"Don't run too far, silly!" She said, giggling as I ran down the riverbanks. I looked over at her, seeing her long skirt covered in mud as she yelped and laughed, slipping while she tried to chase after me up the damp embankment. The spring air was full of the smell of honeysuckle, and butterflies danced around the edges of the nearby woods, creating small splashes of pastel against the verdant wilds. I spread my arms as I ran, as if I could take to the skies in the warm winds.
For a moment, I believe I succeed as I begin to rise, before noticing her hands wrapped under my arms and lifting me into the air above her.
"I got you, you little gremlin!" She called out, her laughter chiming through the afternoon air like the tinkling of a fairy's bell as she hugged me against her, smearing her muddied cloths across my overalls.
We collapsed into a heap, giggling and covered in the river clay. We clung to each other as our laughter bubbled away, replaced by contented sighs and panting breath. I lay out In warm, damp grass, The smell of rain and river filled my senses with comfort. I peeked at her, her face still red from the laughter.
"Look." She said, patting my arm gently and gesturing to a wispy cloud drifting by.
"That one looks like you when you first wake up." She said, giggling again.
I pouted at her, before pointing out a flat, lumpy cloud in the distance.
"And that's you when you get covered in mud!" I retorted, struggling not to break my pout when I see her still grinning out of the corner of my eye.
"You mean when WE get covered in mud." She corrects me before booping me on the nose, leaving yet another smear of wet clay. I scrunch up my face in protest while she laughs. Despite my attempts to look disgruntled, I find the pout I was holding up begin to crack under her infectious laughter.
I reach over and push her nose up with my finger. "We look like wild pigs. Especially you now." I tell her smugly to her very piggy face.
"Oh now you've done it!" She says in faux irritation, pinning me down by the wrists and lifting up my shirt. "I'll show you a wild piggy!" She yells, before snuffling and snorting, blowing raspberries on my exposed stomach.
"N-nooaa!" I screech and laugh through the tickling, trying to wriggle her off while she laughs like a villian. I finally get a hand loose and have it on her head to push her away when I realize that she's stopped.
In fact, all the sounds stopped. It was as if the world became muted, and the skies overcast. I look over at her, and she's now sitting on her knees, staring past me. She's staring into the woods intensely, the happy mood gone. Her face is rigid now, tense with an expression I don't understand, but have seen many times.
"You're room." She whispers the command. It's soft, but I can tell from the tone that she's not leaving room for argument. I almost open my mouth to protest anyway when I hear it in the distance. Through the trees and up the path, I can hear the crunching of gravel and the rumble of the old engine.
He's back.
I try to stand quickly, but it's like the world is made of molasses. I feel like everything begins to move faster then me, while I try to get to my feet.
The old rusted truck careens through the bushes rather than up the main gravel drive, smashing into the mailbox before veering into the yard. The cacophany of clinking glass and empty bottles rolling around in the truck-bed send shivers up my spine and for reasons I cannot understand, the bitter smell of gunpowder haunts my nose and tongue.
The door is nearly kicked off its hinges as the old man gets out, his haggard body staggering against the frame as he does. His eyes scan the yard in a delirious and wide sweep before the slowly focus on me. A sneer of anger and something else seem to cross his face when he registers who I am.
"Boy..." The voice calls out threateningly as he releases his grip on the door and takes an uncertain step towards me. I feel... afraid. A fear that's been engraved into my body. I am frozen as he takes another step on my direction, like a rabbit caught by a predator.
"Your room." She repeats to me, calling out Ina stern voice while my view of the man is suddenly interrupted by her back as she stands between us, her arms out to the sides protectively.
"You again, bitch..." he snarls, spittle flecks across the yard while he staggers our way.
"Remember. You have to listen to me since I'm the oldest." She says, smiling sadly over her shoulder at me. "Go now. And block the door how I showed you."
What more could I do? I didn't know... So I followed her instructions.
I ran.
He tried to grab me, making a disjointed lunge in my direction as I slipped past, but I kept running. Even as I heard him cursing and screaming up the stairs as he tried to follow me, I ran. when I finally slipped into my room I slammed the door behind me and jammed a chair under the door handle before I climbed out on to the ledge of my window. I sidled over the shingles to perch on a shallow part of the roof where it was safer. The almost immediate pounding and slamming on my door nearly causing me to slide off in panic. My hear beats against my ribs even faster, and my breath comes out in short, ragged bursts, the sulphurous smell of black powder burning my lungs.
I followed the instructions. I did what you said sister... so why am I still so scared? She's not here to tell me, so maybe I won't ever know.
I hug my knees to my chest and try to make my sobbing silent.
But there is no moment of silence. No eye of the storm. Instead, once he gives up on my door, he stumbles back down the stairs, cursing and screaming as he goes.
"A bitch, just like your mother!" I hear him scream at her as he exists again. His voice echoes through the empty woodlands.
"Just like your mother..." he says again, but with a different tone. One that I cannot place, but makes me feel like ants are crawling under my skin.
The argument becomes muffled after that. I hear there voices, but they are indistinguishable. Her gentle tone that she uses when she tries to get him to stop, and his slurred obscenities blur into an amalgous din that grates on my ears.
'Is it better now? Is it over?' I wonder to myself, slowly getting back into a crawl to make my way down to the window-sill.
"GET OFF ME!" She screams, the plea echoing through the silent woods. The sound startles me enough that I jump, losing my footing and falling into the bushes below. I groan in pain, fighting against the brush as I try to get back on my feet, sharp brambles claw at my face and hands, and my shoulder and hip are sore from the fall.
But that doesn't matter. I have to help her. She's still shouting, yelling for him to stop. I try to run toward the sounds, but my legs are frozen in fear. I fight internally as I try to push my body forward, but it's locked up, every instict telling me to stay away from the threat, but I HAVE to help her! I have to help.
I begin to tear up again, trying to conquer the painful tightness in my chest when a glint catches my eye. The door of the old rusted truck still hangs limply open, the green glass of the bottles catching light from the floorboards and where they've spilled out onto the gravel.
Nestled between the old glass and the glittering brass of loosely spilled shells, was the glint of an old revolver.
The smell of blackpowder grew stronger as I felt my feet carry me towards the open door. A scream of panic shouted through my mind like fracture memories, and the smell of wet iron filled my nose.
When I began to stretch out my arm to reach for the cold steel, I feel something warm dripping down my hand. I slowly turned my arms back towards me, my fingers spread as the viscous red liquid trailed down the creases of my palms.
"Blood?" The question had barely left my lips when I saw the world around me begin to shatter, fragmenting like glass.
"What have you done?" Her horrified voice echoed from everywhere around me while the smell of blood and black powder overwhelm my senses. The ground begins to fall away, leaving rippling waves of void.
I spun my body, trying to find ground to stand on when I felt a sudden weight in my hands. Even through the chaos that numbed my mind, and the echoing screams reverberating off the void I slowly fell towards, I managed to wrench my eyes down to look once again at my palms. There, in my tiny hands, sat a smoking gun.
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I gasped awake, trying to bolt my body upright and failing. Everything feels disorienting and wrong for a moment before I suddenly recall where and what I am now. Judging from the flames still licking at the edges of my charred body, I must've only been unconscious for a mere moment.
My body, while burnt around the edges, seemed largely unharmed from the fire. Some of my thinner parts, like my hands, had gotten brittle and crumbled as the clay dehydrated, but it was already regaining malleability. The fall on the other hand, hit pretty hard. I splattered against the stone floor like a dollar-store sticky-hand. I'm guessing that the impact is what temporarily stunned me. My core was slapped into the ground hard enough to experience this body's equivalent of a concussion.
I was trying my damndest to peel my pancaked body out of the grooves of the rough stone floor that held me down like velcro. Some nearby dust and small bits of gravel seemed to draw towards me, reconstituting a bit of my lost mass as I slowly retook shape. Slow enough in fact, that I began to hear the buzzing descending from above before I pulled myself free.
I turned my attention upwards, the foggy edges of my senses just beginning to pick up on flitting lights as the insectoids divebombed closer. It was when a sudden gout of flames blasted down that I finally get a good look at one of the culprits. Bursting through the lapping inferno came a horrific little creature. It looked like someone had grafted the ass-end of a honeypot ant onto a killer wasp, and instead of a stinger, a vicious looking hooked tube released a blast of some kind of chemical that caught fire only moments after being shot out. The bulbous backside glowed with a soft orange that, if I weren't in such dangerous circumstances, might have been pretty. Currently however, the luminous chemical chamber that powered this micro-dragon's flamethrower looked like a neon death sentence.
I begin frantically pulling myself together, trying to consolidate my mass as the hellspawn got closer. Flecks of burning liquid began to spatter down from above as they got closer, some landing on my body and charring the surface.
'Almost... there...' I strain, now stuck only by my legs as I pulled.
But I was out of time. One finally got close enough to blast a spray at me. I saw the chemical stream approach, igniting in contact with the air. Everything seemed to move in slow motion.
With a last ditch attempt, I wrenched my body out of the way, the spray creating a maelstrom of lingering fire in the area I'd been just moments prior.
It was a pyrrhic victory though.I had lost more than I thought when I pulled out of the way.
Just inside the inferno, baking in the heat, was one of my detached legs.
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Thanks for the chappie!
Thanks for reading!