Confessions of the Lost: Her Fight in the Snow

She crouched behind the crumbled remnants of an old, stone wall and waited.

She could hear them breathing, hear the slight movements of their hands and arms coming from the signals they gave each other about her perceived whereabouts. This, along with the crunch of snow beneath their boots and sharp intakes of breath from the frigid air they were breathing gave away their exact locations. But, it was clear they did not know where she was. Knowing her location was unacceptable.

And why would they know where she was? Boys. They sent boys to kill her.

The last light of the day was slowly fading below the trees and their shadows began to stretch across the earth as if reaching for her from across a great distance. “Join the club,” she thought.

She wasn’t sure which was the bigger insult — that her ex-captors still wanted her dead after what they did to her, or that they sent these boys all this way to finish the job. After robbing her emotion and feeling, you would think they would leave it at that. Be satisfied that that was enough. That to leave her alone with the memories of their brand of torture would be punishment enough for her escape.

Alone, she was. Left alone, she was not.

She would always be alone after what they did to her. Nobody could possibly know how she felt, what she experienced in those caves. Nobody that was alive, at least. Women never left those caves, only entered. She was the first. She was on a mission of firsts, and if all went accordingly to plan, also of lasts. She, the one for whom the shadows were cast.

Continue reading the rest of this post on Dads Round Table…

 

Confessions of the Lost

He wrenched his sword free from his victim’s stomach, vividly watched him slump to the ground and wiped his blade clean on the fallen body.

Falling to his knees, agony getting the best of him, he threw back his head and screamed into the air for what seemed like eternity. Finally, as his ragged lungs gave way to exhaustion, he stopped serenading the dead body in front of him; stopped reliving the regrets of his past. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this, it wasn’t supposed to hurt so much.

He killed because she was a killer. He killed because she said he would never understand her and that was why they couldn’t be together. So, he killed. Again and again and again.

He stared down at the body in front of him and knew that killing wasn’t the answer. No solution to his pain.

She was gone, and nothing was going to bring her back. Nothing.

**********

Standing at the edge of the cliff, her arms spread wide and eyes closed, she felt the wind buffet her hair as she leaned forward ever so slightly.

For a moment, she was gone.

Continue reading the rest of this post on Dads Round Table…