Una

Una

Sudden

               Two days had gone by, my meat barn was almost full for the winter and I ran around outside in the sunlight while the dogs chased me. Axel, my borzoi and Finch, my Chesapeake Bay retriever, got caught up in each other and rolled around in the grass nipping at one another.

               I stopped and started laughing at them and their tails started to wag.

               I opened my arms wide and called “Come here!”

               They all ran toward me at once and I collapsed back on the ground and laughed as they tried to lick any inch of skin they could get to. I finally sat up and kissed each one on the nose and shook the grass out of my braids.

               When I stood up I caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of my eye and turned toward it. I put my hand on my pistol and walked over towards the edge of the fence and called, “What’s out there?”

               I didn’t expect an answer; I was alone on my mountain after all. No one else had ever set foot on it from the massive cities that had swallowed up most of the landscape to the east and no one had any idea I even existed.

               When nothing jumped out at me or started yelling wildly I gave one final glare and turned back, walking toward my yurt. As I stepped inside and the dogs followed me in, I sighed, wanting a bath. So I stripped out of my clothes, wrapped an old towel around myself and walked out the door.

               When I reached the valley below my home the river went rushing by me on its way down to be polluted in whatever city it was headed for. I hung my towel up on a branch and chose a sunlit pool just off the bank of the river. The water slid over my skin like a lover would in one of my books. As I unbraided my hair out of its many braids I thought about how much I wished I had once had a lover. I had never been touched the way the lucky women in my stories had, I had never been treated with concern or kindness. In my world, kindness was viewed as weakness. And your loved ones were used as weapons against you. I had learned the hard way.

               I shivered, though my body was now used to the cool water, and looked down at the slashes up and down the inside of my left arm. They had scared over from a life that I had run from. A life that I would never go back to. In a daze I remembered bits and pieces, but I had locked most of my memories of my formative years away behind a steel wall in my mind. After so many years I wasn’t sure what waited behind it, waited to be called on again and torture me.

               The only faces I could bring up from my childhood were my brother and three sisters.

               Hamish, my brother, was only five years old in my mind, and he would forever stay that way. Rosy cheeks that begged you to pinch them, riotous pitch black hair, and a soft voice that he had never used to harm. My sisters, Edna, Gloria, and Harper, had been my best friends. Edna, the oldest of us, had golden blonde hair that had curled to her waist. Gloria, the next oldest, had always cut her hair short, keeping it barely longer than a boys hair cut would be, and it was a soft brown that matched her eyes. I came next and then there was Harper. The youngest sister, she was wild and carefree, always with a smile, and a temper that would scare any stranger from our family within minutes. She had hair that she had always kept in a single braid that ended between her shoulder blades that was the color of cinnamon.

               My heart ached as I thought about them and pictured their faces, but I knew I would never see them again. They were destined to forever be in adolescence, stripped of their lives before they had ever begun to live them.

               Tears started to fall from my eyes and my dogs began to whine as they stared at my faced and paced around the pool anxiously.

               I dried them and rose from the pool and wrapped my towel around myself, gathering the elastics and leather ties for my hair. I climbed back up the mountain and when I got home I dried my hair in front of the fire and braided back into its usual places.

               I must have fallen asleep as I lay there, contemplating how my life came to be here, on the mountain, when Rio picked his head up off the floor and growled.

               I came awake instantly, having learned to listen for his growls. I tugged on my boots and laced them up and grabbed my .243 as I went out the door.

               The sun was setting and the sky was painted a deep red with traces of purple and pink. I looked around the perimeter of my yard and stopped dead in my tracks, automatically bringing my rifle up so I was half looking through the scope.

               A figure sat perched on the edge of my fence. I couldn’t see what it was and when a ray of sunlight glanced for the last time through the trees I gasped as it came into view. The dogs growled viciously from inside the yurt to my left but they couldn’t get out to come and help me.

               I stumbled back and a deep menacing laugh came from the creature. It sounded human but wild. I shook myself and brought my scope up to my eye and aimed right for its chest. My finger hesitated over the trigger, I had never killed anything even resembling a human before, and it was my undoing.

               In that split second the thing had rushed across the distance between us so fast it was a big dark blur and had knocked the rifle out of my hands. As it lay in the grass next to me, I faintly realized that I was looking up at the stars. It had knocked me on my back. Huge hands tightened around my throat and I kicked and struggled, trying to break free, but I soon saw black spots flickering in my vision.

               I saw piercing silver eyes like mirrors above me and then the laughter was cut short as it released my throat and stumbled back.

               Before I blacked out I heard a loud series of howls coming from my home and a whisper of words in a stunned voice.

               “You can’t be her. It’s not possible.”

Rivers

My rivers ran red

With the blood of my sins.

Shame, doubt, hate

A toxic mix where no life

Could spring forth.

A thousand angels died

As they fought to help.

But I was gone,

A shell of a girl

Lost to the doom of the world.

A shade floating through,

Posing as a normal human.

But all those eyes watched

And shifted over me,

Unwilling to help or loo

Close enough.

Ignorance choked me,

Surrounding me,

Engulfing me in darkness.

This is the life you gave me, mother.

To see the underside of humanity

That stripped away my innocence

With cold hard fingers.

Demons hide behind beauty,

Nothing is sacred,

Passion is gone.

Your own rivers run black

As midnight.

And nothing can save you.

Nothing can save you.

-ES