Leslie

It should be no real shock by now to hear that another of the main characters was at a party that fateful Saturday night. Leslie was hanging out at a shindig her younger sister had dragged her to, and so was drinking her head off to make up for the immaturity of the ‘kids’ around her, though in truth there was only an age difference of a few years. Though when the range is between 25 and 20, it can seem like a massive chasm of intellect.

Leslie is one of the oldest of her group of friends. She’s tall for a girl, standing near 6’1”, but pretty and powerful as opposed to ungainly. She had a way about her, an aura that radiated natural authority. There was never any issue of arrogance; she simply liked to take charge and was good at it. Her dark red hair spoke volumes of her considerable temper, when out of sorts, and she never backed down from a fight.

It was about 11:40 when she found herself outside in the walled in backyard of the little house, thrust into the middle of an already too-drunk argument.

The instigator was some jackass that apparently everyone was willing to vouch for as a good guy, when sober. The victim? Leslie’s little sister. No wonder shit was about to hit the fan.

Leslie, her sister, the asshole, and another random couple were all standing on the lawn, smoking cigarettes away from the bulk of the party, so there wouldn’t be as much of a problem with mooch smokers, as most of the party goers had been relieving their smoking itch out front. The trouble started when, for no apparent reason, the asshole started ripping into her sister about how ugly she was, how some guy she had been hitting on inside was too good for her, way out of her league, and on and on and on. The slur at the edge of every word told them all that he was wasted, but that’s only an excuse to a point.

Leslie vocally jumped to the aid of her sister, throwing everything right back in his face, talking trash on his looks, on his lack of a significant other, on the crappy little rust bucket of a car he had driven to the party, anything and everything that came to mind, right down to the ugly snaggletooth poking out of his mouth.

By this time the random guy and girl had retired to the back porch, finishing their smokes by themselves but still listening avidly. Leslie’s tipsy little sister was standing next to her, motionless as a statue and white as a ghost in her fear of the escalating argument.

And then the asshole decided to take it to the next level: he shoved Leslie, and pretty hard, too.

She shoved him right back, and he drunkenly tripped over his own feet and went down to his knees, but only sprained his pride. The couple on the porch couldn’t hold back a few laughs.

He jumped back up to his feet, rushed in, and backhanded Leslie across the face, sending her sprawling to the patchy, half-dead grass.

While she lay there for a moment, shaking her head to clear the ringing, her sister shook off her paralysis and leaped at him, nails out and slashing. He ducked her wild attack and responded in kind by almost casually slugging her in the stomach. She crumpled, gasping for breath.

Rage flared in Leslie, hot and unchecked, begging for release. Her outstretched hand closed on a rock, clenching tightly.

PAUSE

An angel dropped down out of the sky like a falling star; my buddy, actually. He told me all about this scene later before we replayed it on one of Heaven’s TV’s. I know I’ve said it before, but God I love TiVo.

Anyway, he walked up to Leslie, knelt down, and did his job. Then, instead of leaving, he vanished and reappeared about 20 feet away and parked himself down to watch on a patch of the grass that was still green and mostly alive, making himself completely invisible and insubstantial at the same time for safety’s sake (like I did, except he was more comfortable sitting cross-legged on the ground instead of creating himself a chair).

PLAY

As her hand squeezed the rock Leslie powered up, subconsciously focusing her rage through the outlet she was gripping, and–

–a six-foot-tall, four-foot-wide grayish-red flaking stone hand burst out of the ground in between Leslie and the drunk, raining loose dirt down on all five mortals in the backyard, completely passing through the insubstantial angel who was watching it all with wide eyes and a massive grin on his face. The asshole had just enough time to let his mouth drop wide open in shock and take the deep breath required to let out a massive scream when the hand suddenly lurched forward and, in a repeat performance of what he had done to Leslie, backhanded him. He went flying twenty feet before crunching into the tall wooden fence at the edge of the yard.

Leslie stared at the hand. Picked up and stared at the little rock in her hand. Concentrated again, and the giant hand disappeared back into the ground, leaving the yard looking pretty much the same as it had before she had altered it. Then her gaze fell on the quivering form a few feet away.

Just like that her new superpower was forgotten as she shot to her feet and crossed the short distance to her sister. Once Leslie made sure that she would be fine, just a little bruised up, she quickly got her to her feet and walked her around the house to the street where she dumped her in her little sisters old grey Honda Accord, without the keys. Leslie had been to enough underage parties to know that the cops got called way more often than at parties where everyone’s legal. It’s a rule or something, like Murphy’s Law.

She was just in time, as the couple that they had smoked near had called the cops, on Leslie! Of course, once the police arrived and heard the crazy tale of ‘the girl who made a rock hand come out of the ground and knock a guy unconscious’, they simply disregarded it as drunk babble and set about handing out underage drinking tickets. Including one to the barely conscious asshole!

“Maybe there is a god,” Leslie thought with a smile as she opened up a new beer and looked through her phone for someone to call to come pick up her and her sister. She tried Amanda first but didn’t get an answer.