Annabelle's Plunge

Annabelle Mitalia was the most beautiful baby in the entire world. Thick, black, baby-soft hair graced her petite, six-month-old head. Her deep-blue eyes sparkled and danced like a shimmering ocean. Her skin looked and felt like the petals of the sweetest rose. Her pert little nose tipped up in just the right way. Her gentle hands could easily become those of a world-class pianist.

She had a gentle spirit, too. Quick to smile, her face lit up a room in an instant and banished demons for miles. Because Rosita, her mother, had always been highly attentive to Annabelle's needs, Annabelle had learned that she could get anything she wanted with a gentle look of reproach rather than by crying. Her laughter had a soft, musical quality that called to mind a music box—yet it had a richer, more full sound.

Today, Annabelle wore a soft, white, cotton dress blushed with tiny pink flowers. Rosita had just finished nursing the little girl and had tucked her gently in the pink and white blanket she had crocheted herself during her pregnancy. She watched her little one's face for a few minutes before she gently carried her to the crib and lay her down.

Rosita softly walked out of the bedroom that served both her and the baby. She took a deep breath of contentment, then she brought a glass of lemonade and the novel she was currently reading out onto the little balcony that overlooked the parking lot for her apartment building. She sat down in the hard white plastic chair she had bought for five dollars and imagined she was looking out on the beach instead of at a bunch of other cold, gray apartment buildings and their parking lots. She took a long sip on her lemonade. Maybe she would make some cookies later.

A gentle breeze teased Rosita's hair and caressed her face. She felt very peaceful and happy as she brought her book up for her enjoyment and dived into its pages.

When the first violent pounding hit her door, all of Rosita's nightmares flooded her mind at one time. Tom. The time he cut off her hair while she was sleeping because he said she had too much power over him. The discovery that Tom never had any intention of being true to her. The time he set her cat on fire right before her eyes because he wanted her to love him best. The discovery that Tom thought of her as his trophy, and any time she even said anything that disagreed with Tom, he would beat her. The time he had beaten her to unconsciousness when he found out she was pregnant, because he was not ready to be a father. He was supposed to still be in jail. He was supposed to still be in jail in another state. How could he have found her?

She leaped up from her chair, dropping her glass and her book without another thought. The glass hit the edge of the balcony, shattered, and rained lemonade and sparkling, razor-sharp glass shards four stories down to the the parking lot below. The day suddenly seemed cold and dark though the sun still shone as warm and bright as ever.

Her fumbling hands caught the clean, white phone off the wall, and she dialed 911.

Pound. Pound. The door was cracking.

"Yes. Please come to my apartment right away. Someone is breaking down my door. I think it is my crazy ex-husband, Tom Cantorio."

Pound. Pound. Splinters of wood flew onto the carpet.

"Yes. That is my address. Hurry. Please, hurry."

Pound. Pound. The door broke in two from top to bottom, and Tom burst right in through the jagged opening. He came across the room like a freight train, ripping the phone out of Rosita's hands and ripping the entire thing off the wall.

Rosita's hands felt cold and clammy. Her heart raced as if it were trying to land a place in the World Record books. Her throat constricted as if she were trying to swallow an ostrich egg.

"So," violently breathed Tom as he turned his full attention on Rosita. "So, you are right here. How can you stand to look at yourself in the mirror after locking me up—your own husband?"

Rosita said nothing. She just stood there in the white, vinyl-floored kitchen as if she were the proverbial deer.

"Did you think for a second I would let you get by with this kind of humiliation?" Though Tom had dark good looks, when he was in this kind of temper, he could easily have played Satan himself in some movie.

Rosita knew from long experience that anything she said to Tom when he was like this would be used against her and would only enrage him further. She held her tongue.

Then he began barraging her with expletives as if they were two medieval armies, and his was the one that had crossbows. The arrows of hate flew toward her with deafening speed, but as they hit, she turned them to flowers, which fell at her feet, by not returning his hatred.

No one peered in the broken door. It was as if all the neighbors were encased in soundproof rooms, or, more likely, they wanted to have nothing to do with the violence that was about to explode.

Finally, Tom sneered, "And where is my little progeny?"

Rosita's blood turned to ice. She held her silence.

Tom tore through the place like a tornado, throwing furniture and kicking anything in his path. He easily found the room where Annabelle lay sleeping. Though Rosita tried to block his entrance, Tom threw her aside like a rag doll. He opened the door and roughly picked up the baby.

Poor little Annabelle began to cry. Rosita had never heard her cry like that before. Annabelle's fright ignited Rosita's voice.

"Tom, please put her down."

Tom ignored Rosita now as his prison-hardened fingers dug into Annabelle.

"Tom, don't do this evil. Set her down or give her to me." She actually sounded braver by far than she felt.

Tom glanced at Rosita's pleading, beautiful face. Insanity gleamed from his eyes. He stomped purposefully to the balcony and stepped outside. He turned the baby so she could look out. Then he declared, "Child of my loins, this is the last thing you will be seeing in this lifetime. You will pay for your mother's sins. She should never have crossed me. She should never have left me. She should never have sent me to jail. Through you, she will pay." Then he grabbed the girl by one ankle and held her upside down over the railing.

Rosita screamed an unearthly scream as if a demon were trying to rip her soul from her body. Save her, Lord. Save us, Jesus. Save us. Save us. Save us. The prayers flew through her mind 100 miles an hour. Save us. Save us Lord.

Tom continued to rant at Rosita all the while. When Rosita tried to take the baby forcibly, Tom just kicked her in the stomach as she came at him.

Annabelle had never felt so very frightened. The world did not make sense. She did not understand anything. She hated how she felt as she swung precariously in her father's grasp. She wailed for her mother. Why hadn't her mother come? Where was she? The crying scared her all the more.

Police cars screeched into the parking lot, and officers flew out of them like rats leaving a ship. Some stayed by their cars. Some ran into the building.

Tom saw them.

His rage, as nuclear as any bomb, continued to explode in a percussion of sound. As Rosita, having gotten her breath back, tried to stand up again to save her baby.

Tom yelled at the top of his lungs, "Now die, spawn of the she-devil who has tormented my mind!" And he flung Annabelle down with vengeance and hatred, and he turned away.

People from everywhere, who had been watching in secret, screamed.

The officers got to the apartment just in time to see him let go of her, and they ran towards him at top speed.

Rosita stood unsteadily on her feet and began to stagger towards the balcony, ready to follow her beloved child.

Annabelle felt the release of her father's rough grasp, and she began to fall. She had never seen colors fly by her in this way except when she was safe and snug in her car seat in their car. She had never felt a "wooo" in her tummy like this, because her mother had always been so gentle and kind. She cried like she had never cried before in her life as the inches flew by. She missed the concrete that had broken the glass. She missed the next balcony railing that rushed by her. She missed that concrete floor as she stretched out her delicate fingers into nothingness.

Then she felt the firm grasp of the man's hands on her arm and her leg. She fell very hard into his chest, but he had her safe and snug. He had been sitting on his balcony railing with one leg over and both legs intertwined in the railing. He had reached out into oblivion and snatched her back from the yawning chasm of death.

Rosita saw him catch her, and she ran past Tom who was wrestling with the officers, and she ran down, down, down the stairs.

By the time she made it to the apartment two floors down, Gary Price had Annabelle snuggled up in his arms as she cried hysterically.

Rosita urgently knocked on his door, and he opened it. She took the baby in her arms and dropped to her knees with the child. She covered her with kisses like only a mother can. Gary just watched her in awe of the love she had for her little one. Annabelle quieted.

Finally, Rosita looked up, and Gary helped her stand.

"Thank you," she whispered as emotion choked her voice into a grainy image of its former self.

Tears rolled down Gary Price's face as he gave Rosita's shoulder a little squeeze.