Amanda
Let me set a scene for you all: I am sitting in my apartment, watching Quantum Leap, and eating a PBJ. It’s quiet, almost too quiet…WHEN SUDDENLY, I hear screaming in the hall. What could it be? I wonder. I put Sam Beckett, time traveler, and righter of wrongs, on pause. I venture out into the hall, the screaming continues. I realize that it is a woman yelling, so I spring into action, and run upstairs, it seems to be coming from the sixth floor, so I run up to the next floor. What if she broke a leg!? When I get up there, I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. Victor, our maintenance man was trying his very best to detain a disheveled young woman, but he was losing the fight. She got away, and was running at me, full tilt. Victor yells “GET HER, SHE WAS TRYING TO BREAK IN!”. The lady, all ratty hair, and crazy eyes wasn’t slowing down, in fact she was gaining speed. I made a decision. I lowered my center of gravity, and tackled her. I thought that would be it, but the crack, or meth, or pcp that she was on was giving her the strength of twelve gorillas. She was mad that I knocked her down, she was like a woman possessed, hissing, and trying to bite. In-between her demonic rage however, she would sputter “Can I have a glass of water Guy?” or “Get me some water Guy!”.
Victor runs to meet me at the end of the hall, and is trying to help me keep her on the ground, but like I said, the drugs were giving her strength. She gave the two of us one hell of a fight, but in the end, Vic got her on her stomach, and he sat on her back. She continued to plead for water, so I asked Vic if he had her, and he replied “Sure.”. I went into my apartment wondering what I could give her to drink from, then I remembered that my mom had bought a gallon jug of water while she was here. I brought her the half empty jug, and she drank as if she had be traveling in the Sahara. She gulped, and gasped, and spilled water on herself. She drank about half of a gallon in fifteen seconds.
After she got the water, she was calm.
The police showed up about ten minutes later, and you could tell that they saw this same person every day. To the officers, Amanda, was just one of “them”. To officer Brown, she was just another one of the many thousands of wretched, disposable, thirsty, addicted pieces of human garbage in San Francisco.
None of them had any pity, and I don’t fault them, for if they did, their souls would become blackened with the dirt of hopelessness.
