Snippet #2478156

 

He looked away from the road for only a moment, to glance at a child laughing on the sidewalk. He chuckled lightly, watching the little girl laugh and throw snowballs at her big brother. How he missed those innocent days. But it wasn't instant. The car came speeding around the corner. He saw it coming, and had a few moments to pull over but he didn't. He closed his eyes, letting it come. It crashed into his car head-on, killing him instantly.

 



 

Salazar's life was becoming a rough one, which was clear when the sound of his building manager pounding on his door at 2:19 am, just eleven minutes before his alarm was set to sound its own deafening sound. The young man stood from his bed, stretching as he did so. Salazar was almost certain as to why Mr. McKay was banging on his door this early in the morning. Sal slowly moved towards the door, almost dreading opening it.

“Why haven’t you made this month’s, oh wait, excuse me,” Almost as if for dramatic effect, Mr. McKay would thumb through a few pages. “The last four months you haven’t made payments Mr. Eres. We can’t have that in this apartment complex, and I certainly can’t have that on our credit record. I know you’re in a rough situation Sal, but If I don’t get at least $500 in the next few weeks, well you’re going to have to find a new place to live.”  Salazar’s face felt hot, and his skin felt almost as if someone had branded him as property.

With a sigh, Sal answered the middle-aged man, “I understand Sir, it’s just, I can’t even pay my match dues.” Sal’s hand creeped to the back of his neck in an almost awkward motion.

Mr. McKay, although saddened looked up at the man. He understood, “at least let me move you down to a more manageable apartment, you can’t afford this one now, and until you can, $550 a month is just racking up more bad credit for you.”

Sal nodded, and as McKay moved to leave, a small sense of Deja vu entered the young man’s mind. Only, he couldn’t place his finger on why. As Sal glanced at the clock, he realized that it was time for his morning run.

After getting changed into his black track shorts, and blue running shoes, Sal was looking into the mirror. “How did I get here,” this question escaped his throat in an angry manner. His fists slammed onto the dresser that lay in front of the mirror, and as he looked up, he saw a man he didn’t recognize anymore. Salazar saw an angry almost hostile person staring back at him, and in that moment, he decided he didn’t want to be this person anymore. So he straightened his green headband and slipped on his lightweight hoodie. He thumbed through his playlist on his IPod and exited the place that no longer felt like home.

As he ran, he felt like running faster, so he changed  the song to something with a faster tempo and adjusted his pace accordingly. On the final leg of his run, he noticed a young woman in a tree near his apartment building. As he approached her, she fell from the tree, and landed on the ground. To examine this situation further, Salazar approached the woman and offered her a hand.

“Are you alright Miss? I don’t believe I’ve seen you around before.”