Red Mink Stole

Somewhere in my childhood I remember.  It was dark yet it was morning.  Red lights were flashing and my body was whizzing by blurs of bodies standing around, staring.  I wanted very much to see what it was that everyone was looking at.  In that moment, I broke away from the arms that were taking me away.  I rushed over to see  and there it was...

And there it was.  The thing that everyone was looking at. Hanging from the broken driver's side window.

A Red Mink Stole.

Or according to my young eyes, it was an animal that was hit by the car as my mom pulled into the driveway.  It wasn't.  Nothing was as it seemed.

Reality.

It was the WHITE mink stole my mother kept in the closet.  The one I would stroke and wear when she wasn't home.

Bullets shattered the entire driver's side including the window.  The door was opened and there was blood everywhere and hanging from the opened door's window was that formerly white mink stole turned red and filled with holes.

Then I remembered.  It wasn't a mink stole at all.  It was a fur coat filled with bullet holes.