My Little Willow

This story would not be possible without the inspiration from My Little Dashie by ROBCakran53

I'm only 22 and I wish I could just die already.

I live my life one endless day at a time. Everyday was the same old, boring routine. I would wake up every morning at 8:45 on the dot, take a shower, get dressed, eat something quick, then go to my crappy job working at the local 7-11. Then after my shift ended around 5:30 p.m., I would come home, eat some crappy meal I picked up on the way home, binge on something on T.V, then crash every night around 10. Then the next day I would repeat. Its been that way for as long as I can remember. I guess after the death of my mother, everything had just been going downhill from then.

My mother died when I was only six years old. She had overdosed on pain medication  and I was the one who found her. The image of her lifeless body sprawled out across the bed still haunts me to this day. I never understood why she had to take her own life. She always seemed happy when I was around. My father however, was never quite the same after that. Me and him used to go to baseball games together, just hanging out doing regular father-son things. After my mother died, he became a shell of his former self. He always had to be doing something, I guess to keep his mind of my mother. He worked 3 jobs and I always had to stay at my Grandmother's house, which is the house I live in now. So, I never really got to see much of him. Unfortunately, when I was 17, my father developed liver cancer. He had no choice but to quit his jobs almost 1 year after he found out due to his weakening condition. Right when I thought nothing in my life would get better, I met a beautiful, young woman my senior year of high school. I knew she was my soulmate and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, so after our high school graduation, me and her got married. Soon after she became pregnant and I couldn't be more ecstatic.  After months and months of preparing the arrival of my daughter, yet another bombshell had been dropped into my life. My wife had gotten in a deadly fender bender and had smashed her stomach against the dashboard, killing our baby instantly. As expected, we were both heartbroken and my wife and I begun to distance ourselves from each other, and begun fighting daily, before we decided we had had enough and got a divorce. I moved out of the apartment we shared when we got married  and moved back in with my father at my grandmother's house, who had just recently died due to old age. For a year me and my dad talked like we had years ago, talked of sports and things that interested us and life was good, until he lost his battle with cancer...

So, here I am two years later stuck in this house, living the same endless schedule. I have no friends, I just don't enjoy the interactions with other people because every person I come in contact with ends up hurting me. The only time I talk to people is when I'm forced to at work... I really should have picked something better than a 7-11 cashier.

I thought I would never be happy again, that was the case, until I met her.

I woke up that morning to the sound of silence. It was a Saturday and I did not have to go into work at all that weekend.  Which meant I could be as lazy as I wanted to be. It was almost 11 in the morning when I finally got out of my bed and I went into the kitchen to make myself a bowl of cereal, before sitting on my couch and watching back-to-back episodes of "Lost" on Netflix. It was almost 2 in the afternoon when my golden lab pup, Gracie begged me to take her outside. With much hesitation, I got up and placed a old brown coat of mine on and still wearing my pajamas, took Gracie outside.

I live in the middle of nowhere, it is literally nothing but grass and a one-way road for miles. There is a few houses here and there, but not too many, which is what I like. The nearest town takes 30 minutes to get to by car, and almost 2 hours on foot, so I'm a pretty good distance from a lot of things. I don't really mind it though, I don't have any friends after all.

I continued to steadily walk Gracie along the road, being a puppy meant that her curiosity was to the extreme. I couldn't walk more than a few feet without her having to stop and sniff every square inch of the ground. It got worse as we came towards an abandoned old house. This house had obviously been neglected for decades. Nearly all the siding was peeling off the two-story structure. The dark grey roof was sinking downwards pretty badly, you almost couldn't tell there was a roof unless you got closer. Overgrown plants covered a plentiful amount of space on the exterior. Broken windows, broken stairs, broken well..everything. I tried profusely to get Gracie out of there, the last thing I needed was to pay for a trip to the vet due to glass stuck in her paws. However, no matter how hard I tried to pull her, Gracie would just lug me with her like I was the dog. After realizing there was no way I could possibly win this fight, I went along with Gracie, letting her sniff whatever was needed to be sniffed so badly. She dragged me to the side of the house. Rusted pipes and tools scattered along the ground. She finally discovered the jackpot, a rather large hole. This hole was about the size of a squirrel..but wait..squirrels don't dig holes..do they? My worse fear suddenly crept itself into my mind..maybe it was a rat? Out of fear for either Gracie or I contracting a disease from the vermin, I tried yanking Gracie with all my might away from the hole, but the stubborn pup just would not let up. She dug her paws deep inside the hole, swaying dirt in all directions. All of a sudden I heard a loud cry along with whimpers of pain. It sounded like it came from inside the hole, but this sounded like a child crying..there couldn't possibly be a child stuck in that hole. Panicked, I heaved Gracie from the hole and quickly tied her up the nearest thing -- a rusty metal pole, that more than likely wouldn't hold up for long, and I dove myself into the hole, frantically finding the source of the painful cry. It didn't take me long to discover what it was that made the noise, but to my astonishment it wasn't a child, a squirrel, or even a rat..it was a little filly..a little bat filly..

I stared in shock at the little grey mass of fur in front of me. Her rose-colored, slitted-pupil eyes staring up at me, eyes that just screamed pain and confusion. Her light grey webbed wings were pressed firmly to her side as she shook in fear.  I looked down and noticed a few slits of blood from her hooves..Gracie really must have scratched her up good. Not knowing what else to do I gently reached both arms down to pick her up, the little filly must not have liked that idea to much and darted right back inside the hole in a panic.

I immediately felt guilty, she had just been attacked by a dog, then some creature she has probably never even seen before tries to pick her up. I slowly carry myself closer to the opening of the hole and begun to coo her in to coming out.

"Hey..Hey..its okay..I'm not going to hurt you." I told her in my quietest manor.

Somehow it must have worked, because the filly slowly crept herself out of the hole and walked up to my lap, giving it a good sniff before climbing up on top. Now that I was getting a better look at her, I could see that Gracie scratched her on almost every part of her little darkish grey body. Dried dirt was inbedded long her tuffed ears and snowy grey mane. She needed to get clean.. badly. I scooped up the now sleeping filly in placed her on the inside of my coat, shielding her from the sun, she was a bat pony after all. I walked over towards Gracie, who had finally calmed down and untied her from the pole. Walking back to my house, I walked slowly and carefully as sure not to wake the perplex creature I was carrying beside me.