she just wants her dad back.
I strode down the peaceful, winding road and looked around to admire the trees above me. Flowers started to fall like snow around me. I heard the gentle pit pat...pit pat as they hit the ground. Where was I? A face appeared in the trees. It was familiar, one I had seen before. It was all too real. It was my mother. My mother who had made me lunches every day since first grade. My mother who had taught me how to read, to write, and to love. My mother who was brutally murdered by my father. My mother who was dead.
“Mom?” I said, my voice wavering. She walked toward me and cupped her hands gently around my face. “Sweetheart, there is something you should know.” A sudden noise startled me. I jumped back to see my dad holding a knife to my mother’s neck. The knife looked delicate, but was made of sturdy metal. He ran the knife across my mother’s throat in one clean sweep. Her body collapsed. Her head hit the ground with a dull thud. She was gone. Taken from me once more. I stood motionless.
My father walked toward me with panic in his eyes. “Not me,” a croaky voice whispered. A multitude of thoughts ran through my head. What are you doing? Why can’t I move? RUN! Why aren't you running!? I willed my legs to move, but they were jelly. My father shuddered as if a cold wind had hit the back of his neck, as if he was trying to shake something off of him. I heard a low growl. It sounded like it would have come from some animal. I searched around to find the source of the sound, and it was none other than my father. He hobbled to me and grabbed my shoulders. “NOT ME! NOT ME! Help me…” his voice trailed off into nothingness. I screamed. I screamed for my mother and my father. I screamed for what I had lost. The Earth shattered.
Luna jolted awake, panic surrounding her. “Luna?” a man dressed in blue asked, “Are you alright?” She remembered that his name was Sam. He was her nurse at Serenity Mental Institution For Children. Luna had watched her mom’s murder. She sat silently behind the kitchen counter as her dad slid a knife across her mother’s throat. “Not me.” he had whispered quietly, holding the bloody knife.
An hour before, her father had seemed completely fine. He came to check on Luna in her room after school. She sat on her bed and listened to her father talk about his uneventful day. A soft breeze blew bright green leaves into the window. The leaves seemed to be glowing, but Luna paid no attention. The only thing she could focus on was the C she had made on her math test that day. What Luna didn’t know is that one glowing leaf contained the alien that would kill her mother.
“Luna!” Sam’s voice snapped her back to reality. “Was it the dream again?” Sam asked quietly. Luna nodded, her eyes tearing up. “Why don’t you go down to the cafeteria. Get something to eat, and see if you meet a friend or two.” Luna lifted the covers with her shaking hands. She brought her legs to the edge of the bed while Sam gathered his things and went to check on the next patient. As she slipped on her shoes, a green spark caught her eye in the corner of the room. She didn’t think anything of it at first, but it slowly started inching towards her, the same way it had done to her dad. The emerald color captured her eyes. She saw it, the alien. That alien had taken her mother and her father.
she just wants her dad back.