One night my friend Rubin and I decided to take a walk through the park. We walked across the south lawn to the pavilion where there were several skateboarders making jumps on the sides of the old fountain and other people walking about. We talked about work and other mundane things as we strolled away from the old pavilion to the rose gardens, where there is a natural maze of huge rose bushes.

Just then I heard a rattling chain behind us and said, "Rubin, can you hear that?"  As I looked around, he replied that he hadn’t heard anything.

“There, I heard it again!”  I exclaimed as I heard the chain jingling.

Still, he didn't hear it and we could see no one. Continuing our stroll, we moved toward the middle of the big field where it was more open and sat down in the cool grass to smoke a cigarette.

Moments later we were surprised when we saw a kid riding a bicycle with a chain dangling from his pocket.  Turning circles around a thin pale man, dressed in what appeared to be a shredded hospital gown covered with blood, the pair moved toward us.  To say the least, we were petrified!

As they grew closer, I could see that the pale man’s jaw was broken.  He then approached us and asked for a smoke.  As I handed him a cigarette, he said, "Did you see them?"

Dumbfounded, I simply replied, “Who?”

“The ones who did this to me. They stabbed me fifteen times," the man said.

He then lifted his sleeves to show us what looked like very deep stab wounds in his arms, back, and chest.

Horrified, I said, "Shouldn't you be in the hospital?”

Shaking his head, he answered, “They let me go because I didn’t have any money.”