Do You Believe In the Ocean?
an excerpt

A few of the younger men, in worn leather jackets and faded blue jeans, broke off from the mob and sprinted ahead, disappearing into the trees after the girl. My breath was coming fast, fogging up the window and obscuring my vision of the scene. My glasses clinked against the window as I pressed my face closer. I had seen plenty of mobs like this one before, running down various people from our community and dragging them back to deal out their punishment.

I racked my brain to think of the girl’s name – our community is very large, you know – and got my answer from the screams and cries of the mob now fifty feet from my window. Rebecca. I couldn’t exactly recall what she was like. Young boys like me didn’t make it a habit to reside in the company of older women.

I watched the young men reappear, gripping Rebecca’s arms tightly. She wasn’t struggling or screaming or putting up any fight. My face couldn’t be pressed any closer to the window, so I splayed my hands across the glass to steady my weight.

Rebecca was wearing a purple blouse and a denim skirt that went to her knees. She looked like any other woman in our little town if it hadn’t been for the long hair that the young men now grasped in their hands, tugging unmercifully despite the girl’s screams of protest to stop. They ripped out chunks and chunks of that hair, taking her scalp with it until half he head was covered in blood and she was sobbing from the pain. The rest of the mob went for her clothing – I watched purple shreds touch the sky and strips of denim kiss the ground.