Everyone loved Craig-the kids and adults alike. It was the first time in his young life that Abel had known peace.Īnd then Craig had begun volunteering, having come to them from a Christian outreach center that helped kids get off the street. The first couple weeks at the orphanage had been heaven compared to their parent's apartment warm beds and warm meals, heated rooms, no sudden outbreaks of screaming and yelling, slapping and hitting, things breaking. When Abel had went begging to the neighbors for food, he had finally come across someone who gave a shit and turned their parents in for neglect.

Isn't that what mothers told their kids when they played out in the bad weather? But then-how the fuck would he know what concerned mother's would say? His mother-along with his piece of shit dad-had left their eleven-year-old-son and their eight-year-old daughter in a dank, freezing apartment to fend for themselves, night after night, as they'd gone out drinking, getting high. The t-shirt glued to his body like another layer of skin, his jeans sucked to his thighs and calves, no longer a barrier to the rain and cold. There was no feeling left in his feet, his socks sopping, toes frozen. Abel's amber eyes were shadowed-a deep, dark gold in the freezing night-and stared blankly, numbly at the sidewalk before him, watching his soaked shoes hit down, water squeeze through the surface. Ice chunks clung wetly to his dark blond strands and slid down across his cold flushed cheeks like bitter tears. He would experience each and every excruciatingly painful bite as its teeth sank into the flesh of his heart again and again. If it caught him-it would devour him, rip him apart piece by piece, feast on him while his heart still beat, lungs still pumped air.

If he just kept going, moving forward, maybe he could stay one step ahead of the nightmare biting at his heels. But he couldn't stop, not even for a moment. He didn't know how long he had been walking, or even where he was in the city. Hands stuffed deep into wet pockets as drenched sneakers sloshed through the gathering puddles on the sidewalk of the dimly lit street. The raindrops turned to ice and cut through the street lamps and neon bar signs, reflecting gold, emerald, sapphire, crimson-pelting his face, hair, clothes, arms-chilling him to the bone.

Abel by C.J. Bishop