Guilty

After a long school day, my braids surrendered. The red ribbons holding them had been set free somewhere behind me on the sidewalk having blown off with the November wind, seeking a new destination.

Camouflaged into a mixture of dead dead leaves, trapped under an azalea bush, the springtime raker would never know they were once mine, that they had a purpose, and that they didn't mean to let go.

It was all my fault.

There was no way I could push the loose hair from my eyes with each gust because my hands were full. The clock hour had just been turned back the week before allowing the sun to fight against my stride ending the guarantee I would make it home before dark.

With one more block to go, the shadows were gone as the switch from day to night threateningly reached down choking me, before his hands ever wrapped around my neck.

It wasn't even a quiet street. One after the next on their way home from work, the headlights from the cars scorched against my back till I purred like a cozy kitten. How could I know they were just mocking me?

Two times he beeped his horn as he slowly pulled up along the side of me, a short and friendly signal I should stop and he threw the passenger door open so quickly I imagined he was driving from that side.

"Uncle Ray." I said, dropping my things, ducking down in the wind to say, "Hi," and he said, "Get in," and I said, "That's okay it's only one more block," and that's when he snatched me up with his octopus arms pulling me in like a skilled magician.

"Wait! My things are on the sidewalk."

With that said my free hands pushed my hair aside enabling me to look out the window barely able to see the outline of my possession shrinking all too fast. Turning abruptly in the direction of my Uncle Ray with outrage it was only then that I realized,

"Wait! I whaled louder. "You are not my Uncle Ray! Let me out! Let me out!"

The last thing I remember before I blacked out was the smell of canned fish, the kind with the bones, mixed with stale beer and cigarettes wafting out of his mouth as he whispered,

"Call me Uncle Ray."

And I couldn't, wouldn't, because then I would have to admit what was about to happen was most definitely all my fault.