Jacket

Arkou sat alone in her room and cried.  Her world was tears, sorrow, and most of all, hate.

Her mother had always told her never to say she hated someone - but rather that she ‘strongly disliked’ them. 

“Fuck that.” Arkou murmured under her breath.  

She didn’t have to listen to her mother.  Especially now that her mother was dead.  Brains, blood, and life smashed out; all over the jacket Arkou had given her last December.  It was a light grey leather jacket.  Long and lined for the cold Chicago winds.  Her mother had loved it, wearing it almost exclusively – even after the beginning heat of Spring made it far too warm to be comfortable.  She had been wearing it tonight while walking back to their apartment as protection against the still-cool spring evening.  

That’s when it happened.

Arkou realized she was still clutching the jacket between her hands, kneading the fabric back and forth in time with her sobbing.  The blood looked dark and foreign on the fine leather.  Arkou reached down and rubbed frantically at a patch of dried blood, as if trying to erase it and the horror that had stained it.  

Witnesses reported that a women in a long grey jacket was walking down the street when a car drove slowly by, stopping alongside the women.  Someone in the car seemed to be asking a question to the women.  All seemed ordinary until a loud bang ‘like a firecracker’ sounded out loud.  The next thing the witnesses could tell the women was lying on the sidewalk, and the car was gone.  

After a moment, a long-haired young women ran out of a nearby apartment building screaming.  

Arkou ran a hand through her long hair, trying to calm her tears.  She found she could push the tears and the sorrow into the background of her conscientiousness, but not the hate.  The hate was too powerful and too fresh.  That someone could do this horrible thing to her mother – to anyone’s mother – was too much.  Arkou threw the jacket onto the floor of her small bedroom and stood up in a rage.  All her thoughts bent towards making the ones who had done this to her mother suffer in some horrible fashion.

“Goddamn son-of-a-bitch fuckers!”  Arkou screamed through the tears – Slamming her fists into the rough wood paneling decorating the wall.  A sudden pain caused her to inhale sharply and lose some of the rage boiling up inside.  She had sliced the side of her palm open on a sharp corner of the paneling, and her blood dripped down onto the grey jacket laying at her feet where she had thrown it moments before.

Arkou watched her blood, so red and fresh, soak into the material.  After a moment, it was difficult to tell whose blood was whose.  Both the dried and fresh blood took on a dark unfamiliar yet similar appearance. 

Slowly, Arkou stopped crying.  She wiped her face with her clean hand.  The sorrow along with the tears was disappearing from her eyes   The hate was still there, but now it was mixed with something...

Terrible resolve.

Arkou leaned over and carefully picked up the jacket.  She knocked the dust off and held it out at arm’s length.  A moment later she slid one arm through a sleeve, then did the same with the other arm.  Reaching up she pulled her hair out from under the jacket and let it hang down behind.  She adjusted the collar, picked up her cell phone, car keys, and wallet from a bedside table.  Sliding her things into a pocket – she walked to the door, and out into the apartment’s main room. 

Two uniformed police officers were there, standing up as she entered the room.  Glancing at them as she walked past, Arkou opened the front door and headed down and out the main entrance of the apartment building.  Without missing a beat, Arkou stepped over the dark stain on the sidewalk and ducked under the police tape.  Quickly and quietly she disappeared down the street and into the dark night.

The blood stained jacket was found a week later, abandoned on a pile of trash down some forgotten alley. 

11/7/2018 (700)