Various Works

The North Star

I was just your typical female. A normal girl of twenty five, well as normal as a girl with red hair can be that is. I am still the same as I was that day. I was young, and had just told my husband that we were going to have a daughter in three more months. He had been given a month of leave from the Marines and we were celebrating the fact that we had a baby on the way. We had spent most of the month in and out of the hospital because of testing to make sure that our daughter would be healthy. It was his last day home and we spent it at the fair. I couldn't believe that by August we'd have a daughter and he was upset because he'd be on tour again. But Tommy knew that he had a reason to go back. He wanted to make sure that our baby could live a life of freedom. I had kissed him goodbye the last day I was alive. It was the last time he got to say I love you to me, and the last time he'd ever hear me talk to him.
If only I had known that it would be our last day together maybe I would have done things differently. I might have asked to go with him on the ship or even begged him to stay with me. But then he would be dead as well. I went home after his ship left and had cried myself to sleep, maybe it was my hormones, or the fact that he wouldn't get to hold his daughter until she was nearly two years old. I don't know why I cried that day, not anymore. It's been so long since then that I can only just remember his face in my mind. I long to see him but I can't. Not anymore, maybe not ever. The day I died was May 28th 2009. I can remember that date no matter how many thousands of years may pass.

I had fallen asleep from crying and had been asleep for at least an hour or two when the sound of glass breaking woke me up. I grabbed the gun that Tommy kept under the bed and silently walked down the sairs. From the top step I could see movement in the living room, but by the time I got to the living room no one was in there. I figured maybe my cat had knocked over something and that would explain the glass and shadows moving. But when I looked for her I realized that she was still in my room on the bed. So it couldn't have been my North. So I checked in the kitchen but saw no one there either.

I decided that I must be imagining that I had heard the glass breaking. That I had dreamt of it and had headed back to my room. I had just started to close my door when I felt a hand go around my mouth. I tried to think, but I felt tired, more tired than I have ever felt. The last thing I saw before the darkness came was my North hissing and the bed rushing up to meet me. I can still remember thinking 'why is North hissing she's never done that before,' she was my guardian. I came to, to see a man that I knew on top of me. He worked on the ship with my husband, that is until he was given a dishonorable discharge for attacking one of his shipmates. I never knew who because Tommy wouldn't tell me who or how bad he injured the person. He always said that it was too painful to talk about and he didn't want to upset me.

I can't help but wonder where my North was she never left the bed on her own, she was a rescue kitten that had lost her ability to walk, or jump after the man who owned her tried to kill her and her siblings. I had manged to save just her and another female kitten. They became my little girls because they never left my side. But when I looked beside me I saw something that tore at my heart more than anything else in the world. This man, had killed North and her sister Star. I cried for them they were still only babies they had only just turned two. But they at least gave him a fight his face was bleeding quite badly where his left eye should have been. But it wasn't enough in my opinion he should suffer far more than that for stealing my daughters from me.

Then I realized my daughter, my Nym wasn't moving I couldn't feel her inside me anymore. I panicked and squirmed as much as I could under the man's extreme weight even though he had to only be around one fifty he felt as though he weighed close to three hundred pounds, and he was on my stomach. I looked down and realized that there was more blood on the bed then there should have been even with what he had done. Then I felt it the wetness on my dress, the pain in my body and how intense it was. I felt as though I was in labor from how sharp it was.