The Third of Three

taken from a dream that occurred a month or so ago. cheers.

The traffic had stopped. Everyone piled out of their vehicles in a confusion that angst-ridden crowds usually possess. As I was among them, I, too, congregated in the intersection that sat in a valley, under a bridge and between two hills. A cop stood on the western hill, with two individuals handcuffed. He made some incoherent comment about how two criminals had been apprehended, but the third of three had eluded capture, too cunning and wily to have surrendered under traditional advances.

I stood in the crowd, curiously watching and observing the two criminals when a chorus of gasps turned my gaze to the eastern hill where a line of citizens stood. A crazed lunatic, the third criminal, had appeared. Armed with a sizable knife, she took the first woman hostage from behind amidst the flurry of cries from the shell-shocked crowd.

As she spewed bitter fragments of fulfilling her task, I became mindful of not standing out in the crowd, lest her gaze fell upon me. At the same time I looked at the faces of those in line atop the eastern hill. I knew all of them and though none were among those closest to me, I was aware of each vague connection that linked myself to these individuals.

The hostage remained frozen in submission beneath the blade of the third of three's knife as I found myself as comfortable as one could be in the crowd of captured faces. Without warning, the third of three cut off half of the woman's ear, terrifying the masses as her voice expelled further obscenities. She moved to the next woman in line, taunting her only briefly before slicing off an ample portion of her nose with a swift, vertical chop of her knife.

The victim stood in shock as blood poured out of her snout, looking at me in credulous bewilderment as to how I allowed such an act of primal cruelty to occur.