To Catch a Child

A middle-aged man, wearing glasses and draped in an old brown trench coat, sat quietly on a park bench with a newspaper in hand. In the near vicinity was a child, and what the man assumed to be her parents, who were busy conversing with other people.

The man looked down at his paper, all the while keeping the child in view over the top of the page. He glanced at the couple, then back at the girl. Her folks probably wouldn’t even notice if someone ran off with the girl, he thought.

To his surprise, he witnessed the girl stray from the playground in the opposite direction of her parents. He read a little more, and then turned his attention to the girl, before checking to see if her folks were still preoccupied. They have no idea their daughter is running off in pursuit of a butterfly.

The man abandoned his paper and walked in the girl’s direction. As he strolled across the park, he never let her out of his sight, save for brief glances over his shoulder to see if her parents were watching.

The man’s walk turned into a jog. He didn’t want to seem obvious, though he knew he’d have to move quicker. The girl’s back was turned as she continued after the butterfly. I have to get her now! He went into a full sprint after the child.

She was within grasp. The man reached out, grabbed her arm tight and pulled her back. The girl screamed in terror. He was afraid of that, but her folks were too far away to have heard, and the noise of the busy streets served to mute her cries to those nearby.

“Let me go!” The girl shouted.

The man kept hold of her, knelt, and looked her in the eyes. “You should be more careful! Never play near the streets. You nearly wandered into a speeding car!” He eased his grip.

“I’m sorry I frightened you. Just get back to your parents, kid.” He let go, fully expecting the girl to run away in tears, however she stayed, staring fixedly at the ground.

“I’m sorry, mister.”

"Look, the man sighed. “No need to apologize. You just be safer from now on, you hear? Now run along before anyone gets the wrong idea about me.”

She started off, then turned to wave before she continued back to her folks.

The man kept his eyes on her until she reached her parents. There she goes, a young girl with her whole life ahead of her. He exhaled a deep sigh as the headlines of the newspaper resurfaced in his mind. With all that is going wrong in the world today, does she really have a future? Hell, do I? Life just seems so damn pointless sometimes. A dark cloud of hopelessness hung over his head.

He took a walk along the busy streets of his city in hopes he could shake the depression. On a whim, he wandered into one of the tourist-attracting skyscrapers, got in the elevator and hit the top floor. The door opened, and a balcony which wrapped around the building was laid out before him, from which a vast cityscape filled the horizon.

He found a place where there weren’t any people to observe him. The man peered over the side. The sight of the streets below was dizzying, and gave him a tingling sensation in his feet. Is this it? Should I do this now? He beheld the city before him, lost in contemplation. What the hell, I have nothing to lose.

And then he made his move.

He reached into his pocket to retrieve his phone, aimed just off to the left of the sunset and snapped a photo of the cityscape. The man looked at his picture and smiled. At least there's still some beauty left in this city. Maybe life isn’t so bad after all.

WC: 655