Chapter One

 

A clap of thunder rang throughout the sky as the electricity flickered off. I sighed, and set aside my laptop to go find some candles. The hundred year old oaks surrounding my home cast lengthy shadows across the kitchen floor of my comfortably sized stone cottage. I found seven white candles and placed them throughout the rooms. In the living room, I lit a fire and with the sofa at just the right angle between it and the window, I settled down with my favorite book and opened the front cover. My fingers traced the untidy and loopy signature near the bottom. The familiar writing took me back to my childhood, a place where everything was the opposite of what it should have been. The thunder and lightning boomed at me like hysterical laughter seeming to be bent on bringing back that one memory, that one memory that made me shudder worse than a small child during their first Halloween. The wind howled through the trees that night as if screaming for an escape. I found that ironic. The wind rages and screams for an escape even though it can do and go wherever it wants, but it’s still stuck here like us with no way out. It took me back to that day when I desperately needed an escape. The day that I honestly thought I had no reason to see another sunrise.

*****

The dirt road near my house was a country mile long and I was only a country mile away from the end of it. I can leave. Just go. All they care about is themselves anyway. I took one last long drag from the cigarette hanging from my lips and flicked it to the ground. I popped a piece of gum in my mouth and chewed slowly working the stench from my breath. As I got nearer to the shack, I saw that Ted had just gotten home from the factory. His torn clothes were dirty and unrecognizable as material meant to be worn; he swaggered through the door. He had that gleam in his eye again. His whole person ranked of whiskey, and I knew he had been drinking. Mother didn’t say anything about it though. Her last bruise had just started to fade and she said that she wasn’t in a hurry for a new one. I didn’t really understand her fear. Ted was pretty much the most pathetic guy I’d ever laid eyes on. He had long shaggy hair, dirty wrinkled skin, and a gangly build. Sure when he was in a drunken stupor I wasn’t stupid enough to get him angry, but still in my eyes... he wasn’t anything special, he was nobody. I didn’t understand why my mom didn’t just leave this... this poor excuse of a man and take me with her. Our two room shack didn’t say much for our financial security. What was the point of staying here anyway? My earliest memories weren’t of this wasteland dump. I could remember really big shady trees, and a clear cool creek running next to a wooden house. I could remember friendly familiar eyes staring back at me. I remember safety. I remember warmth. I remember laughter. That was all before Ted.  Hurriedly stashing my pack of cigarettes into my back pocket as I walked through the screen front door, I heard Ted screaming and ranting on at my mother.

“You no good wench! Look at this place, it’s a dump! You were supposed to have dinner ready!” As he spoke I looked from him to our skeleton hollow cabinets to a small, shiny object on the counter, and then back to him.

My mother was on the floor whimpering cradling her right arm close to her chest. “You haven’t earned your keep! Where’s all that money you’re supposed to be bringing in eh?”

 

“No,” my mother whimpered, “Meagan doesn’t know about that, please...”

“Shut up wench!” the back of Ted’s hand cracked against my mother’s face. He picked up a kitchen knife and studied it. “I’m right about sick of you and your lazy bum of a daughter! She’s just as no good as you are, and just as ugly. I think its time I taught you a lesson”...Those was the last words he ever said.

It happened so fast. I don’t even recall how the spare knife on the counter ended up in my hand, all I knew is that when he ended my mother’s life, I ended his as well. The room was spinning. The next thing I knew Ted and my mother were laying in pools of the blood I was covered in. All I heard was screaming. It took me a moment to realize it was me. I had to get out of there. I couldn’t stay there one more second. I had no belongings of my own save the blood splattered rags on my back, so I set off at a sprint. Once I hit that dirt road I never looked back. I was running away from everything I had ever known. When I reached the end of the dirt road I came to a crossway of roads that had, on both sides, miles and miles of corn field as far as my adolescent eyes could see. It never occurred to me that stealing was wrong then; I had no fears of going hungry for the next few days. All I knew was that no matter what, I had to keep going and get as far away as I could from the place where I grew up, the place where my mother had just died, and the place where I had taken a man’s life.

 

 

Reviews

[An owl on the moon]

What a powerful, vivid scene... setting about the course of a life... Circumstances change and can thrust us into doors we never wanted to enter... You create such a world that longs to be understood.. Amazing write!