Time to Leave?

Soggy. That's how my right side feels, above my butt, below my ribs, with a knife made for sharp stabs protruding from it. It's what I've gained from sitting, listening to the rain for too long, and typing gibberish about moments in time.

I cock my head at the airy tap-tap of tennis shoes headed down the stairs. His tread is lighter since the attack. Before, the steps were like rocks being dropped one at a time, huge breadcrumbs leading to destruction. I'd heard him, ignored the warning. Minutes wasted.

"Going running. Hi George. Leave that inside when you're finished." He says the words loud enough for our "good as it gets" neighbor to hear, happy enough to twist the knife in my back.

I try to get to my feet, but the planks of the floor smack my face. It hurts. It hurt when he was laying down new ones and hit me in the head with a 2x4 last year. I got up then. I can get up now.

My hands slip in the wet goo of my insides spilling on the hardwood. Eight quarts, two probably gone in the first couple of minutes. That leaves me about six to live.

"Linda?" George drops the rake he'd borrowed, envelopes me.

"No." I think I say the word, push at him, but he doesn't let go.

"Forgot my phone. What's happened? George, what the fuck have you done?" Boulders landing, unmistakable, right outside the evidence pool of red. "Hold on, Linda. I'm calling 9-1-1." He backs away. "Help. The neighbor attacked my wife."

"No." The word takes all my breath. It will take a minimum of ten minutes for EMS to get to our house.

Last time, he'd gotten in nine punches before then. Said I'd be dead, if he'd wanted me to be and he'd get away with it. Said keep your mouth shut. I'd told them all was okay. I figured they were too late to save me anyway.

He edges forward, smirks.

The scarlet pool spreads. I am ready to go. Not one quart at a time though.

"No." My focus shifts from the man outside the red zone to George the Good. I take his hand, press it to my wound. I hold on tight to the moment. It isn't quite right for leaving. This time, it's not too late.

Painting Murder

This was how it always started. The familiar scent of paint, wet paper, compliments and then a jarring plea for help. Micha Mason lay a wash of blue and gray paint across the top of a sheet of cold-pressed paper, moving the sable bristles in soft curves creating a storm filled sky. Cindy Lowen stood permanent as a fire hydrant, waiting for her answer. Mica frowned, apprehension rounded her shoulders, tightened her grip on the paintbrush. “Hire a real investigator,” she said as she rinsed her brush.

The woman shook her head. “Daddy has an investigator, some creature who comes and goes, or so I hear. I want you to find out why. It’s like Daddy doesn’t want me involved.” She wobbled back and forth, her plump little feet spilling from the sides of her expensive red Italian heels.

“What about your brother?”

“Not talking to him either.”

Mica shrugged and looked down at her work. “I think I’ll stay right here and you need to leave. I can’t concentrate.”

The shapes of leafless trees appeared under her rapidly moving brush in the drying blue color. They faded into the glaze of cerulean giving the illusion of being in the far distance. Then she added a touch of alizarin, and ultramarine generating a hint of mountains. She felt the coolness of the painted sky on her skin, caught a slight whiff of fallen leaves, then realized the coolness was coming from the drafty window, and the smell from rotten garbage wafting up from the alley bins five stories below. She jammed the window closed with a palette knife, and stirred a bowl of potpourri that rested on the sill.

Mica concentrated on her work, steeling herself against the burn of her friend’s worried eyes, and then her heart cracked with compassion. Resolve fell into the crevice created and she carelessly dribbled water, like falling rain, onto the painting in front of her.

“If your Dad really needs help.” Her mind reacted like a cut to turpentine as words emerged from her mouth. She slapped a hand across her lips, too late to stop the unleashed words.

“Please go. I trust you. I wouldn’t ask if Daddy wasn’t acting like a man with a mess of bad moonshine.”

Mica knew when Cindy lapsed into her mountain dialect she was worried. She looked at her artwork searching for an answer. Rivulets of water ran like tears down from the beautiful mist-shrouded mountains she’d created. She frowned, turned the ruined painting over on the table, then looked up and smiled gently at her friend. Someone was going to die.

“Maybe I better go,” she said as her mind switched from the creative right side to the analytical left