A Mugger

My latest submission for The Red Dress Club. Here are the details of the prompt:

Write a piece about a fight. What happened? Why? Who “won”? What were the repercussions?

Show us. Use emotion. Description. If it’s a fist fight, what did it feel like to hit someone – or be hit? What does it feel like to be screamed at – or get the silent treatment?

‘She put him out like the burnin’ end of a midnight cigarette
She broke his heart he spent his whole life tryin’ to forget
We watched him drink his pain away a little at a time
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind”

Whiskey Lullaby– Braid Paisley and Alison Krauss

The police tell you that the best thing to do is give a mugger your wallet. Don’t argue and don’t fight. Money and valuables can be replaced, but your life can’t. Unfortunately I have never been real good about listening to advice…from anyone.

We were older when we met but by no means were we old. Rather we were both old enough to have drunk deeply from life’s wine bottle and had more than enough life experience to feel like we knew something about ourselves and what we wanted. Neither one of us expected to fall in love and certainly not with the kind of passion that we felt. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that it felt as if we had rediscovered that feeling you got with your first love.

The days were filled with magic and mystery. Sometimes I would stop what I was doing and just stare at her. The intensity of my gaze often made her look away. So I would walk over to her and gently lift her chin and tell her to look in my eyes. “Find your reflection in my eyes and you will see why I get lost.” She’d blush and tell me to shut up. And then I’d laugh and tell her that she just needed to accept that she was beautiful.

Sometimes she’d get teary eyed and kiss me.

But the thing is that when you have the kind of passion and intensity that we have it can come out in other ways…and it did.

Sometimes you go looking for trouble and sometimes it comes looking for you. I can’t say whether I was or wasn’t looking for it because I don’t remember. When I left the house I was so very angry. Twenty some years ago I probably would have gotten in the car and gone flying down the road at high speed towards the closest refuge from whatever it was that I was getting away from. But not this time.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t spitting blood but rather maturity had taught me to go walk and clear my head. The park seemed like a smart place to go. It wasn’t quite 10 o’clock and the place had lights. I had been there a million times and never had a problem.

There were two of them standing on the grass. Just two skinny guys in t-shirts and jeans. One of them called out to me but I shook my head and kept walking- at least I have planned to.

Instead I found myself lying on the ground trying to figure out who hit me and how I fell. I felt a hand reach into my pocket and I grabbed it. Something hard and heavy hit me in the back but I didn’t let go…I twisted and pulled it underneath me…felt a body come down on top of me.

The strange thing was that the whole time I could hear her screaming at me and it just made me angrier.

We are wrestling this unknown assailant and I. It is not a holy experience like Jacob and the Angel. It is just Jack, the guy who had his heartbroken and some poor schmuck who is going to be savaged by me. He doesn’t know that the combination of fear, anger and adrenalin have made me numb. He doesn’t know that the shock of her leaving me has made me feel like I have nothing to lose.

But he is lucky because there were more than just two of them. The others pulled me off but I can’t tell you much about afterwards other than the cop that came to see me wanted to know where I learned to fight.

Past posts for The Red Dress Club:

• Wind and Waves
• Donuts
• A Detour
• 1974
• The Day Joy Left My Life
• Preserve Your Memories
• August
• The Flying Clown
• The Kitchen
• One Slightly Used Pump For Sale
• The Song of My Heart Has Gone Silent
• Grandpa
• Five Minutes
• Endless Blue Skies
• And then the world shifted
• I Hear Music
• A Fire In The Sky
• The Telephone Call
• She Wore A Red Dress
• Song Sung Blue…And Other Colors
• When Simply Awful Became Simply Wonderful