They were the last two of my grandmother’s babies. Close as twins. One with flaming red hair and beautiful green eyes. The other, a blond Adonis.

At seventeen and nineteen, they were coddled as the babies of the family, and praised by all for their good looks.

It was on a rainy night. They had been drinking at a juke joint. Living life, having fun with the girls and the music.

Two teenage boys at the door of possibilities.

It ends there in the dark, speeding down a lonely wet road. Too fast in life, too fast in the car.

Too fast gone.

First grade was in a basement halfway under ground. The cafeteria was down the hall a bit.

The hallway had a distinct smell that originated from the kitchen. I get a whiff of it now and then in other buildings I enter. That smell always takes me back.

There was a row of windows in my classroom that, from the outside, looked as if they were laying in a row on the ground.

Inside the classroom, we reached up a bit and decorated the window ledges with little plants we were growing in Dixie cups.

My seat was the last one in the second-to-last row. In the last row, last seat, was a boy. He was very aggressive and mean.

I tried my best to steer clear of him, but to no avail. He enjoyed tormenting me and succeeded in making my days miserable.

The teacher always seemed too busy to notice him much, and therefore me, in my suffering. I was a very shy child.

One day we were being herded out to lunch. We were supposed to get in line in the front of the class, but it was always a noisy and mixed-up affair with the teacher looking very busy trying to hold us together from her front-line position.

In the back of the line, the boy decided he wanted to actually see my underwear. Fear struck into my heart as I held my dress down to keep him from pulling it up.

Not to be deterred from his goal, the boy laid down on the floor so he could look up my dress.

My face, in my minds eye, is frantic and terrified as I try to catch the teacher’s attention and to step away but stay in line at the same time.

The teacher never knew. But, she saved me anyway. She finally told us to march, and we all left the boy scrambling to get up from the floor.

A good 45 years later, and I assume that this now man-boy is pretty much used to prison food.

The family had moved back to town.

The scuttlebutt: Fourteen-year-old Teresa had gone to have a baby.

…Teresa pushed a baby carriage down the sidewalk as the fake-smiling Kyla Jean approached.

“Aww! Can I see?”

Teresa only shrugged.

Kyla Jean greedily pulled at a blanket and uncovered the happy, goofy face of Teresa’s dog, Mikey.

Little Sarah’s heart swelled at her new puppy’s ability to love her. She loved him back with kisses and doll clothes that made him look funny.

For a solid week, they were inseparable.

Then, he disappeared.

Buckets of tears later, mom finally found him. In the closet, loose-limbed. Sleeping up a storm beneath a T-shirt.

Photo credit: cloneofsnake

“Mom wants five bream on credit, please,” says the girl to the towering Ms. Lamprey.

Ms. Lamprey, to everyone in the store, “That whole trailer park wants credit!”

Nearing her way out, the little girl drops her parcel of fish.

One moment. One fish. Hidden up under a shelf.

Four fish will do just fine.

Photo Credit: shicksdesign

His belittling was incessant. The worst names a woman can hear. Infractions spewed forth even while he chewed.

Oh, how she’d like to smash that face into his glop!

Sated, he stood up. His woman did too.

She watched them leave the restaurant.

Clutching the cold steel in her pocket, she was not far behind.

Photo credit: storem