7th and Columbia

    The three Figg sister's were put into the custody of the state after their brother, Dakota, stabbed their mother to death with a kitchen butcher knife and afterwards was shot to death by a Lafayette police officer.
    There was Rebecca the oldest, Sarah the middle child, and the youngest, Stephanie.
    After the girls school, where Stephanie sunk her teeth into the cheek of a roommate's face and ripped out a handful of her frizzy strawberry blond hair (they were having a fight over why they were sent to the reformatory school) Stephanie decided to run away and live on the streets. She resorted to prostitution sometimes, if she simply needed a meal or a place to stay out of the cold for a night.
    Eventually she found a man with enough money to pay the rent most of the time, though she claimed  to never know his occupation. They began living together.
    She said she cooked all his meals for him.
    She claimed she performed all her womanly duties, pointing out specifically that she would suck his dick.
    She claimed he would hit her when he became angry because she slept with another man for money when he couldn't pay the bills that month, but she would just hit him right back. She was still young and agile, and he being so much older and slower than her, he would helplessly lose the altercation. "It happened too many times." She told the police. "I got fed up."
    Most of the time, they would laugh at each other after fights. She would hold him in her arms, rocking away the suscpicions they had for each other.
    Tyrone was his name, but all of his friends and some of his family called him Baby Bird because of his shrivelled and atrophied arm.
    It was out in front of the Tippecanoe public library in broad daylight. Stephanie pulled out the pocket knife with the black plastic handle and yelled "I know you're still fucking her!" She thrust the blade torward his skinny brown chest. His stained white polo shirt rippled in the hot summer air before the knife lacerated the cotton and plunged through his skin and entered the viscera of his gut. She pulled the knife out and went to stick him again, but he choped the blade away; the edge of the blade sliced the outside of his palm and fell to the sidewalk rat-a-tat-tating on the surface while small specks of deep crimson misted the grey composite.
    He grappled Stephanie around the neck. "Woman, have lost your goddamn mind!" He growled.
    That is when the police car pulled off of Columbia Street onto 7th. Tyrone (a.k.a Baby Bird) jogged over to the police officer , his hand dripping blood and his polo shirt saturating a deep red outwards from one small crescent shaped hole below his ribs; not between the fifth rib. "This bitch stabbed me, man!"
    The police officer turned the key of his Charger off. "Step away from the car, sir. We'll get this sorted out."
    An ambulance showed up and took Tyrone away. Questions ensued. Back-up arrived. She was hand cuffed. One of the police officers took pictures of the bloody knife with his phone. Another officer took Stephanie's state issued I.D. "You're a Figg" he said, but did not ask.

Aaron C. Molden