Zoe was too engrossed in her anger to notice, as I had, that A) my hand was now bleeding due to my fingernails’ deep burial into my palm and that B) the crowd behind us had ceased their milling about. There was also a C) that she failed to notice, to wit the propagation of a series of cracks starting under her feet, especially where the heel of her high-heeled shoes contacted the cobblestones in the pavement.

I was about to bring this up when she impulsively socked the youth right in the kisser.

Now, recall that time was passing very slowly for everybody else, but not for us, so we were going even faster. Now imagine a fist traveling at a velocity much higher than a bullet’s. The youth’s head virtually imploded, sending bone and blood and brain all over the living place.

Zoe screamed. She tried to run away but ended up generating serious amounts of fractures in the pavement, for the same reasons as the demolition of the teenager’s cranium.

I grabbed her hand and took us back five minutes.