Again I saw all the oppressions that are practiced under the sun. Look, the tears of the oppressed – with no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power – with no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who have already died, more fortunate than the living, who are still alive; but better than both is the one who has not yet been, and has not seen the evil deeds that are done under the sun.
– Ecclesiastes 4:1-3
_______________________________

It was as if the whole world just blew to pieces in the short span of a second. I can remember a few years before, watching from a distance as my nephew fell from a tree and broke his arm; the feeling of powerlessness that overtook me then was almost identical to the one that flooded my senses that fated October afternoon. Regarding moments such as these – moments of crisis – people often speak of a slow-motion phenomenon that occurs – they are absolutely right. When the adrenalin kicks in and you and every last object in the room are propelled forward out of control you can see and hear everything – perhaps even the random thoughts of an unsuspecting fly stopping for a moment’s rest on the counter below you.

I was seated at a booth in the bistro car when Senator Davies wandered in and took a seat up at the front counter. Everyone knew the Senator, mostly for his work involving small business tax cuts and farm subsidies. He had constructed for himself the coveted reputation of being what is commonly referred to as “a people’s senator”. What that truthfully means is subject to debate, but for Davies it meant a majority support from an adoring and affectionate public, while the few enemies he did engender were almost always consigned to the irrelevant and disgruntled fringes of almost every debate imaginable – at least that’s how things appeared to those of us outside the Capitol.

I smiled and extended my right hand as he passed, but he either failed to see me (which was highly unlikely since he quite literally had to maneuver around my hand in order to pass) or just flat out ignored the gesture (which was the obvious and humiliating truth). I quickly withdrew my hand, shooed a fly from my table and took a long awkward sip from my Styrofoam coffee cup, despite the fact that it had been sitting empty for the last half hour or so.

Now, I’ve never considered myself an over-emotional or a particularly fragile person, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit slighted by the whole situation. I mean, I knew very well what a busy man he was, but I was the only other person in the car at the time, so it was not like he was about to be mobbed by a crowd of gushing fans or something. It was curious to me that in a nation that is, in theory anyway, ruled “by the people, for the people” that politicians, who are also in theory the “servants” of the people, often acquire and even revel in a fairly high degree of celebrity. I wondered why these “servants” could garner more respect and admiration from the average Joe than say, the farmer or teacher or shoe salesman that put them there, who once again in theory, were supposedly the ones calling the shots? Maybe I wasn’t being completely fair to ol’ Davies though – I had grown rather cynical at the time. Or maybe in truth I was just more emotional and fragile than I cared to admit.

I sat back and relaxed to the methodic track-clatter that flooded the cabin and warmly beckoned my eyes to close. The sound reminded me of road trips to Florida as a kid, back when highways were poured in sections rather than continuous slabs. It was a sound that always caused my stomach to jump with anticipation, as if everything tedious and loathsome was being left behind and replaced with exciting horizons both unexpected and new. Even though I had made this trip six days a week for four years straight, some of those feelings still managed to hang on.

I had just closed my eyes when an unusual sound stirred me from my reverie. It was nothing too alarming, just a sound that didn’t fit with the Johnny Cash rhythm pounding out underneath. I looked around just in time to see the Senator closing the door to the rest room, and then, the very next moment found myself in a slow-motion flight over the bistro counter amid sounds of screeching metal narrated by my own frantic and random thoughts. I wondered what exactly was happening. I wondered how badly my inevitable collision with the back wall of the bistro was going to hurt. I wondered if this would cause a major delay in reaching my intended destination. I hoped not; I was hungry. I wondered if I would be compensated for any delay with say a free boarding pass or a bistro coupon. I wondered where my right leg was. I also wondered about the fly on the counter that I swear audibly gasped at the sight of my hasty approach. It wasn’t long though, before the metal wall at the back of the bistro forced these and many other jumbled thoughts from my over-emotional and fragile head.

________________________________

I awoke beneath a pile of Evian and Dasani bottles. The collision had jarred a refrigerator onto its side, causing a barrage of bottled water to dump onto my lifeless form like coins from a winning slot machine. As cliché as it may sound, regaining consciousness was quite literally like falling from one nightmare directly into another. As my delirium gradually subsided and my thoughts finally gained some cohesion, I began to slowly fit the fuzzy pieces of reality back together. I remembered the train, Senator Davies, the gasping fly and to my horror, my missing right leg.

Amputated at the knee, my right leg throbbed and screamed with pain, but the bleeding, amazingly enough, appeared to be under control – at least for the moment. Someone had applied a tourniquet. Looking closer, I was startled to see that the tourniquet was in fact my very own leather belt. It looked as though an extra hole had been punched to accommodate the constricting fit required of a tourniquet, but I was unable to determine whether I had used my penknife to do the work myself while still lost in delirium, or if someone else, namely Senator Davies, had assisted me in my distress.

When I tried to sit up, the pain from my right leg quickly radiated to my left, causing me to scream out. Investigation of my left leg revealed a large and excruciatingly painful lump about mid-thigh. While not amputated like the other, my left leg was clearly broken. Using my arms, I scooted myself back to the nearest wall for support. It was then that Senator Davies appeared, wide-eyed and manic.

Muttering what appeared to be nonsense, Davies began frantically heaping water bottles into his arms and hauling them off to some other location in the mangled railcar. I watched in amazement, half amused – if amusement was even possible at that moment – and half frightened by his behavior. The third time his crazed and bloodied frame came bounding around the counter I proffered a question as delicately and non-intrusively as I could.

“Was it you who put this tourniquet on my leg?” I asked.

“The economy’s gone to shit!” he screamed into the air. “We’ve got China on the horizon, Iran in the back forty and North Korea everywhere in between. On top of that, we’ve got a billion screaming illegals demanding Medicaid and public schooling for their watery-eyed dirt-bag children, and all the while, crying in the background like some overgrown Vienna Boy’s Choir, we’ve got a nation full of queers demanding marriage and equal rights!” That said, he headed off with another load of bottles.

The next time he returned I gave it another go. “Senator. Senator Davies! Did you make this tourniquet?” No response. “Do you know if help is on the way? Are there any other survivors?”

He turned and looked me squarely in the eyes this time, and as he did a cold shiver shot down my spine. “You know what you do when the market is a bear, son?” He was shaking with rage at this point. “You grab it by its fluffy ears and kick it in the tax cuts! That’s what!”

No luck. Judging by the size of the gash on his forehead, the Senator had sustained a pretty sizeable blow to the head, which had clearly knocked him silly. He was now operating on an entirely foreign plain, completely aloof to the real crisis at hand. As a result, my agonizing pain was now complemented with fearful trepidation.

Not knowing how long it would take for help to arrive, I began to worry about Davies’ stockpiling of the water supply, so I stuffed a couple bottles in my pockets just in case. I then opened a third and took a long drink before pouring the remainder of the contents over my sweaty, soiled face. A thick haze had passed through the car that left a greasy film on the surface of everything it touched. Somewhere, not too far away, diesel was burning.

Things quieted down once the Senator confiscated the last of the water bottles. In the distance I could hear the occasional creak of twisted metal, a shout here and a scream there, but no sounds that spoke of imminent rescue. The fly buzzed by my ear and settled down for a snack on a spilled bottle of maple syrup. I sat alone studying the bloody stump that just moments before had been a leg. You would think someone who had just been robbed of a leg would be saddened by the thought of the countless joys he would now miss out on as a result. You know, playing soccer with the kids after work, riding a bike down the boardwalk in the cool of the evening, running through fields of daisies and shit like that. But mostly I was just annoyed. Without a leg, everything in life would be a complete pain in the ass.

A moan from the other end of the car reached my ears and roused me from my self-pity and angst. I wondered at first if it was Davies, but the second time I heard it I was certain that it was not. This was not the moan of a sixty-three year old Senator; this was the moan of a child.

“Senator! Where is that coming from? Is there anything we can do to help?” There was a slight pause and then the moaning resumed. “Senator!” I screamed in angry desperation.

“Take it easy, son.” came the calm though noticeably aggravated reply. “Pay no attention to the moaners and complainers. There’s nothing we can do about them. When the real estate market is in a crunch and consumers are outsourcing the entire GDP, we have no choice but to tighten the borders and spread the hope of democracy and free trade to the four corners of the world. Do you hear me? The four corners of the world!”

It was clear that the Senator was still out to lunch. By now the moans had changed to pitiful sobs and cries for “mommy”. I couldn’t bear it any longer. Despite excruciating pain, I went down on my elbows and army-crawled around the bistro counter and into the main aisle of the railcar, dragging my bloody stump and the other broken, lifeless limb behind. Davies was sitting alone in the back booth hunched over counting his bottles. His vast store had been arranged on the table with pristine obsessive-compulsive perfection. Still, the moans and cries poured in from the other car until I screamed out as a last ditch effort, “Senator, think of the voters, your legacy, don’t let it be said that you were a man without a heart. You’ve got to do something about that boy in the other car! Your voters are counting on you, and besides, it is your duty as a privileged American.”

The political jargon broke through the malaise – well, sort of. Davies stood to his feet and with determination and duty sparkling in his eyes, tucked a couple of water bottles under his arm and marched to the entrance of the other car. Then in a voice as forceful as it was graceful he announced: “Let it never be said of Senator Douglas R. Davies that his great service to the state, the nation and the world abroad was in vain – that his legacy was one of a scoundrel or a thief – for with his very hand the naked were clothed, the hungry fed, the thirsty given drink.” And with that he threw the water bottles into the other car followed by several bills from his billfold. Then, spinning on his heels in polished military fashion, he marched back to his throne behind the display of bottles, carrying in his face the same look of determination and self-sacrifice with which he had begun. His duty done, he once more resumed his work of counting and sorting his precious store of life-giving water.

Frustrated to the point of tears, I began the long crawl down the aisle toward the cries in the other car. As I inched past my booth, I noticed my leg lying carelessly on the floor. The sight was disturbing on so many levels, I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or lose consciousness. I decided to give all three a try: first crying, then laughing, and then, just for good measure, passing out. I was probably only out for a few seconds though, before the groaning and sobbing from up ahead revived me and set me back on course. I hadn’t realized before just how long those aisles truly were. It seemed more like an airline terminal than the aisle of a railcar. I don’t recall much about that miserable trek other than the intolerable pain of it, but one thing I do remember is being completely overtaken by an unbearable sorrow for the child up ahead.

The Senator was still arranging and rearranging his stash as I labored past his booth. He never even acknowledged my presence until I was almost out of view. It was then that he looked up from his work with a sneer so hateful and a gaze so blistering that I once more feared for my life. I politely smiled back, but to no avail. The sneer remained until the back of the booth blocked it from view.

As I crawled, I wondered about what went through Christ’s mind as he labored up the bloody hill of Golgotha? Did he dwell at all upon his own pain and loss? Did he mourn the fact that he would never again set his hands to the task of shaping a formless block of wood into something beautiful, something full of use and value? Or was it the fate and condition of the world that solely occupied his mind? Since a child, I had faithfully performed the Stations every Lent, and each year I would test the limits of my imagination as I strained to internalize what the suffering of Christ must have felt like first hand. Never in all that time had his suffering appeared so clear to me as it did at that particular moment. If it is true that Christ had the ability and insight to peer through the shallow flesh of a man and into the very depths of his heart, then it most certainly was the pain of the human condition that occupied his thoughts throughout his upward trek. For the pathetic desperation of the groans and whimpers that lay before me tore mercilessly at my heart and filled my thoughts to capacity. There was nothing else. My legs meant nothing anymore. All that mattered was alleviating this pitiful boy’s suffering – even if for a moment.

 ________________________________

As I neared the passageway leading to the other car, I could see clearly that the first door was already open, although the second was not. I hoped that my being legless would not pose a problem and prevent me from getting through. As I inched my way into the corridor my heart sank into despair when I realized that the second door was not just closed, it was jarred off it’s hinges and jammed cattycorner inside the corridor itself. The window on the door had been shattered out completely, which had enabled the senator to throw his offerings in without ever entering the car itself. As I drew closer to peer through the triangular opening at the bottom left of the door, glass debris cut into my palms and elbows causing them to bleed. It was dark in the other car and I wasn’t able to make out any specifics at first. I tried in vain to open the door – it wouldn’t budge – and the opening at the bottom was far too small for me to crawl through. The window was large enough to gain access, but without the luxury of legs I hadn’t a prayer. This was as far as the road would take me.

The cries sounded as if they were just on the other side of the door, so I squeezed my face through the opening as far as it could go and gave my eyes a few seconds to adjust to the darkness.

“Hello? Can you hear me?” I asked.

More sobs came as the reply.

“Where are you? I can’t see you.”

“I’m right here,” came the squelchy response.

My eyes had finally adjusted to the lack of light, and when I looked down I was startled to see the back of a boy’s head not two feet in front of me. He couldn’t have been but eight or nine years old.

“What’s wrong? What hurts?”

“My legs…and my stomach…I-I can’t move,” he labored to say before breaking off into more unrestrained sobs.

“Just calm down now. Everything will be okay. I’m sure the rescue team is on their way, so we should be out of here in no time. Now, what exactly is wrong with your legs? Can you move them at all?”

“Something fell on me. I don’t know what, but I can’t move and it hurts. It fell on my mom too. Please, help!”

I couldn’t see anything past his neck so I had no idea what had fallen on him, but as I was straining to see what it possibly could have been my eyes caught something else that caused my heart to first stop beating and then literally melt within me. And I don’t use that analogy lightly. It truthfully felt as though my heart turned to water and then gushed downward into depths of my stomach. It was all I could do to keep from vomiting out of sheer shock and horror. There, staring back at me in the darkness, were the dead, lifeless eyes of the boy’s mother.

“My mom’s not talking anymore. I think she’s sleeping.”

She died watching her son suffer. He was just six feet or so away but unreachable nonetheless. Not able to touch him, or hold him or sooth his pain in any way. She died knowing that her son would more than likely die as well. She died knowing that even if he did manage to survive he would probably never walk again. Witnessing life in its cruelest hour had a profound and devastating affect on me. It was a scene too repulsive and complex to have just happened into existence by chance alone, but I was as equally appalled at the thought of it occurring as the result of some grand and noble design. What are we mortals to make of such things as this? I couldn’t see how one could witness something as deplorable as that scene and then progress through life with any shred of hope or optimism?

I could see a water bottle not too far from the boy’s face, but he was completely incapable of reaching it, much less of opening it. “Are you thirsty?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I can’t get over to where you are but I’m going to try and get my arm through the opening here and get you a drink. Alright?”

“Alright.”

My first attempt failed miserably. The bottle slipped from my hand and went rolling down toward the boy’s feet. I apologized and got the other ready. I tried several positions but there was just no way for me to reach the boy’s lips with the opening of the bottle. He was just out of reach. I never felt so frustrated and inadequate in all of my life.

“I can’t reach your mouth, so I’ll just have to pour it from above your head and let it roll down to meet you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Luckily the floor was at a slight tilt so the water would in fact roll down toward his tongue, but the situation was absolutely appalling. The poor child, who’s dead mother lay six feet away, would have to lap the water up like a dying dog! This was completely unacceptable. Had the Senator shown his face at that moment I would have killed the bastard – mental illness or not!

The water rolled down the rubbery floor of the aisle and slowly made its way to the mouth of the dying child. I could hear him licking and slurping at it as best he could, but I doubt it was of much use. And what little did manage to enter his mouth probably tasted like shit anyway, for by the time the water reached him it had turned a cloudy grey, having picked up dirt as well as diesel residue that had settled on the floor. I began to despise myself for not being able to do more.

“Is that better?” I asked. “Were you able to get any?”

“Yes.”

That was it. That was all I could do. As we lay there in silence I could hear the boy’s breathing become increasingly labored and desperate. It wasn’t long before he was breathing like he had just finished running a marathon or something. I was no doctor, but it was obvious to me what was happening: his lungs were filling with blood – he was drowning. He was drowning and all I could do was sit and watch. I caressed his head with my hand but neither of us spoke another word. The breathing gradually slowed and then stopped altogether. I lay there and wept like a baby.

I was mortified, sickened and filled with rage. There is no rational thought at moments such as these, only conflicting and overpowering emotion. I cried, I cursed and I pounded my fist against the metal door, but without any real notion as to why. Why was I so angry? Why did the death of this unnamed child cut me so deeply that it felt as if a part of me had died along with him? And why, for that matter, is death such a tragedy at all, when it has been snuffing out lives on this planet nonstop for countless millennia? Certainly death should come as no surprise to us by now. So, why then hasn’t the human race simply adapted to the inevitable?

________________________________

I couldn’t remain there any longer. I had to get as far from that dismal display of hopelessness as possible, so I embarked on yet another long and laborious trek back toward the front of the car. My anger reached its peak at the sight of Senator Davies still meticulously arranging and rearranging his egregious cache of petroleum encased H2O. I was completely aware that the man was out of his mind, but my feral emotions had overtaken any scrap of judiciousness that may have still existed within the confines of my spent and hazy mind. I pointed a bony, bloodied finger accusingly in his direction and then, with all of the vitriol and rage my broken frame could muster, told the son of a bitch where he could stick his fucking water bottles. “You should have done more to help that kid you worthless piece of shit!”

The Senator just sat there going about his business. I wasn’t sure if he had actually heard me or not, and yet this strange feeling overtook me that at any moment he might spring from his seat and break my neck. Finally, his gaze still fixed on his ever moving hands, he spoke: “Only the most foolish of men would travel thousands of miles to help another, only to abandon his own neighbor who is caught in a similar quandary just as dire.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

His eyes flashed in my direction, nearly knocking me over. “The concierge, you fool!” he spat, motioning toward the bistro counter.

“Of course, the bistro attendant,” I thought to myself, “he must have been in the kitchen when the wreck occurred!”

Though the Senator’s fanatical stare caused a mortal fear to once more creep over the entire length of my body, an irrational and vengeful rage that had been germinating deep inside me exploded to the surface, bolstering my courage and forcing me into action. I pulled my penknife from my pocket and pointed it directly at the Senator. The flimsy blade shook uncontrollably in the feeble grasp of my overtaxed hand. “I’m taking some water,” I shouted, “ and if you come near me I swear to God I will slit your fucking neck!”

I reached up and grabbed two bottles from off the table and quickly shoved them into my pockets; all the time trembling beneath the Senator’s weighty and manic stare. Then, just for spite, I swept the length of my arm across the top of the table, knocking half of the bottles to the ground, and then embarked upon a hurried getaway. The Senator went completely bananas at this point. Throughout my entire journey down the aisle, his frantic and frazzled form could be seen darting here and there, gathering bottles and assembling them back to their preordained positions.

It was hard to believe I was once more struggling to push my broken frame up the endless aisle of that decrepit railcar. Unlike Christ, I had failed at the peak of my Golgotha, and was now being forced back down it with a debilitating shame added to my already burgeoning list of sufferings. I couldn’t help but feel at that moment, that my sufferings outweighed those of even Christ. At the top of the mountain his journey ended, and did so in a manner that many would later describe as victorious. At the top of my mountain, all I met with was inadequacy and failure. And there I was, embarking upon yet another journey that would most likely result in yet further reprehensible and disheartening loss. But perhaps the experience with the boy was not the peak of the mountain at all. Perhaps I had merely lost my footing and stumbled under the heavy load? Either way, death seemed about the only real hope there was anymore, but even that appeared interminably out of reach.

I noticed that the trail of blood I was leaving on the way back to the counter was substantially larger than the sparse, spotty one I had left on my previous trek. The reason for this, it turned out, was that my tourniquet had slipped. It seemed the moisture from all of the blood had caused the leather belt to expand and stretch. Quickly, I worked with my penknife to punch a new hole in the belt to facilitate a greater compression. When I went to tighten the belt, an intense pain shook my entire body and I let out a scream so bloodcurdling that it stopped even the frenzied Davies cold in his tracks. I fell to my back and remained there utterly exhausted.

It was at that point that I seriously began to consider whether or not I should just undo the tourniquet and be done with it all, then and there. As far as dying was concerned, bleeding to death seemed a fairly desirable way to go. The hardest part is the initial opening of the artery. The rest is fairly simple. And since the crash had taken care of the first part for me, the dirty work had already been done. Other than undoing the tourniquet, I wouldn’t have had much else to do but to lay back and let nature run its course. Blood pressure would drop and my heart rate would spike, but before too long, the brain would become so anemic that consciousness would be lost completely. That’s all there would have been to it. It was a difficult decision to make, but in the end I decided to at least check on the bistro attendant before doing myself in. Dying with a dirty conscience didn’t seem very appealing to me, even amid the miserable circumstances that had befallen me.

________________________________

Before long, I was back behind the bistro counter and peering into the darkness of the galley. The crash had made quite a mess of things in there and it took me a few moments to figure out what in the world I was even looking at. I called into the darkness but there was no response. As I sat and listened though, I could plainly make out the sound of breathing coming from further on inside. I called out again but still no answer, just the buzz of the fly making his way to the remains of a cinnamon roll that had tumbled out of a trashcan nearby. I began inching my way into the galley, moving various pots, cups and kitchen utensils out of my way as I went along. Just a couple of feet in and I happened upon a flashlight that I quickly utilized to scan the lay of the floor ahead. Near the far end of the galley, flat on his back and buried under an avalanche of kitchen utensils and foodstuffs, lay the broken form of the bistro attendant. There was no movement other than the slight lift of his chest upon respiration. His eyes strained to turn in my direction but his head lay stationary. It was as if something was securing him to the floor and refused to let him move. When I asked if he could move, his mouth formed the word “no” but there was no sound other than that of the air escaping his lungs. I moved up beside him. There was visible bruising to the front of his neck, which I surmised was the reason he was unable to speak, and I could only assume that there had been a spinal fracture of some kind as he was completely unable to move his arms, legs or head.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” I said, but the words left a sickening taste in my mouth, as lies always do. I think we both had the similar understanding that to be alive at that point was anything but lucky. “Can you move at all? Are you in pain?”

There was still no vocal response, but his lips clearly mouthed the word “No” immediately followed by a silent “Yes”.

“What hurts?” I asked, “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

His lips began moving so rapidly that there was no possible way of deciphering even a fraction of what he was saying, but by the amount of words he made use of it was quite clear that he was in utter misery. I had no idea what to do. What could I possibly have done to alleviate this man’s suffering? I was legless, he was paralyzed and mute, and we were both trapped on a broken, smoldering train without any immediate signs of rescue or escape. In the midst of all of his voiceless babble, I was able to make out one word though – “water”. The man was thirsty. I checked my pockets but they were empty. My water had evidently become dislodged during the hasty slide down Golgotha. “Just a moment,” I said before turning and maneuvering back out of the galley in search of the missing water.

Once outside, the tears came streaming in torrents, as I once more lost all control over my emotions. The situation was so absolutely pathetic and humiliating, I wasn’t sure how much longer I would be able to take it. In the other room lay a man in desperate need of assistance, and all I could offer him was a worthless sip of water. His more critical problems, I had no expertise or training to properly address, and the superficial concerns that perhaps could have brought him some much needed comfort, I could not even understand. The only thing I could manage to discern was that he could use a sip of water, so that is what I resolved to do. Although doing so did nothing to relieve the crippling guilt and frustration of being so utterly useless and trivial.

I crawled around the bistro counter and looked up the aisle to see what lay ahead on the horizon. There was no sign of the Senator, but just fifteen or twenty feet up the aisle I spotted one of the missing water bottles. I never did see where the other ended up; perhaps Davies had already reclaimed it. I set off toward the bottle but didn’t get too far before discovering that my tourniquet had once more slipped. The hemorrhaging appeared to be far more severe than before. I immediately sat up and made some adjustments that seemed to get things back under control, but not three or four feet further and the bleeding resumed. In frustration, I sat back up and took another look at the belt. The last hole had torn through to the other, and it appeared that yet another hole would be required to fix the problem. I pulled out my penknife and carved a new hole in the soggy leather, hoping to God that this one would actually hold. My scream once more ripped through the dismal cell of the railcar as I set the tourniquet in place. Then after a moments rest, I resumed my quest for the illusive water bottle that at that point lay just ten or twelve feet ahead.

Not six feet further though and the tourniquet popped again. This time it had ripped completely in half. I lay motionless and debated whether to sit up and attempt to remedy the problem or just simply surrender to the fates and die. It was then that I noticed a shadow overtake me from above. “Perhaps the rescue crew had arrived after all,” I thought. An unexpected flower of hope sprung up within me. “I’m going to need a new tourniquet,” I called out.

The next moment a sharp pain tore through the middle of my back and radiated from there to the spent and shattered remains of my extremities. This initial sting was then followed by another and another. I tried to scream but horrifyingly discovered that I had been rendered as silent as the bistro attendant still glued to the floor in the kitchen. Turning my head, I saw the commanding form of the Senator hovering over me, clutching a bloody kitchen knife, his face completely void of emotion. He then stepped over my body and stooped to pick up the water bottle, never looking back, never flinching. While the fly, contented with his evening meal of syrup and cinnamon roll, managed to escape through an invisible crack in the ceiling.

 About the Author:

Mark Bowers resides in Southwest Missouri and is currently a student of St. John’s College of Nursing. He enjoys literature, art, music and time spent with his wife and six year old daughter. He has been published by Carte Blanche and will be featured in the upcoming issue of Broken Plate.