BEING LOVED BY AN ANIMAL

POV: Lucy

I grew up looking at those pictures of my ancestors on these walls.
As you move on to the right of the hall, you see every successful hunter in our family. The last one is of my Daddy and mommy together. They both were the first ones to successfully marry their lovers, the first in our family. Before that, it was forbidden to marry someone out of our family relations.

Daddy said, our family consisted of great hunters during the King's empire, but as the modernization started , people became concious about the extinct animals. What did our family kill? Wolves, we were known for hunting wolves at that time. At the present, I can't even think of killing any innocent animal. I'm just incapable of doing that. Maybe I do not belong to this bloodline. Who knows? I don't even remember my parents now.
My mom died when I was 5, due to unknown reasons. Dad said police could never find out her body. It was lost in the void of the deep dense forest around the palace. I don't even remember her face now. Her face is just imprinted on dusty pictures and her love forever ingrained in my heart.

My Dad passed away 6 years later, when I was 11, in a car accident. I still remember being my daddy's girl. He's always in my words when my eyes are filled with tears. When I smile, he's always there in my mind.
Sometimes I feel, he's watching his daughter grow up into a woman, a lonely woman. But I'm sorry Daddy, being lonely isn't my choice, I don't have an option anymore, I've to be alone to be safe from all the fake people in my Life.

I stare at the picture, when I suddenly feel a loud thud on my door knob.
Not again! Please.
I've filed enough complaints already for the petroling department to think I'm making up stories to attract attention. I'M NOT!
Some of them suggest I rather go to a therapist and cure my depression that is caused because of my loneliness, but it's not, I'm not going insane. I'm busy in my own world, even though I'm all alone. I'm studying business, I've investments with big companies and I'm doing absolutely great without anyone. I'm better off alone, and certainty that isn't the cause of my depression.

This time I ignore the noise and go on to getting breakfast done and leave for my classes. I'll late if start thinking nonsense.

Is it weird that this is the first time in years I actually heard footsteps leaving my doorstep or am I hallucinating already?

Within seconds,
I grab my phone,
Switch on the camera,
Open the door and search for any footsteps that the intruder might have left here. As for this time, I've enough evidence that there is in fact, an actual human surrounding my house.
But none, there are no footsteps, in fact there are no traces of any animal or being!

So,it could be ghosts? Of my ancestors? Because they're disappointed by my living style? And they're here to teach me some skills? What nonsense!! I've stopped believing in ghosts ever since I tried to call my parents' spirit and they never appeared. Ghosts and spirits are just a factual image of human imagination that is created to fill the emptiness created by loneliness or just to keep their loved ones very close after their death. But that theory is too good to be true. Ghosts do not exist, they never did and they never will. Atleast I believe that.

For the time being, I've to be inside the college campus within an hour. To get out of the forest it takes 30 minutes approx and the traffic ahead is huge, another 30 minutes. With that in mind, I am already late and I cannot waste time for another bullshit imagination of mine. I just have to leave.

To be contd.........