I grasped my legs against my chest so hard my arms started to ache.My jaw was clenched tight, and my breathing rapid but quiet as I strained my ears to hear something, anything.
I jumped and let out an involuntary gasp as the front door slammed open, male voices I didn’t recognize began to scream inaudible orders. I heard the stomping of boots above my head and the crude crashing of my family’s belongings being carelessly knocked onto the floor and broken. I hoped they wouldn’t look under the rug and reveal the door to the basement, my hiding place.
I hoped even harder that my parents would be alright. My hope turned to despair as my mother began to scream loudly, her screams morphed into raspy pleads. Tears dripped down my face and unwanted whimpers tumbled out of my clamped mouth like vomit.It was apparent that my dad was struggling, but to no avail.
Two explosions occurred quickly, one after another, my mother’s wails and my father’s struggles stop with the sound I reluctantly accept as guns. A caterwaul of loud sobs pour out of my mouth and into my small safe place as I came to the realization that they were dead. I feared that my safe place was no longer safe as the yelling ceased and repulsing curious murmurs began at my instinctive sounds.I couldn’t understand what they were saying but I had a good idea when the boom of laughter and repeated gunfire being shot into the ceiling echoed throughout the house I once knew as home, but this, this was not home.
They mockingly crooned to me. I crammed my head between my knees and rocked back and forth as the lock on the basement door was shot open.
I will die today, I will die today, I will die today… I can’t die, I’m only nine. A thousand endings can occur on earth and out of all of them this is mine. An ending that no one will know, no one will care about. An ending that will only be remembered, if even that, by these monsters, these child killers, these murderers of the innocent.
I didn’t bother to look up and see my killers. I wanted the last people I saw to be my parents loving and worried faces, faces full of worry for me, their only child, not even their own lives.
A gun shot was barely audible through my thoughts. Then everything went black, and stayed that way, forever.

* * *

I screamed awake, my eyes popping open as I found myself curled up into the tightest human ball ever made possible, a rough and scratchy blanket riddled with holes discarded at my feet.
The feeling of warm arms enveloped me. My screams became loud sobs as Finley’s soft calming voice whispered reassurance into my ears. “shhh shh, it’s alright Dennie, your safe, shh, it was just a dream”. I cried into my best friend’s chest, his strong muscles flexing under my fingertips as he held me so tight I couldn’t breathe, just the way I liked my hugs.His words were cold comfort to me, I know that what I had experienced was a dream, but I also know that that was the end somewhere to someone who was innocent and defenseless.
“It was her, Fin, it was the little girl again”. I forced so much sorrow into my painful words that he clutched me tighter, stroking my hair.“she died the same way, the same fucking way… it… seemed so real”, my voice quivering with cries at the end.
We stayed that way forever it seemed like, of course forever ends sometime, that nameless little girl thought she had forever. I probably fell asleep or something.

Notes

Hello lovelys!
Hope you enjoy this new story, I have it posted on wattpad as well.
Bai for now,
don't let the frost freeze your spirit!
-May