19180309 11:44:20
DA-N-6000
The woman's yell was all that William Humeski needed to assess the situation, as it caused everything else around her to react in kind. He turned around to see a circle of space slowly form around the woman as she raised her hand to point at the door which was still open from the thief running through it. The gasps and staring by the surrounding people verified that the crime was committed. William had this kind of situation in his mind before, and he was waiting for it to come, hoping for it to come, so that he could prove his morals to others and himself. Time stood still long enough in his eyes to watch the static freeze of the onlookers and the yelling woman's mouth form each syllable of the words "Stop, thief!", and he knew that his time to act was right now.
He leaned his body forward to have his shoulder meet the glass pane of the doorway as he used his outstretched arms to push people out of the way for clearance. Once outside of the store, he quickly looked from side to side to see if he could find the runner, and the slowing walking pace of the pedestrians across the street and yelling by a few carriage and car drivers in the road gave him the guidance he sought. The thief was a small teenager who wore a black overcoat and matching hard shoes, and was running with enough speed and force to make his steps audibly cut through the dense shopping traffic. William decided to cut across the street at a diagonal and try to cut him off immediately. He rigidly held his hands as if to make them into two scalpels which pierced the air in front of his eyes as he exerted his maximum physical and mental effort to catch up to the runner. Each step was a dash off of the ball of his foot from the red worn bricks of the road, each breath came out of his mouth exactly as each alternate hand swept up to its apex. The gap between them was quickly closing, and spectators ahead of both of them were taking measures to be out of their way as they approached. The thief knew that he could make his way through an upcoming alley in a few feet, but was distracted by the sound of the approaching running coming from behind him, and in that realization, he made the mistake of turning to look behind himself. That moment of anxiety was enough for William to close in on the thief and make a lunge to wrap his arms around his waist. The tackle caused both of the boys to tumble and skid forward on the sidewalk and careen into a garbage can that was placed across the entrance to the adjacent grocery store. The thief released his grasp of the purse as the force of his collision against the can caused it to tip over and spill its contents onto the sidewalk as it tumbled and rolled. William positioned himself to roll the boy over and kneel on his body, then yelled out as he pulled his right arm back to strike at the thief's face. The thief reflexively responded by swinging his leg upward and kicking away at William's crotch. William's arms went limp and his yell was immediately muffled by the strike. This gave the thief enough time to look to his side and see an empty glass bottle on the ground, which he picked up after rolling upright upon his knees, then grasped at the neck to swing it at William's face. Some shattered fragments of glass glistened in the sunlight as they fell away from William's face, while others dug their edges into his flesh and tore bloody gashes into the side of his cheek and neck. William instinctively raised his left hand to press it against the cut flesh, but doing this caused some fine glass fragments to dig deeper into his face as well as his fingertips. William became dizzied and staggered in place as he attempted to regain focus in his attack, but the lapse in his offense was all the thief needed. Before William finished wiping his bloodied hand against the side of his body, the thief had already ran forward with his waist bent over so that he could knock William away and reach for the purse on the ground by his feet. The thief simply continued running forward with the purse in his hand and suddenly ran into a store at his right. William turned to see the thief go inside and began to move his legs forward to give chase, but his head reeled and the view of the street around him tilted to an angle and spun as he struggled to keep his eyes open and his body standing. He was soon forced to kneel upon the sidewalk as he held both of his hands up to his neck and felt warm liquid seep through his fingers. His breathing became more labored and his entire body soon started to tremble. A man from the nearby grocery store suddenly whipped the door open and stood to look at William as he knelt on the ground in pain, and only needed to take three steps forward to see the red liquid trickling from his bloodied hands. The man quickly went back inside and started to yell something, and the last thing that William remembered was trying to figure out what language the man was yelling.
The grocer, who yelled in Italian to his brother inside the store to call for police, soon returned to the sidewalk with a handful of white shirts and dashed over to William, who was now lying doubled over his knees with labored breath and was losing consciousness. The man reached knelt besides William and dropped the shirts at his side, then pulled William's hands away from his neck so that he could brush away the visible fragments of glass still embedded in the flesh. Then, he tied the white shirt around William's neck as tight as he felt he could make it to still allow him to breathe yet apply pressure to minimize the bleeding. He then gently helped reposition William so that he could lie prone upon his back on the sidewalk, and held his head up to cushion it with another shirt before releasing it from his hands. When he stood up and saw the several people who stood motionless and watching them nearby, he yelled "We called polizia!" out to them as he pointed four fingers to his own chest.
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PS: Today marks the 100th entry into the Everstreets Draft blog. Thank you for reading.
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