younger than I previously thought now that I was up close. Seventeen? Fifteen? She let out a cry full of dreadful sobbing sounds. “Stay away from me, please!” A sob. “Don’t come any closer!”

Was this what Tanner was thinking when (and if) he saw Kate stand and walk over towards them? I did what would have never been the best, or right, thing to do in this situation. I smiled at her and gently touched her naked arm. The sobbing stopped; time stood still. Her skin seemed to get slightly brighter just for that short moment.

“No,” she said slightly amazed, like how a dead person would be amazed, “Please, stay away from me.”

“Okay,” I told her. “Still though, I want you to have this rag to clean yourself,” I reached out the rag to her and dropped it to the grass, “Please, for me?”

She picked up the rag and looked up at me. The tears in her eyes made them gleam and shine. I could see my reflection and I could see that I, too, was crying.

I wiped my own tears from my face and lowered myself down to her level, “Are you sure you don’t need anything? You can trust me.”

There was an unsettling silence. Her fear had faded away. “I know, but I can’t believe it,” she said, “I need to be alone, right now.”

“Okay.” I started to walk b-

“Wait!” she said. I could see her reaching out to me. “I need help. I can’t get up . . . ”

I walked over to her and grabbed her hand to pull her up. She was very light and I noticed that had actually already cleaned her legs of the blood. She hobbled over to her where skirt was- “Hold on,” I told her. I rushed over and picked up her skirt and handed it to her. She took the skirt without saying anything and then squatted down and picked up her panties.

“Hey, can I ask you for one more thing?” She said as she slid her skirt on in the shadows. She started to cry again.

“Of course,” I told her, “Anything.”

“When you go back upstairs,” she said, “will you call a taxi for me? And then watch me from your window until I get picked up?”

“You want to be alone? I can just stay ove-“

“Please,” she said. “Just do those two things.” I could see her face starting to deform itself into a combination of pain and sorrow.

“Okay.”

*          *          *

I haven’t really thought about that night since it had happened.  Of course, I did the two things that she told me to do. She just stood at the sidewalk, her arms folded across her chest. It almost looked painful for her to stand up. The night was perfectly still and silent. It seemed as if nothing had happened. When the cab came she just limped herself into the cab.

I returned to my life as if nothing had happened. I never told anyone about what happened or about how I stopped those two men. I have thought about those two men though. Whatever happened to them and where did they go? I don’t know.

I would like to say that I wouldn’t want to know, but I do want to know. I need to know why they are the way they are. Was it just the booze that shadowed their morals? Or was there a curtain that they had closed to hide a troubling past? Or, maybe, they were just genuinely bad people. It’s always been hard for me to except that there are people like that. Even the most terrible, vile, disgusting humans could “justify” (I use that term very loosely) what they did with their own moral code. Morality, what a strangely, impossible concept.

But that moment has changed the reasons why I do things now. I’ve always been a generous man, like I’ve given money to the man who sits on the sidewalk feeling like he is a wasted life and faith is hopeless. I’ve talked to those who look down on themselves with despair. You know those kinds of guys, the ones who sit there without a smile and lost hope in their eyes. Every time I try to converse with them, they immediately put a mask on that says, “Yeah, I’m cheery and happy and I don’t care about the things that happen in my life.” But you know. You know.

Anyways, now when I help them, I feel like that somehow I have made their life better in a way that I can’t fully understand and that they won’t be able to understand. I know that this might be a ridiculous thing to say but I save them from more suffering. Maybe even show them how to save themselves.

I have gotten to the end of my book, the Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield had admitted that he got help from a psychologist and he is at a mental hospital. But before that, there was a beautiful moment when he was watching his sister Phoebe ride a carousal and it was in that moment that he realized what he needed to do and how much he truly does care for people unlike he always thought. The thing that amazed me though is that because, and for, his little sister, Holden did the unlikely thing and sacrificed his dreams for her love. To me, that’s true love.

I went outside to grab my mail at the long row of mailboxes for my apartment complex. I lit up a cigarette while I was walking to the mailboxes and took in a breath. I wanted to gag for some reason at the horrible taste but then my nerves calmed down and I became less tense. I have never had that happen to me before until then. “There’s something really messed up about this,” I told myself. How can something taste and feel so horrible, maybe even make you feel sick, but then make you feel “good”? I concluded that it just isn’t worth it anymore and I threw the cigarette on the ground and threw the rest of the pack in a garbage can by my mailboxes.

I opened up my mailbox with my key and opened the top of it up. There was only a single letter inside. I picked it up. There was no address on it, or a stamp, or a return message. It was just a purple square envelope. I was worried that I wasn’t supposed to get this letter. But curiosity got the best of me and it made me open it up. It read:

 

                        Dearest savior,

 

You probably don’t know who I am and I don’t know who you are either. However though, you have changed my life in ways you can’t even understand. Actually, that isn’t really the most appropriate way to say that. But I don’t know how else I could say it. You see, you saved a life about a month ago. That life is my sister. I don’t need to state what happened or anything else because I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. And even though I don’t know who you are, you have saved my sister’s life and her well being. I can’t even begin to explain how much your existence means to me, my sister, and our family. My sister is a prized gem and you stopped a lot of potentially bad things from happening. You reached out to her, touched her, and saved her from her own misery and fear. And for that we’re grateful. Don’t worry, there was only abuse, nothing more. And as horrible as that is, we are grateful that that was all that had happened. And, of course, we are most grateful for you and how you have saved a life.

 

 

With love,

Catherine

Author's Note

This is one of my recent serious attempts at trying to write a short story. The story is still in progress with the details, but this is what I'm planning on being mostly the gist of it. I feel like that some of the dialogue isn't worked out right and that there might be some confusing inconsistencies. Feel free to comment on any of these, this is still a rough draft.

Reviews

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Wow, powerful and suspenseful too, I loved the detail and imagery.
This was really amazing. I loved this.