ANIMALS..
At first she didn’t recognize the thundering sounds that startled her from her sleep, she had seen the dark looming storm clouds that loomed above the trees throughout most of the day and thought that perhaps the storm was the cause. But soon all of her questions had been replaced by the sudden fear of the real culprit, the thunder outside of the door of her fathers shack that she heard from her bed was the sounds of angry hooves beating against the earth. Hooves of horses that carried angry men bearing torches who would only come out on dark and storming nights such as this one with malice in their hearts and acts of unthinkable evil on their minds. And so on they all came, waves of riders carrying the torches whose bright flames raged against the rain itself, torches that found their way into every open window and jarred doorway of the mining settlement that her father and her called home.. And with the fire that now ravaged through the entire settlement, then came the gunfire, men who shot every man or boy from the back or front that dared cross their path, and left them to die in the rain soaked mud as if they were little more than dogs. And now she too found herself running from the fire in fear for her life, she hadn’t even dared herself to think of where her father was or even what his fate in this surprise attack may have been. Or even if his life had been ultimately spared, she could only fear what these men would do to a thirteen year old girl if she were to be caught. However brief the thought, she was soon surrounded, and found herself in the middle of five.
They came at her like a pack of hungry wolves ripping and tearing at her clothes as though they hadn’t looked upon a female at anytime in their lives. The first came to her and savagely threw her to the muddy earth and began pawing at her naked flesh, and there in the rain her mounted her and stole away her innocence, and when he’d finished there came another, and then another, until she could no longer feel nor bear such ungodly pain, and as she tried to look to each new face for some form of mercy, each new face became twisted and merged with the next, no mercy came for her that night, only the childhood memories ripped from her mind and stolen from her body the innocence that she could never recover, all that remained for her was the rain that came relentlessly crashing down onto her body, there in that cold barren place where they took her and then left her for dead. Soon all that remained was the rain, no more thunder, no more angry riders bearing flaming torches that lit up the sky with fire.. So she lay there until it was almost light outside, until she could feel nothing, not even the cold, she had almost given up when against the light she could see two arms reaching down towards her, at first thought it may have been the men come to finish the deed, but they picked up her small frail battered body from the muddy earth and carried her away from that horrible place and she thought for a moment that it was perhaps God himself come to take her home, her eyes closed for a time, and sleep finally took her from the pain, but even the smallest of her dreams could not be summoned.
Her eyes squinted against the light of a crackling fire, where a large piece of charred meat was cooking above it, the smell of food made her stomach rumble, she didn’t know where she was only that she was dry, warm, alive and very hungry. When he came walking through the doorway she closed her eyes fast in fear that the nightmare that she had lived through would return, but he didn’t seem at all interested in doing her any immediate harm, he seemed more concerned with the keeping of the fire. He was a rather tall older man with long white hair that just seemed to her to shine and his jaw was squared and bearded and his eyes were as blue as the mountain sky and he spoke in a thick accent that she did not recognize. “Well, little one, are you gonna hide under them covers all day or are you gonna come out here and get something to eat?” and so it went for three days, he would cook and leave a small portion of meat and root vegetables that he’d cultivated there in the area, and she would wait until he’d leave to tend to the business of fur trapping before she would come out and eat it, and when he would return in the evenings he would talk to her even though she never talked back, and he would regale her with great tales of the life of a fur trapper and she would politely listen without talking back, until one evening he happened upon a tale that was all too familiar to her, “You know what Kitten? There are just some bad men in the world that only live to bring sorrow, pain and despair into the lives of other people, whatever them fellers did to you, well its comin back to them in spades! There’s a thing in this here life called fate, and well what you do to folks sooner or later comes back to you. By the way young un.” he smiled at her. “My name is Jackson Macleod, the Indians round here say when I’m riding that horse out yonder, that I cast me a right long shadow, so they took to calling me Longshadow Jack, so if you ever need to talk to me I reckon that’s what you can call me too.” he looked at her and paused, but got no response, so he turned to leave.. “Rain.” she said softly.. He turned seriously to face her again and walked over and knelt down next to the bed “what’s that now?” “Rain.” she repeated. “My name is Rain.”
Scratch.. © 2006.
