GABBY HAD FINALLY FINISHED work and was heading home. She was apprehensive and uneasy. Today felt like the day her dream would unfold.
She decided to make a detour and head to the grocery store instead. As she cautiously made her way to the store, she saw the awful scene unfold just one car in front of her.
So surreal, just like a bad amateurish B movie. The light turned red for westbound traffic, while the heavy duty black pickup truck accelerated to beat the light. The southbound traffic pulling forward with the lead car, a small silver sedan just picking up speed to go through the intersection.
But Gabby knew they were running out of time. She knew she had to act. Only she had the gift that could possibly save this woman's life. She had one chance to get it right, this time.
Driving that small silver sedan, a mom, with a toddler strapped into her car-seat in the rear. Probably just going to the same store Gabby was going to; to get a meal for her family tonight or diapers for the baby.
In that huge monstrous pickup was an older gentleman with a strange intense look on his face. In the blink of an eye, Gabby saw the whole thing unfold.
Gabby looked at her watch. The watch her grandfather had given her. The watch he said was very special and one day she would know what to do with it.
She knew she had only one chance and one chance only to make a difference before it was too late. As she prayed to her GOD to let this mother and child live, she pressed the one button on her watch that could make a difference.
Time reversed.
Gabby sat at the intersection with a small silver sedan in front of her. The westbound traffic light was just turning yellow as a monstrous black pickup truck came thundering through. An older gentleman with a scary intense look on his face turned and looked pointedly at Gabby.
Very clearly she saw the man mouth the words, "That was the last one you get; you've run out of time."
The Prize
One Man’s Trash is Another One’s Prize
AUSTIN WAS TRYING TO bury his new toy under the big overgrown bush in the vacant lot. You couldn't tell it now, but once upon a time this bush would have been the prized flowering rose bush of a caring and careful gardener. It still bloomed heavy blood-red roses with wicked thorns to protect it from marauders.
The bush took up a large section of the ragged, misused yard. It was surrounded by other less showy shrubs but just as large. One could stoop behind its protective arms and not be seen.
Austin thought the bush could probably hide tons of buried treasure. The lot itself had been abandoned years before and most of the kids in the neighborhood steered clear of it. Someone had meant to build a house there; had indeed started a broken and crumbly foundation, but bad times being as they were, they had let it all go to waste.
Now all that remained was a semi-cleared hole in the ground and a scattering of overgrown underbrush, tall bushes and a big spreading rose bush. Everyone had started to use the dead lot as their own personal garbage dump. An old mattress was discarded in one corner and miscellaneous parts to some old cars were in another. Whatever anyone didn't want but had no good way to get rid of was dumped on the lot.
The rumor was that the man who owned the land had misfortune raining down on his head; before he could complete the foundation someone had shot and killed him while he was working on it.
Austin didn't know this for sure, but rumors usually started from some truth and therefore something had happened to keep the man from completing his task. He dug harder and with every hot breeze that blew across his cheek, he thought he would be found out.
He understood that if any of the other kids in the neighborhood found his toy, it would no longer be his. Austin knew he was lucky to have found it in the first place.
His mother fearful of all the things that could befall a ten-year-old boy in their neighborhood seldom let him roam around it alone. His eight year old brother Tyson was usually under his feet like hot melted asphalt; but this one time, he had managed to slip out of the house without him being aware.
Austin’s mother had made both him and his brother promise to stay close to home while she was at work. They didn't have summer camp and youth programs in their neighborhood. They only had their mother's directives to stay close and not venture too far, to guide them. Austin used his best judgment as to what was too far.
He had been out hunting. That's how he liked to think about his looking for odd bits and pieces that others had discarded or abandoned. He was six blocks from where he lived, and he was pretty sure this was probably the ‘too far’ his mother cautioned him about.
He had been down to the school yard, but since it was summer, the yard was locked up tight. Austin slipped in anyway, through the gate in the back where the buses came through.
Austin looked around hesitantly and fearfully, with thoughts of being caught running through his mind. Although he thought to himself he wasn't doing anything wrong, but just in case, he was wary. Sometimes teachers dropped things in their haste to get to their cars and maybe today he would find something lucky.
Austin thought he heard someone call his name. He looked around for some bigger kids who hung around the school in the summer. They didn't go to this school, but they liked to
