ESCAPE IS NOT AN OPTION

YOU DON'T HAVE TO DIE TO SEE THE LIGHT

Perhaps it was something passed on from her great, great grandparent's
escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad about the necessity
for freedom to have life that made her fight fear and injustice, even when
she'd rather have been doing something else.

Perhaps it was a response to the trauma of growing up a molested child
in an alcoholic home that led her through years of codependency
and marriages with men like her father to adopt children
and uplift the downtrodden, but to live alone.

Perhaps she had some innate talents and intelligence, God-given
tools of creativity and self-defense, that enabled her to land
always on her feet somehow, no matter the sickness or injury, nor
how many times she was abandoned or betrayed. It was not luck.

When she was depressed, she wrote poems about social problems
and worse off people. When she couldn't sleep, she sang
Gospel songs from down home country places she had never known
in the inner city projects and ghettos across the tracks of her youth.

When she was alone, she went to work for others, organizing campaigns
for better housing, better schools, equal pay and rights to sue. So many
came to know her name. When help was needed they came and without
asking, she gave, but in time her health began to fail

It must have been a flash of insight, like the light seen when someone
nearly dies, that showed her how to do more by doing less. By helping
herself, rather than dying for causes, and at last understanding the serenity prayer, she recovered. Though through it all, her mother never liked her.

NO PLACE TO RUN

Policewoman Melissa Barnes, at twenty-five, was what old timers call "a good cop." Patient and relaxed in her job, she had the uncanny ability to sense a crime in its early stages of progress, as well as a reputation for being in the right place at the right time. As an investigator, she was unrivaled in her persistence in finding solutions and in her attention to detail. Quietly authoritarian in manner, she got on well with citizens from all walks of life. Popular and respected by co-workers, she demonstrated her daring and courage on more than one occasion. 

There was the time she and her rookie partner, Carol Newman, were on an assignment inside a housing project whose tenants were notorious for hostility to police. Cruising the area in a perfunctory search for a lost bicycle, they unexpectedly witnessed a lye throwing incident. As they got out of the car, Carol froze at the ugly sight of the victim's melting flesh and the advancing threatening crowd. Melissa, walking toward the crowd, ordered them to a halt. Almost in one continuous motion, she gave first aid to the victim, calmed Carol, rebuked the culprit and drove to the hospital, Afterwards, she returned to her headquarters to type a report of the incident while joking with the oncoming crew about the slow day. Then she went home.  

Arriving at her apartment, Melissa opened the door, stood breathlessly still and listened, as she always did, for any small noise. Despite repeated assurances from her landlord and frequent visits by an exterminator, Melissa was unable to quell the rising fear that seemed to climb her body as she ascended the stairs to her door, so that as she turned her key in the lock, her head was throbbing. She was afraid of rats.

Melissa could only recall having seen a rat once...inside a shabby ghetto house. As she spoke with the mother of a runaway girl (standing in the middle of the floor to avoid the roaches on furniture and walls), Melissa caught sight of a strange movement from the corner of her eye. She glanced over to one of several holes in the dining room plaster. A string dangled from the hole.  Suddenly the string moved and a large squealing rat emerged. Struggling to maintain composure, Melissa looked at the dozen or more people about the room who seemed oblivious to the rat which was now walking casually about. Afraid she would vomit or faint, Melissa fled the house without explanation, leaving behind a bewildered group of people.

Despite the fact that this incident had been the only one its kind for her, Melissa had been plagued all of her life by nightmares about rats. She would wake screaming and cringing in her bed; sometimes leaping up to run from her vision...hundreds of rats hurtling themselves in her direction. And though she always awoke before the rats reached her, she lived in terror of the dream as if it was reality.  Melissa's mother, in recounting the hardships of the war years, had once mentioned leaving Melissa in the care of grandparents whose home was frequented by a multitude of people and a family of rats. Melissa's grandfather, on hearing the rats thump up the stairs, would rush into the hall adjacent to Melissa’s room and kill them with his slipper. Melissa often tried to force her mind to recall those early childhood days, believing the recollection would provide the clue to end her nightmares, but she never could.

In time, she developed a morbid fascination with the rats of which she could not rid herself.  She avidly read stories whose plots involved rats in horror and in comedy. She read about rats and diseases. She even found a book about rats and history. The nightmares continued as always.

On a hot summer day at home, Melissa received a phone call from her office about a special assignment.  Sh