The night air was crisp with the premonition of an early winter. The subtle nip in the wind may be enough to frost the earth, but it was far from cooling one young woman's perturbed temper.
Dejected as the walk of every humdrum, blue-collar worker in America her agitated pace was accompanied by a string of colorful language that Estelle reserved for special occasions. Along with root canals and tax season, having to work on a scheduled day off constituted as such. And if it was one thing that Estelle Summers despised more than being coerced to work on her day off it was walking to said occupation. Having a permanent destination at the end of a journey always seemed to distract from its blissful nature of simple, unadulterated wandering. Especially when that destination included inebriated middle-aged men who have the tendency to deem themselves suave romantics, thus insisting that groping is a preferred and acceptable means of flirtation.
"I swear I'm going to shoot Vinnie one of these days," she muttered to herself with words laced in reserved ire and pungent agitation for her supervisor.
As if approving of her desire for preemptive murder, her mutterings were countered by the anguished groans and moans of another soul in peril. Despite its faint sound, it stopped Estelle dead in her tracks. The distress of recognizing its creator seemed to cascade down her spine and ripple across her skin in one fluid motion that shook her from her macabre thoughts. As quickly as the notion fluttered throughout her mind, she dismissed it with a decisive shake of the head.
"No," she spoke defiantly with hands curling upon the wake of her valid decision as her posture straightened with fabricated assurance. "Not today. I have work," she added in a meager truculent tone that sounded frail even to her own ears.
Her pace commenced anew with weary footsteps whose decisiveness faded with each passing one. They ceased completely once more when the distressed groans and stifled gasps for air became entwined with something she could no longer disregard.
"I rebelled for this?!" A disembodied voice pierced through the silence of the night. It was surly and made rough around the edges by what Estelle could only presume to be an indignation fashioned from poignant sorrow.
Knowing she no longer possessed the rationality to persuade herself not to meddle, she flippantly threw in a final "damn it" as she summoned the audacity to venture closer to the daunting alleyway. A voice that sounded awfully like her mother's chastised Estelle for loitering and proceeded to bark at her to hasten her gate. Unfortunately for her mother, Estelle seldom listened to her parents and hardly thought now should be any different; especially upon hearing the distinct sounds of weary pleading trailing from the alleyway that could no longer be ignored. Like every young adult deluded into believing invincibility was interchangeable with youth, Estelle peered meekly around the foreboding alleyway to witness a brass exchanging of fists and wounded groans.
The once disembodied voice found its home in a man clad in a dingy trench coat that hung limply from his broad shoulders. His gruff voice compelled his ire to fashion more pungent words to fill the night's lulled silence. "I gave everything for you and this is what you give to me," they seethed ominously from his lips yet there was an oddity to his tone that Estelle could not disregard; a certain monotonicity to it that compelled her to wonder if the sentiments were truly his.
The man's face was hidden from her sight but she was certain it was antipathy that rippled across his frame, contracting his muscles and pushing them to action. An inaudible gasp fluttered from her lips as a he flung the pleading man into a wall with a single, swift kick. Prolonging the anticipation to listen to the other's weary coughs and feeble gasps for air, his self-righteous supremacy seeped into his amble as he advanced upon his sputtering victim. Despite her alarm and her dwindling rationalization pleading with her that it was not her place to intervene, Estelle knew she had to act in some manner that would cease such brutality.
"Hey, Columbo!" The terse call escaped from her lips without the recollection of ever crafting them. Later she would look back upon the instance with idle fondness and perhaps even laugh at her brash imprudence, but now there was no remnant of mirth in her menacing tone. Among her extravagant notion of justice and her delusional sense of self for believing to be its vessel, the last thing that remained within Estelle was the encroaching gnawing of her trepidation that wondered just what in the hell she was doing.
Before the man adorned in the ragged trench coat had the opportunity to pivot and face her imposing presence, adrenaline entwined with her nerve endings and compelled her arms to rise above her head. In an autonomic movement that fell in accordance with her fight or flight response, Estelle brought her purse down hard upon the man in a callous act that escaped her logical awareness. With an appalling thud he dropped unceremoniously to the ground leaving them all properly flummoxed.
"I'll be damned," Estelle spoke with an air of astonishment as a hint of hubris inflicted her tone. "That actually worked."
Sauntering off to the side, she momentarily admired her handiwork of the unconscious man before the rasped coughs brought her attention back to his callously pulverized victim. Estelle winced at the mere sight of his haggard and hunched over form that still somehow possessed the effrontery to project his supercilious dominance and fabricated sense of control over the situation. With a flabbergasted sigh that teetered on aversion as her response, Estelle was certain that he was even brazen enough to wink at her. For a moment she wasn't quite sure if she wanted to help the man or hit him over the head too. Regarding his staggering frame fatigued by abrasions and a substantial amount of blood loss, she finally decided on the former.
"Are you okay?" In a manner to control her trepidation, her adrenaline mixed with the urgency of the situation and pressed upon her words, making them sound harsher than she intended. As a feeble endeavor to correct her abrupt tactlessness, she attempted a soothing tone that still felt taut to her lips, unable to disregard the nature of her levity. "You got hit pretty hard back there, Rocky. Is there someone I can call for you?"
To her surprise a coarse chuckle seeped passed his cracked lips, sounding frail from his abrupt somnolence. "Damn, sweetheart," his gruff tone was masked in a thick coating of blood that sputtered from his busted lip. "Do you carry rocks in that thing?"
Her gaze traveled the invisible line of his gesturing chin behind her to the place where her purse – now rendered into a proper bludgeoning tool thanks to the brawl – lay forgotten. She rendered the demure accessory with the utmost admiration, quite pleased with its versatile properties.
"Actually, it's a brick," she corrected with a faint smile tugging upon the corners of her lips despite the peculiar gravity of the circumstance.
A subdued thud instead of a snarky rejoinder on his behalf responded to her amendment, alerting her full attention to the enigma of a man that was now sprawled out upon the ground. Wistful that he was merely dozing off and not utterly unconscious, she nudged him with the toe of her boot for good measure but to no avail. When it became evident that he would not be waking anytime soon, Estelle conceived another entry to add to her list of special occasions. And she earnestly intended to celebrate with some colorful language of her own device. After she exhausted the majority of her ingenuity and the durability of her vocal cords, she finally decided to end with the usual:
"Damn it," she sighed, now thoroughly exasperated upon noting the time on her shoddy watch. "Now I'm really going to be late for work."