Hi, this is a clip of the beginning of a story I’ve made and was wondering what your opinion on it would be. Sorry if it’s a little long. Enjoy! (Hopefully).

PROLOGUE
“Hey, Hun! Look out the window! Is that what I think it is?”
The man’s hand froze as he grasped the cold metal of the door knob. The sudden and rapid loss of heat caused a shudder to run up his arm and down his spine. With just a simple rotation of that seemingly harmless handle, the man would be thrust into yet another miserably bleak and freezing wintery day. The problem was, the calendar hanging over the kitchen countertop read, oddly, July 7th.
With his left hand, the man rubbed both of his eyelids; he couldn’t believe the sight.
“I think… I think it’s snow! What in the hell? Honey, come down here, quick! It’s snowing! Oh my God, it’s snowing in Phoenix, of all places!”
A loud thumping resounded through the quiet, old, suburban house as the man’s wife rushed down the carpeted stairs in her pink, fuzzy pajamas. Her blonde, shoulder-length hair, a mess as it was, and her baggy, weary eyes, exhausted as they were, still took the man’s breath away. He couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful wife.
“Jesus, John, you sound like it’s the end of the world! Where is it? Show me. ”
He waved her over, “Alright, come here, take a look. See it falling from the sky? I know, it’s kind of hard to see, but it’s there, Ashley, look! It’s there, snow in Phoenix, for Christ’s sake!”
Ashley’s tired, yet vibrant eyes squinted as she strained to look through the iced-over window for the tell-tale sign of white flecks falling from the dark and cloudy vastness above their heads.
She shook her head. “John, I think the weather and the long hours are getting to your head. It’s just another grey day, there’s not a flake of snow in the sk—. ”
Then she saw it.
There, just about a foot and a half away from the kitchen window, was a small white speck, drifting lazily down towards its un-avertable destination.
“Oh my God…” The words barely escape her mouth as a whisper. She was in dismay.
“See? I’m not crazy, huh? Can you believe it? Freezing cold and snowing in one of the hottest hell holes in America. This is unbelievable. ”
For a minute, the couple stood in place perplexed, hypnotized. The drop of frozen water finally came to a standstill against the pane of their window. Then, John turned to his wife and kissed her gingerly, savoring the sweet scent of her perfume and the tender embrace of her arms. He was home, with the one person he would risk his life for. Nothing else mattered in that moment.
Then, as quickly as the moment had come, they broke apart to say their daily good-byes.
“I’ll be back around five. Don’t bother fixing up any dinner; I’m taking us out tonight. Something special. It’ll be a surprise. ”
Ashley gave him a playful smile. “Always the charmer, even after eighteen years of marriage. ”
John’s eyes widened in mock surprise. “Oh, damn, I thought we were in the twenties at least. ” Ashley rolled her eyes as he continued, “I guess that’s what marriage does to you, though. It drags out the time and makes everything seem longer than it is. Kind of like when you’re bored and have nothing to do. ”
She slugged him in the arm, hard, as he started to laugh.
Ashley scoffed. “And always the joker, even after seventeen years of therapy. ”
John retorted, “I can see that some of it’s beginning to rub off on you. ”
They exchanged smiles, his jovial, hers a show of disbelief mixed with ecstasy, and John leaned in to kiss her once more before he turned the knob of the front door of their Phoenix home and walked out to combat the oncoming storm.
He turned right and walked along the sidewalk which, by then, had become barely traversable due to the ice that had accumulated over the night. The sun, a ray of white-yellow light, struggled to shine through the dense cloud cover. But even so, the effect that it had on the town was dazzling.
Roads, lawns, and roofs glowed with a luminescent splendor as the sun reflected off of the icy asphalt, grass, and shingles. Cloudy as it was, John thought that it had never been brighter or clearer in all his time in Phoenix. The town emanated with a feeling of happiness, or perhaps that was just him. The entire scene made him feel wonderful inside; that one moment, walking the streets of Phoenix with snow falling and the sun beaming upon him, made all of life’s struggles worth living for. This was life. This was amazing.
John turned his gaze before him now as dozens of suburban doors began opening to welcome the foreign weather. Little children, while still in their pajamas and barefooted, ran into the streets and danced around without a care in the world. John cut a corner when he spotted four youngsters holding hands in a circle, spinning around with their heads held high up to the sky. As he neared them, one boy, a white, red-head, slipped on the ice and tumbled onto his friend, a black boy,
who proceeded to fall on top of another of their comrades, an Asian girl, who finally toppled over the fourth individual, a Hispanic. As they all slipped and bumped heads they laughed the most joyous chorus of giggling that John had ever heard. Oh, how he longed to be a kid again.
He waved to the children as he passed by, and they returned the exchange.
A broad smile swept across John’s face as he continued to walk the two miles to his job as a civil engineer. As he rounded yet another bend, he spotted a peculiar little boy standing at the beginning of an intersection on the left side of the road. His eyes were turned heavenward and a flake of snow fell onto his nose. He quickly brushed it off, surprised by the cold twinge it set off, and looked up once more, like a curious cat pawing at a running faucet.
John felt sorry for the boy; he had been like that once. Not curious, although, he had been at times, but alone. It wasn’t that he didn’t have any friends before; it was just th
that he couldn’t get himself to be a friend. He never hung out with his comrades and he never did anything for them, despite all of the love that they had put into the friendship. Although it seemed like a cruel or antisocial personality, John saw it as the opposite. He loved being with people; he loved to talk. He just found it difficult to associate with people he didn’t know. It was outside his comfort zone, and John was someone who liked to live in a comfort of the most luxurious status. As he grew; howeve–.
His train of thought was abruptly derailed as he caught sight of an electrical Chevrolet Suburban humming its way silently towards the boy at almost thirty-five miles an hour. Since the car wasn’t fueled by petroleum, like in the almost-forgotten years before, it didn’t roar like a typical behemoth of a car such as that would. The driver behind the wheel was talking on her phone (an illegal act now, punishable by jail time) and putting on her “fake-up” at the same time. John
picked up his pace as he glanced once again at the boy. He had just brushed off yet another snow flake and was looking up again. He was oblivious; clueless. He had no idea that at any instant his life could be stripped from him with an act as simple as holding a foot down on a gas pedal. John wasn’t about to let that happen.
John’s heart began to race; thumping within his ears as he picked up the pace. He saw the driver of the car break into laughter and her foot accidentally floored the pedal, shortening the time he had to reach the boy. He broke into full sprint, tearing off his jacket, and a bead of sweat formulated at the top of his forehead, in spite of the freezing weather. He hollered in a voice that echoed throughout the street, “Kid! Kid, watch out!”
The boy’s glance came down and leveled with the strange man who was dashing toward him. Terror swept across the innocent child’s face. He was frightened, alright, but not because of the oncoming two-and-a-half tons of metal,
oh no, he had yet to discover that problem. Rather, he was scared of the business man who was screaming and rushing at him, as if attempting to rob the boy. Or worse.
Jeremy Stranton had heard about these types before. They taught him in school to avoid them, no matter what. “If one of these nasty people ever asks you to do something, the best thing you can do is say ‘no’ and run. Tell your mommy, tell your daddy, or tell anyone you trust to help you. These are mean people, and we don’t like mean people, do we?” Jeremy vaguely remembered him and his class of three hundred other naïve kids collectively saying “No!” in a short, sing-song chant.
Jeremy found himself yelling at the top of his lungs, almost in a scream, “No!”
The next part’s easy, he thought.
Run.
He tried to turn, but the signals being sent to his brain told him to remain still.
Why can’t I move?!
He had been instructed on what to do, time and again, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Why? He thought
to himself.
His knees began to shake and he thought that he might collapse under his mere sixty pounds of weight.
Move! Come on, move!
The creepy man – what did the assembly lady call them? – the peh-duh-file was almost upon him now and he braced himself for impact. Jeremy didn’t have a plan B.
John was horrified. “No, kid! Look up! You have to move, NOW!”
Then, John saw the driver finally fix her gaze on what she was supposed to watch: the road.
Her eyes widened in fright as she said the words, but John could only read her lips, “Oh my God…”
The tires of the SUV squealed as they fought to catch traction against the icy pavement.
But would it be enough?
The car was about twenty feet from the boy. John, just ten.
He focused all of his energy into his two thighs now, thundering along the blacktop at a painful speed.
Meanwhile, the boy had quickly turned on his heel to face the unknown threat; the squealing beast that was bearing down upon him. His stature only
became more rigid.
John leaped through the air in hopes of yanking the boy aside before he got clipped. He wrapped his arms around the child in a protective embrace.
The next moment felt like an adrenaline rush unparalleled by any other.
Then, a foretaste of hell.
John’s legs were clipped at the knees and sent a pain unlike any he’d felt searing through the synapses in his brain.
One. He started counting the blows; he knew more would come.
His body whipped around like a ragdoll, in an almost complete circle, and as he came around, his ankles slammed against the unyielding metal of the Suburban which was, by this time, passing him by.
Two. His sense of reality was in a shambles by now. He could hardly tell up from down. He wondered, vaguely and for but a moment, where the boy was.
He had no idea.
Now his body had attained a forward momentum, one parallel to the car’s. His body spiraled in one more complete circle before giving in to gravity’s pull and letting him fall
and tumble painfully onto the ice-cold, unrelenting sidewalk.
Three, four, five, six, seven. He counted every point of contact he made with the ground.
As luck would have it, the majority of the time was spent landing on his shoulders. He thought he heard a crack issue from his left one during a particularly awkward bump.
Finally, John’s body stopped bouncing. He rolled steadily to a halt where, on his last revolution, his left arm folded open and he laid flat on his back, facing the beautiful Monday morning.
 
Hope you liked it (more importantly, hope you actually read it); any criticisim is appreciated. Any compliments are appreciated even more, haha. On the last sentence, though, I’m not sure what tense “laid” is supposed to be in. Hope you can help me with that.

Thanks in advance for your help. (And thanks for your patience!)