It all started with a party that I was invited to on a Saturday night. The people who invited me told me that it was going to be great, so I asked them if I could invite a few friends of mine. They agreed and I called up a few of my friends and asked if they wanted to go to a party.

The next day we all met at our regular hang-out which was at a Chinese restaurant and we stayed there until 7 o'clock when we drove over to the party. When we got there we parked the car a few blocks away and walked to the house because there were no parking spots anywhere nearby. As we approached the house we could hear loud music, and when we opened the door everyone was dancing and drinking and acting really wild. When we went in we could see the place was trashed because of the huge numbers of people there. Then somehow we got split up, and there were so many people that trying to find each other in the crowd was almost impossible.

After the party was over I noticed one of my friends, Shelly, was gone. Somebody told me that she was with some guy and that they took off before the party was over. The next day when I saw Shelly I asked her where she had gone and she told me that she'd met this nice guy named Gilbert who took her to a movie. They got to know each other better and decided to go out together again. I told her that I was really happy for her.

For the next couple of weeks Shelly and Gilbert were always together as a couple and it wasn't often that we saw them apart. But as time went by we hardly saw Shelly anymore, and she wasn't showing up at her job either. I was worried about her and I asked her friend, Mary, if she could go and see if she was okay.

Mary went over to Shelly's house and when she asked her where she had been Shelly told her that she couldn't go out because she had twisted her leg when she fell off a stepladder.

After Mary told me Shelly was hurt I decided to go visit her too. When I reached her house Gilbert's car was parked out front and they were talking on the lawn. I watched them talk for a while until suddenly Shelly's boyfriend grabbed her and slammed her against the wall of the house and then started slapping her. When I saw this I got really angry and ran over to Gilbert and yelled at him to stop. But he didn't listen so I started slugging the crap out of him. Shelly screamed for me to stop but I was so mad that I didn't hear her. While Gilbert was down I went over to Shelly and helped her into the house. Gilbert stumbled back to his car and slowly drove away. Inside the house I asked Shelly what the fight was all about and if he had been like this for a while. She said, yes it had. But why didn't she call the cops, I asked, because he shouldn't have done this to her. Shelly said she didn't know why. She just put up with it

After a few months, Shelly got over Gilbert and eventually found another boyfriend. This time she made sure that he was a nice guy. But I told her if he turned out to be like Gilbert to let me know about it and I'd teach him the same lesson I taught Gilbert!

By Robert Pitka