“I love—”
Something catches my attention and I stop mid-sentence. A shadow darts across the windows of a closed store across the road and before I can do anything, the man in the leather coat with the greasy ponytail appears in the street. He rushes at us, pulling something from inside his jacket. My heart explodes when I see the gun.
“Jasper, watch out!”
As the gunshot rings out I shove Jasper away from me and he stumbles into the street. The gunman remains holding the smoking firearm in front of him. He sneers at me and my stomach roils, then he dashes off, vanishing around a corner.
I reach down and feel my stomach, my torso, expecting to find a bullet wound, but I’m fine. I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Jasper, are you…?”
In the middle of the street, Jasper is standing looking down at where his hands are clutching his stomach. A red blossom is blooming outward, staining his shirt. He lifts his head, panicked and confused, and our eyes lock.
“Jasper? Jasp?”
He crumbles, falling to the street, and I run to him.
“JASPER!”
WAILING TO THE MOON
Jasper’s blood covers my hands. There’s so much of it, pouring out of him, staining my shirt, my jeans. His body is heavy in my lap. I hold him tightly, trying to support his head, which he can no longer hold up on his own. His eyes are halfway shut, his mouth open in a silent scream of pain. His breaths are short and shallow. His face is ghostly pale.
“Jasper, hold on,” I say. “The ambulance is on its way.”
I don’t know how I managed to speak calmly enough to the emergency services operator to get an ambulance here but somehow, maybe before the shock set in, I was able to. My phone lies beside me now, the screen smeared in red.
“Please, don’t die,” I whisper into Jasper’s hair as I clutch his head to my chest. “Do you hear me? You’re not allowed to die.”
In my arms Jasper tenses, he struggles to keep his eyes open, looking around like he’s having trouble focusing. Then finally his gaze lands on my face and he almost smiles…almost. With a shaking hand he tries to touch my face, like he needs confirmation I’m really here.
“M-Ma…”
He starts to say my name but can’t get it out before he convulses in pain. His eyes slam shut. His body judders, tenses then relaxes, and he drops limply. His head falls back and his eyes close.
“Jasper?” I try to shake him gently, just enough to keep him here, awake—alive. “Jasper, no! Jasper, please!”
The hand he reached for my face with falls sideways, hitting the road. I rake my fingers over his cheeks.
“Jasp, wake up. You have to wake up.”
He doesn’t respond.
“No.”
There’s so much blood. It’s in his hair, slicking the strands of midnight black together. It’s on his perfect, pale-freckled cheeks. It’s drenched his clothes and stained the pavement.
“NO!”
As all hope seems to drain from me, I hear the faint wail of sirens. Eventually the street becomes lit in flashing red and blue.
I barely notice as the paramedics haul me to my feet and go to work on Jasper.
All I can think about is the blood that’s seeped into my clothes.
So much blood.
So much…
