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There's a man sitting on the bench watching people in the park and just enjoying a nice day. He's maybe in his mid-fifties, and he has a family he has to get back to soon. But the day is pleasent and he delays. Suddenly a young man runs up and pulls a gun. He demands money and the man passes over his wallet. The young man opens it and takes out the money. Only $50! The young man is very angry, he needs more. The man doesn't have any more so in anger he fires the gun. A siren sounds and the young man drops the wallet and runs. The man is fatally wounded but he lives long enough to describe his attacker. With that and the help of finger prints on the wallet the attacker is arrested. The bench is now stained with blood drawn in anger. A stain that will remain for many years. Some wonder what it is but the bench keeps its secrets. It is too sorrowful to speak even if it could. How could someone take a life of another person for only fifty bucks? A child and her mother comes there often. They are both very sad. Sometimes the mother tells her about how brave her daddy was. He believed in his country and went into the army to fight for its honor. For a year he was in a foreign country defending the rights of others. He had won a couple of medals for bravery, but just when he was due to come home a sniper bullet found its mark and he was shipped home in a coffin. His last letter was about how soon he would be coming home. How once more he could hold his wife and little girl. But now all they have are memories, medals and a flag folded three-cornered. Then one day a soldier comes to see them in the park. He had been searching for them. He was with her husband when he died and he needed to find her and make sure she was alright. The two men had been together from the first day in the army so they had become close. He visited them often at the bench and soon it wasn't about her husband that he came and she waited for him. They were falling in love but they didn't realize it yet. The bench knew! At last something good was happening again. The stains of life there on the bench had new meaning. Hope was reborn! The next winter was cold and hard and there wasn't many visitors that year. Only a few brave souls would come and watch the children play in the snow but not for long. But spring would come eventually and the bench patiently waited for new secrets to keep! neon_sapphire |