• “Run! Hide!” I could hear the panic in my father’s deep voice. I ran and hid as he told me. I didn’t dare look behind me. The dog was now barking like crazy, and for the first time, I didn’t care. I ran down the long dark alley and hid behind a green city trash bin. I could hear the vehicle come to a stop. The laughter calmed and I could hear faint voices. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Slowly, I crept from my hiding place to the wall on the other side of the alleyway. I made my way to the entrance of the alley and peaked around the corner.

    The first thing that came into view was the big red pickup truck with silver detail on the side of the doors. It had four LED lights sitting on it‘s roof. The cab was raised away from it’s huge monster truck tires.

    “Please,” I heard my father say. “I have family that needs me.” His voice was pleading. His grey brown hair was soaked with sweat around his neck. His dark brown eyes were closed in prayer. “Please.” I heard him repeat. His voice trembled, but it had an authority about it. My dad was a great Christian. He and the rest of my family had gone to the little church on main street since the day I was born. Possibly before, I didn’t know.

    I felt the urge to run from my hiding place and save him. My hands trembled and I was motionless. As much as I wanted to help him, I couldn’t move. My joints were frozen. My knees were locked. I felt a tear fall from my eyes and down past my chin. All the food we had gathered for that night was scattered on the ground around my father. Jars were broken and bags were popped and stepped on.

    “Old man, you don’t have a life! You dead.” Said the young man closest to my dad. His black hair was in a spiked mohawk with frosted blonde tips. His black eyes held no sympathy. He held the silver handgun sideways like I had seen many times before on TV. “Do you think your God is going to save you? Get up!” He shouted.

    I watched my dad slowly get up from his kneeling position on the ground and raise his hands. “Please, you don’t have to do this. You can come to church with my family. We can help you” My dad’s plea went unheard.

    The young man with the silver gun and his four other friends with their guns, all held sideways, ignored him. “Not everyone gets what they want, old man.” I heard the young man with the silver gun whisper to my dad.
    Big salty tears fell from my eyes. I fell to the ground on my hands and knees as I saw and heard the bullet being shot from the gun. Immediately I knew that it had all been my fault. I knew I could have done something. I knew I could have stopped it and I didn’t.

    Throughout the year since my father’s death, my mother tried putting me through counseling in school, sent me to shrinks and even tried to tell me herself that it wasn’t my fault. She even stopped going to church after a while.
    She would always tell me it wasn’t my fault, but all I could do was look into her deep, red-brown, teary eyes and tell her, “You weren’t there.” She would always just leave it at that. She would escape to her room with a picture of my father in her hands and cry, leaving my brother and I to fend for ourselves at dinner.