pinned behind the exit door

was excised like a human tumor from her life, we visited Bobbi-Jo at Dunkin Donuts, where she worked. She gave me a coffee and Pepper asked me to take Brick for a walk so they could spend ten minutes together. I took the coffee and the dog and walked to the end of the plaza.

At the end of the sidewalk, Brick and I turned around, We began to run back to DD’s, just because it felt right. About halfway there, a woman coming out of CVS was pinned behind the exit door as I ran full speed into her outswing. The styrofoam coffee cup split perfectly in two, while my knuckle on my left ring finger exploded violently and Brick, attached by leash to my right hand, left the ground in an arc and hit a shopping cart. As I sat on the concrete looking up at the door covered in coffee and blood, I made eye contact with the woman behind it. She had obviously never seen anyone time-jump before. The fact that in her world, I appeared out of thin-air at a violent intersection of her unremarkable life had left her dubious about her next footsteps.