The Backpack

The Backpack
By Scott E. Hurowitz

It was a bright, hot, sunny afternoon in downtown Houston. The thermometer had already hit 98°F. Jack Walker was walking down Texas Street and headed for the light rail to take him home. It was the evening rush hour and downtown was swimming with people and cars.

Jack was approaching the corner of Texas and Main when he saw a woman ahead of him walking in his direction. The woman had long, blond hair and was wearing a red dress that came down below her knees. She was carrying a maroon backpack over her shoulder, which contrasted the sleek, sexy look of her outfit. She stood out amongst the ocean of people scurrying to get home.

As Jack got closer to the woman, she walked up to him with a wide smile and said, “Here you go,” as she handed him the backpack.

“What’s this?” said Jack to the woman, but she had already started to walk away from him. He started to follow her, yelling, “Ms., excuse me Ms.,” but the woman just kept walking faster, seemingly trying to get away from Jack.

When she got to Main Street, she did not stop for the DO NOT WALK light, but merely kept walking across the street. She never saw the train collide with her. The train hit her so hard, it knocked her right out of her red dress shoes.

Jack was in complete shock. He had no idea of what just happened. He stood there for a while as people ran over to assist the woman. There was no movement from her at all. Jack could not tell from where he was standing, because of her red dress, that her body was completely covered in blood.

After about ten minutes of watching emergency personnel tend to the woman, it was clear that she had not survived the collision. Jack did not know what to do next. He gazed down at the maroon backpack in his hand and was overcome with a strange sense of curiosity. “What could possibly be in this bag,” he thought to himself, “and why did she give it to me?”

He opened up the bag and peered in to see its contents. He was in disbelief. He wasn’t entirely sure that what he was looking at was real. He looked at the contents of the bag for more than a minute, and then closed the bag, and walked to the light rail station.
Jack could not eat dinner that night. He paced around endlessly in his one bedroom apartment. The newly acquired backpack sat on the dining room table, untouched since Jack had placed it there upon returning home for the day. He tried to watch some TV, but nothing interesting was on, and he ended up just flipping through channels for most of the evening. Jack wasn’t really interested in watching TV anyway. He was just looking for something to distract him from the day’s events.

Jack couldn’t sleep that night either. He’d doze off for a while, and then wake up just as quickly. There was one point where he had woken up and was soaking wet from head to toe with sweat. He got up out of bed and walked over to the dining room table and sat down close to where the maroon backpack lay. He stared at it for almost an hour before he realized what he needed to do.