Oh well, hope you enjoy the second installment.
...“It’s okay,” he said softly. “I’m in pre-med.” He gingerly felt the break in her ankle, and as he did, the pain left. He touched her forehead, where the collision with the brick wall had left a two inch gash. “You’re going to be fine,” he assured her. “Can you make it home okay?” Suddenly she felt fine. Her ankle and head were no longer on fire, and as she felt for the cut, it was strangely gone. Chrystal held her hand into the light from the library. It was covered in blood.
“Wait,”
she said. “How did you?” As Chrystal looked back to her savior, he was
gone. She sat up and scanned the
courtyard. Off in the distance she could
see the dark hooded figure limping away.
“Hey, wait up,” she cried. But it
was too late. He ducked into the
darkness of the woods.
By
the time Chrystal arrived at her dorm, she realized she had left her satchel of
books back on the courtyard steps. Screw
the books. She wasn’t going back there
until daylight. Sarah, her roommate,
gasped when Chrystal opened the dorm room door.
“What happened? Are you alright? Should I call campus security?”
Chrystal
held up her hand and went straight to the bathroom. Her hair and face were covered in blood. She turned on the shower, pulled off her
clothes and got in. After soaking for a
few moments and rubbing the chill bumps from her arms, Chrystal washed the
blood from her hair and face. She
watched as the tub water became pink, a mixture of the red blood and foam of
the shampoo. She dried off and examined
herself in the mirror. How could this
be? So much blood and not a single cut? She put her foot on the sink and looked at
her ankle. There was no doubt she had
broken it in the fall. So where was the
injury? The ankle wasn’t even swollen.
Finally,
Sarah burst through the bathroom door.
“Would you please tell me what in heaven’s name happened to you
tonight?” Chrystal shook her head and
examined once more the cut free forehead.
She told Sarah about the dark figure and the other man who knocked her
down. She explained the fall, the broken
ankle and the cut on her head.
“I
don’t know, Sarah. I just don’t
know.” They both saw the blood, but
neither could find a wound. “Would you
go with me tomorrow to look for my books?”
“Sure.” Sarah helped Chrystal change into her pajamas
and tucked her in bed. “Are you sure you
don’t want me to call security?”
“And
tell them what?” Chrystal asked.
The
next morning Chrystal and Sarah left early to search for her books. They found them exactly where Chrystal had
lost them. And at the bottom of the
courtyard steps, where Chrystal had fallen…they found bloodstains. “We got to find this hoodie guy,” Sarah said
with determination. “Pre-med, huh? That shouldn’t be too hard to find. It’s a small school.” Sarah turned to her roommate. “Did you see his face at all?” Chrystal shook her head. “Any distinguishing marks or
characteristics?”
Chrystal
thought for a moment and reran the images of last night through her head. “Yeah, he had a limp.”
“Good,”
Sarah added with her best Sherlock Holmes accent. “A pre-med student with a profound limp. Elementary, my dear Chrystal. We’ll solve this riddle in no time…”
“Time!”
Chrystal screamed as she grabbed the satchel.
“What time is it?”
“Six,
twenty-two. Why?”
“Oh
god, I only have an hour and a half.”
Chrystal ran off with the book bag banging against her side.
While
Chrystal went home to write a good history paper, Sarah set out to discover the
mystery man who magically healed Chrystal’s wounds. There were only two sections of pre-med
students, so the process should be relatively easy. She pulled out her I-phone and checked the
university’s website for class schedules.
One section would be in the Fulbright lecture hall, and the other
divided into five labs at eight, ten and two.
No one would care if she dropped in on the lecture, so Sarah climbed the
balcony steps and looked for someone in a gray hoodie. There were only sixty-five students in this
section, so it didn’t take long. Sarah
descended the steps of the balcony and ran down the hall to the labs. Finding a reason to interrupt class would be
difficult. She might get away with it
once, but five times?
By
the end of the day, Sarah’s search proved futile. No male student in a gray hoodie, and no one
with a limp. Maybe he was absent? Sarah called in a favor and had an office
worker check class attendance.
“Aha!” Three missing students,
and two of them were male. One was in
the B lab and the other in D. She would
check back on Monday.
That
following Sunday night, a young man in a gray hoodie walked across the campus
with a slight limp. He headed over to
the pizza parlor wearing black gloves.
Before he got there, he ran into a little trouble. He wasn’t watching where he was going and
accidentally bumped into a group of students on their way back from a pick-up
game of basketball. “Dude! Watch where you’re going.”
“Huh,
oh, sorry,” the hooded figure offered.
As he walked on, one of the guys grabbed his hood and pulled him
back. “Hey, I said I was sorry.”
“What’s
with the gloves?” he asked. “It’s not
even cold outside.” The boy tried to
free his hood from the man’s grasp.
“What’s your hurry, Dude? I asked
you a question.”
He
pulled again, but the man’s grip was too tight.
“What do you care?” he asked.
“I
care.” The man jerked the hood and
yanked him over to the others. They
jumped right in and began pushing him back and forth in a circle. “So, freak, what’s with the gloves?” They pushed and teased and pushed him some
more. “Take his gloves,” the man
instructed the others.
“No,
don’t!”
“Why
not?”
“Please,”
he begged. “Just leave me alone.” They didn’t. After taking his gloves and
stripping him of his jacket too, they kicked him, hit him, spit on him, and
left him crying in the bushes. He never
made it to the pizza parlor.
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