Menage Monday Week 40 – As Good A Reason As Any

This is my entry for Week 40 of Cara Michaels’ Menage Monday flash fiction challenge.  The photographic prompt was a street scene with structures all lit up in purple.

As Good a Reason As Any

“I don’t remember so much… purple,” he said as she led him down the boulevard. The pipes and tubing of some sort of factory were lit up in garish colors. “How long did you say I was out?”

“Ten days. I found you in that alley there.”

The clothes he had on didn’t fit. And he had no idea who the woman was. He’d been trying to place her all day.

Red hair. Tattoos. Ripped jeans and half a shirt. Nothing. No recognition at all.

“You kept repeating, ‘survive this’,” she said.

They stopped in a bus shelter so he could rest.

“I don’t feel like I belong here.”

“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t,” she replied. “Maybe you’re here for a reason.”

“What reason?”

Screeching tires and gunfire drowned out her answer.

Bullets tore into him as he forced her down beneath him.

She turned him over as the SUV peeled out.

He was leaking sauce and already felt the chill. He tried to speak but could only whisper.

She held his hand and leaned in to hear him.

“This is as good a reason as any,” he said.