The Near Miss

I stopped in my tracks when I saw him looking down at me from the shelves of the local discount store.
He was exactly how I remembered him when I escaped. The same terror that gripped my heart those decades before squeezed the breath out of me now. My feet felt glued to the floor. I felt my hands on the shopping cart trembling.

I looked cautiously to the left of me, hoping for someone to help rescue me. Now that the beastly musk ox found me, I'd never get out of the store. How could I escape now? No one would ever believe me. I never told Sid about my past, so it would be pointless to call him. He'd ask me if I'd taken my meds. Ignore the fact I threw out my last bottle five years ago and Sid knows it.

"Eieeeiiieeeiiiiqhhhhh!!!"

This sound ripped through the department store like a fire alarm. My intake of breath was equally loud. I looked from the picture of the ox to the source of the piercing noise to see a blonde boy with freckles wearing an Indian headdress and holding a toy bow and arrow. The child's mom was two or three isles down from us yelling, "Timmy! TIMMY! Get back here!"

Timmy just smiled and sighting in on the ox, he drew back a bandaged elbow and pulled a red suction topped arrow back until the string was taut. Leaning in to aim his right eye squinted. He let the feather tipped arrow fly and the red suction tip stuck the evil ox right between the eyes!

The picture fell, slow motion, to the right of isle 6. As it went down I saw red oozing from the ox's forehead.

I put my phone back in my purse and headed to the checkout. Timmy's mom was somewhere behind me apologizing for the broken merchandise but I'd given Timmy $5.00 for the rescue

Photo captured at Walmart today on a Samsung Note10 Plus

This is my five minute freewrite using prompt: musk ox hosted by @mariannewest.

My Twitter handle is:
@wandrnrose7
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