Countless squares of shattered glass were scattered across the asphalt. Like seeds thrown to barren earth where they can never take root. Under her feet the glass ground against the pavement and cut into her flesh.

Where was her shoe?

Wind whistled in her ears, but she couldn’t feel it on her face. Everything was loud, roaring, screaming, but she couldn’t make any of it out. Cupping her hand to her ear, she found it wet and sticky. She pulled her hand back and stared at it.

Color was smeared across her fingers. It alternated bright red or rich brown in the flashing lights. She looked up toward the blue and red lights, holding her hand over her eyes and squinting into the brightness. All of a sudden she felt very, very dizzy.

Out of the light, a figure strode toward her, catching her as she felt her knees give out.

“Ma’am? You’ve been in a car accident. Are you alright? Do you know where you are?”

The face of a handsome man looked down at her, she smiled then tried to brush the hair out of her face, leaving behind a smear of blood.

“I can’t find my shoe.”

Memphis Note
For several years, the intersection of Riverdale and Winchester was the most dangerous intersection in the state for car accidents. The large number of traffic lights, the broad streets, and the dozens of turnins to the retail establishments meant you never knew where danger was going to come from. Accidents were happening at least once a day, many of them injury accidents. In recent years, the number of wrecks has decreased due to most of the key stores moving to safer areas of the city, causing a decrease in the area’s traffic.

I came upon the two men in the black of night.

Surely if they had seen me before I took their lives, they would not have known what to make of this figure rising from the mire. Lithe. Half-naked. Female.

I killed the one that slept first. Silently exposing his insides, while the other played his harmonica, completely unawares of what was coming for him. I did the other just as quickly, playing a note with his final breath.

I left them in that bog to bloat under the next day’s sun. Such was what they deserved.

They had dug up the grave of my beloved, desecrated his body, and fled with his skull. No doubt they meant to sell it to buy more poison to throw down their gullets.

To do such a thing to a great man like John Murrell was more of a sin that any I have committed.

The Mystic Clan may have faltered since the passing of their founder and master, but I could never, ever, forget him.

I would shepherd his remains to that ancient sycamore tree. Part the rich earth with my hands. Then plant him like a seed amongst the roots.’

Memphis Note
John Murrell and his Mystic Clan were a loose organization of several hundred bandits in the Mississippi River region of Tennessee and Arkansas between the 1820s and  1840s. Murrell himself was a bit of a regional legend, though one more akin to a boogie-man than a benevolent figure. It is said that millions of dollars in plunder are still buried around Western Tennessee, yet another reason he was called the Great Western Land Pirate in his day.