A Nightmare

One late evening in Autumn, Night reached her icy cold fingers to grip the streets of a small town and the heart of a little girl.
A father starts walking, hand in hand with his daughter, down a dim, damp street. The pale green of the patriarch’s eyes hold a hint of sadness and the daughter’s light blue eyes look around unseeing. Clinging to her sole parent, the pair walks past store after store.Music is heard coming from a bar. A pebble skids across the hard, cracked, cement sidewalk.  The pair walk on.
Past drunks coming out of a bar, the pair walk, not hearing their slurred speak and or seeing as they wobble by. Passing a huge man in a dark rain coat, just standing at an entrance to an alley, they go on and on. The moon is hiding it’s familiar face and the lamp lights shutter spookily. Leaves piled up at the base of a nearby tree rustle, and the wind brings the sound of a train whistle while the tightly joined duo walk on.
A teenage stranger approaches the pair who are snapped from their numbness when she inquires if they would walk with her home. She seems frightened, a bit on edge, and she reminded him of a little girl, a little like his own daughter, so the father agrees. Still clinging to the strong hand of her father, the girl studies the stranger. Strangely dyed, curly hair is pulled up on her head in a bun. A pretty necklace graces her neck and a gangster-like jacket hangs about her slim shoulders. And so the now trio walk on.
An old, orange, stray tabby cries from its seat on an abandoned car. They travel past a hole-in-the-wall, long closed, Pizzeria and down the long street. An owl screeches when it‘s prey is found. A car drives by with its bright headlights on, temporarily blinding all three. The girl still clings to her father’s callused hand as they all walk on.
With the strange teenage girl leading the way, they take a sharp right and find themselves in a dim alley behind a small Mexican-American restaurant. People are lining the wall to their right and a few large silhouettes line the wall to their left. The teenage stranger thanks the father for accompanying her home and the father daughter team turn to continue their tedious walk home. The biggest silhouette, one who reeked and wore a gangster-like jacket similar to the one the teenage stranger had on, left the wall and placed a pair of arms as strong as heavy rope around the unsuspecting father, suddenly tearing him away from his beloved daughter’s grasp. Although the father was no match for the man he commenced his useless struggle, desperate to not be parted from his little girl.
Deeply miffed by the cold she felt when the warm hand left hers, the daughter goes after the thug who is dragging her father to the back door of the shop. She throws herself at him and manages to place one good kick to the scoundrel’s shin. Before she can strike again however, another massive thug grabs her from behind, stopping her pitiful rescue attempt. He pins her to the ground while they continue to take her only mortal parent away. In a last ditch effort to free her father she pleads for mercy from the seemingly merciless thugs, screaming, “NO! NO! NO! You can‘t take my dad! I don‘t have my mom anymore, I need my dad! No! You can‘t take him! He‘s all I‘ve got left!!”
A confused consciousness fills the girl and she reaches one small hand out in lonely anguish for a mother who is no longer there. Her father, after hearing her cry out, comes into her room and holds her till her self-pitying sobs end. The daughter then grabs hold of her father’s strong hand and clings to it till a numbing sleep frees her from her current woes into the arms of nothingness.