Left. Right. Left. I hear footsteps all over again. His footsteps. Just like it was yesterday. Like I’m in the cot, urine stench and all, listening to him come down in the middle of the night.

The moon is full so there’s plenty of light and I don’t mind that he can see me.

Unlike back then when I wished I could just disappear whenever I heard the thunk of his heavy gait.

A truck pulls into the parking lot of the bar just as I stand up straight and focus on my phone. There’s nothing on the screen but pictures of her but I don’t mind passersby in the night thinking I’m texting someone. Some drunk patron trying to find a ride, maybe.

My heart races and a flash of faces forces adrenaline to course through my veins. The screams are something that’s so hard to silence. Nearly impossible.

I try to remember what she told me. I try to think only of her. It’s all too much sometimes. The memories and the nightmares that linger.

His footsteps echo again and it helps to remind me this is something that has to be done. They can’t get away with what they did. Then it happens.

His footsteps, one after the other, they’re off.

My heart drops and my blood runs cold.

Punishment. That’s a punishment.

As my gaze focuses on him, silence descends. With a cigarette hanging from his mouth, he lights the end of it and takes a puff. All the while walking to the side of the building where cigarette butts litter the gravel.

He’s alone. Just as he is nearly every Tuesday night. And Wednesday and Thursday and nearly every fucking day of every fucking week.

Maybe that’s how he deals with what he’s done… he drinks his sins away.

My throat is tight as I swallow and keep my hands in my pockets, my left holding the basic utility knife, the pad of my thumb running circles around the metal.

He lifts his head back in greeting as I make my way to him.

It’s nearly midnight, the bar is only open for a handful of regulars. I wonder if they’ll even find his body tonight or if he’ll lay in the puddle of ash and blood all night.

Maybe the animals will get to him. After all, he’s close enough to the trash.

The corner of my lip picks up just slightly as I ask him, “Got a light?”

His head lowers as he looks down to his pocket.

I watch his hands and remember them on my shoulders, his fingers digging into my flesh in a bruising grip. ‘Straighter!’ he’d scream in my face and I swear I’d try. I can smell his breath. Cigarettes. ‘Straighter you little shit’ Whack!