Chapter 39 - The Forgotten Truth Pt 2

Life is taken for granted.

We all believe that it will be there until we grow old and choose to die, yet we forget that it was given to us, it was never ours to keep.

A fact of nature so cruel, we never come to term with it.

In a matter of a few minutes so much had happened I couldn’t process it. I stood in my place with no emotion. Not that I was a stone being, just that I didn’t know what to feel.

Shock?

Sadness?

Anger?

Depression?

Sorrow?

Despondency?

Despair?

I felt nothing, not in that moment. I stood in my place with my white stained red fur coat, just absently staring at the dead bodies in front of me. I wonder how long I stood there for? I wasn’t sure but I felt so numb that I couldn’t muster up any energy to move. I felt dead, I felt like I was falling in some strange distant dark place.

“Daddy?” The voice of a little girl brought me back and I turned my head to see Nena sitting by dad’s side and attempting to wake him up, “Daddy don sweep here.”

“Nena…” I try calling out to her but the words just come out as a whisper, “Come here.” My voice wouldn’t reach.

“Ma?” She turned her head around and looked at me, “Ma, daddy is col.”

At her words, I began to realize the weight of the situation.

He was cold?

Of course he was cold. He was dead.

I slowly turned my head and looked at my mother.

They both were dead and yet still the word sounded so forgein.

There was so much blood around, mixed with the snow and turned cold, it felt eerie and bizarre. As I looked at the dyed shirt of my mother, her lifeless eyes , her expression full of worry and her hands that were still in the form in which she was holding me. All the emotions I should be feeling came to me at once. Sadness, anger, depression, sorrow, despondency, despair, terror, grief, every negative emotion attacked me at once and my eyes began to get watery.

She was dead? I looked at dad. He was gone?

Dead…?

Dead.

As I came to term with the fact , there was suddenly so much pressure on my heart I felt like I was sinking, like I was being pulled with immense force from every direction, like someone had just grabbed my heart and shattered it into so many pieces that binding it again would never be possible.

“Ma?” I looked at Nena again. She had climbed on top of dad’s chest, still unaware of the situation. Her clothes were getting dyed in red as she tapped his chest, “Daddy?”

“Nena…” How can you not tell he’s gone when a huge part of his neck is missing? Is she still too young to understand the concept of death? Too innocent to know the notion of passing on?

I gathered some energy and walked over to her.

“Daddy’s sweeping?” She looked at me with big round eyes. They were so pure and innocent, I felt the burden on my heart increased even more.

“No-” I choked while trying to hold my tears back, “He’s gone….” No matter how much I tried I couldn’t speak in a normal tone.

“Were?” She asked, visibly confused since she could see him in front of her.

“Away. Far away.” I answered and she looked at me with a bewildered expression, then looked back at dad, “He won’t be coming back…” I said those words to her but I couldn’t accept them myself.

How could they just leave like that?

I looked down and noticed how dad was looking at the window. The direction in which he was looking at was where Nena and I stood in the house.

My heart pained even more. In his final moments, he chose to look at us.

The pain reached a level of agony I never thought was even possible.

“I wanna go too-” Nena said those words and laid down on dad’s chest. She wasn’t even aware of what she had said since she just said it in answer to what I had told her.

The clouds in the sky began to align and a shadow was cast on the ground, at all places except where she lay.

“No!!” I screamed. The moment her words made sense in my brain I had another sudden fear, fear of losing her too. My last and only family left.

The only rays of light that just wouldn’t go away were on her. It was as if the heavens were ready to grant her her wish. She had stained her clothes and right cheek with blood but it didn’t matter at all.

Not her too! She couldn’t leave me too!

I yanked her off dad and held her in my arms, tightly tucked in so that no one could take her away. No one. No one at all.

The energy left my legs and I fell to the ground while still tightly holding onto Nena who just camly stayed put in my embrace.

I breathed heavy as my heart pounded painfully in my chest.

It hurt so much that my emotions began to swell up, to the point where I could no longer keep them in.

I began to cry.

It started out as low sobs which kept getting louder and more miserable, to the point where I was crying my soul out.

A feeling so foreign yet tragic that it could never be defined in words. So painful, it leaves you numb. So wicked and cruel it leaves you helpless.

Helpless like a newborn baby who can do nothing but cry in the arms of his mother, just like how I was crying in the cold embrace of nature.

I looked at the dark sky from where soft white flakes fell to the ground but somehow it was just hurting me. Why was it that nature decided to give me more cold and nothing warm?

I looked to my right, my mother was dead there with the body of the wolf that had somehow turned back human. I look the other way and I find the horrific view of my father. I couldn’t see it anymore so I just closed my eyes.

I couldn’t calm myself so I cried. I cried till I had drained the very last bit of my own energy and when I began to drift into sleep I turned my heavy head to look in the direction of the forest.

There, in the shadows lurked a figure. A figure of a lady, A lady who looked at me with a weird gaze, like she was upset things didn’t go her way.

As my eyes were still on her, she decided to slowly move back, into the dark depths of the forest.

As she disappeared into the dark I found my eyes too heavy to keep them open any more and finally I closed them again wishing this was one hellish nightmare and nothing more.