Chapters "It's about pushing ourselves in the right direction and not rushing into things recklessly."
These were the words that my daddy would try to teach me time and time again when I was younger. He'd insist I repeat this sentence again every morning when I came down for breakfast, and again before I climbed the creaky wooden staircase to my bedroom to retire for the night.
It became my mantra. The one sentence I would be able to recite fluently even after memory diseases like dementia and amnesia caught up with me, or I cracked my skull so badly that I was rushed to the emergency room, to spend what little time I would have left staring blankly into space, mumbling mostly incoherent gibberish no one understood. Not that any of those scenarios would be unlikely to happen in the near future, in the line of work I had taken up for some twisted reason even I couldn't explain to you, since even I never fully understood why.
Now some people would ask me, is your daddy a good man? And I'd say definitely. Even if we never spend as much time together now as we once got to. And even if a lot of people think of my daddy as a meanie, I wouldn't have asked for a better daddy if the decision was handed to me on the shiniest silver platter.
My daddy was a patient, gentle man. He was never loud or violent with me ,but as kind and caring as a daddy should have been. He tried his very best to teach me what he thought was important for me to know, and what to him was the right thing to do. And I couldn't have asked for a better teacher than him. What more could any son or daughter ask for?
To a lot of people who didn't know him the way I did though, they would say my father, um daddy, was a stupid guy. Even the neighbors would sometimes poke fun at how beyond his own name, dad could barely write and had trouble reading even the simplest texts.
But to me at least, he was a prodigy, a hidden genius whose skills an uncaring world failed to appreciate. A boy from our neighborhood once came to ask him what an IBM was. "It's for my homework" he claimed "and if I can't correctly define what IBM's are, the teacher will slap another demerit onto my report.".
My father shook his head sadly. "Well for a start, you've missed a very important C between the I and the B" he tried to explain, scratching his head thoughtfully "It should be ICBM.". The boy got a good laugh out of that, but ultimately still returned home the next day with a F minus on a report card after as a last resort he took my dad's advice and put that an ICBM was a highly lethal explosive device that could be launched over long distances to cause catastrophic damage to entire cities.
Another time, a girl who happened to be cycling past came up to daddy to ask what AC was. "My daddy told me it cools things down when it gets hot, but because I don't know what it is or how it works, I always have to sleep very uncomfortably in the summer when the sun stays up all night. Please can you tell me how to use AC mister, my daddy told me not to rely on him for everything and to find out myself. That's why I'm asking you."
An inquiry into what I now knew was simply an air conditioner, and how to operate a simple piece of mechanical equipment often used in cars and buildings to prevent overheating and to get some air when it got stuffy, became a lecture into what was one of the most commonly used killing devices in modern military forces and what would later become a treasure more valuable than all the gold and jewels in the world to me. The AK. A thing you'd rarely see carried in the hands of anyone who didn't also have a badge on their camo-patterned fatigues, and a tightly fitted helmet.
He explained to the puzzled girl, and his equally as confused daughter (who by then was even more brainless and scatter brained than now) that the AK was a semi automatic rifle that kept a great balance between accuracy and rate of fire. He went on further to explain that a lot of people got the K in AK mixed up with a C for AC, and that it was a mistake that had sent many misinformed soldiers to their death when they brought the wrong thing to the battlefield.
"I as a rule, generally don't like Russian people or things very much" sighed my father, allowing himself to be judgmental and reflective for a moment "But the Russian man who built the AK is one man I know I'd be good friends with if I got to meet him. He really outdid himself on the day he invented the AK, and we really should show him more respect."
He sighed once more, though this time not as sadly. "Typical" he remarked "All you kids care about nowadays is who built the light bulb or who invented cars and the internet. when none of those things will save you when that murderer with a knife in his hand springs at you to stab the life from you. Take my word, the AK is a handy, life saving thing to have. Don't leave home without one, or something similar."
The girl shook her head, it was clear that none of these things meant anything to her except to show that my daddy was out of whack with reality, and that he was not a man worth talking to since anything you said to him would be misunderstood. So she thanked him for the story and left, clearly bitter that he had not told her the things she wanted to know.
Though to be fair to him, blowing the windows open with a shot or two would let a bit of oxygen and cool air into the room that was clearly only hot because of lack of ventilation with the outside air.
Every moment I spent with dad was a moment that seared into my memory for eternity like a photograph taped into a photo album. I treasured each second I had with that lovely man like a bar of solid gold. Not that I didn't love my dear mom, who insisted I address her mommy much to my delight since the titles father and mother really didn't do two special grown ups the justice they deserved. It would be an insult, just as bad as if I swore out loud at them while sticking out my tongue. But time with my daddy was precious, since while most dad's could reassure their crying children who were worried about what life without their parent's would be like, that they had ages and ages left to spend together since it was a well known fact that being thrown into a wooden box that was then buried in a hole in the ground, was the only possible event that could separate a parent that truly loved their children the way mine loved me.
For my daddy though, it was a thing that could happen at a moment's notice, he explained. He did not have the luxury of being quite at ease as long as his skin hadn't wrinkled and his hair hadn't whitened. And everyone knew how unfair, and inhuman it was for a relative, especially a parent to be put into that wooden box when his skin hadn't wrinkled, his hair hadn't whitened and his hands gripped without a tremble. For daddy, it was just another game of roulette he would have to play and play, with nothing but a friendly pat on the head along with a small bag of money if he won.
A small bag of money that even a janitor wouldn't envy, I'm sure. But it put food on the table, and a roof over our heads, and so he didn't complain. He even told me each time he could spare a visit to our house, not to cry if he never came back.
But against all the odds, he would return each scheduled day he said he would return. Sometimes with a stagger in his step, sometimes with a bandage in his arm or leg, but he'd always be back at the promised time.
"It was nothing" he would joke, but my mom and I would turn to each other as we both knew that what daddy really meant to say was "the horrors, the horrors." and that it was only his care for us that stopped him from telling the truth.
We shared good times together. Sometimes he took me to the playground, and sometimes we'd sit by the fireplace while mom read us a story.
I loved the feel of his warm embrace as he took me in his arms, and kissed me gently on his cheek. Telling me just how much he valued his little Lightning and how even though he couldn't always be there for her like he hoped, he would do his best to always live on in her memories.
Those memories stayed with me in my heart, long after I left my home knowing I'd never be able to return even if I somehow lived to a hundred and some more.
For me to begin to recite some of the joyous moments, would be for tears to flood from my eyes, and for me to begin to convulse and tremble uncontrollably with long sobs as my friends around me began to shake their heads and shame me for being weak and soft.
And by the time I came to myself, and pulled it back together, an entire day might have passed, and I would have wasted it trying to dwell on a time that had long since been set in stone, and had long passed.
"Don't look back and keep moving forward." was another mantra I made a vow to follow over the years, though it wasn't from my daddy that I learned that one.
But as with all gambles, whether it was slots, blackjack or whatever it was you played, you just couldn't win them all.
And the one loss for my daddy, was an even bigger loss for me.
For most people who gambled, when they lost their bets that they had made, they could laugh it off and promise to do better the next time.
For my daddy and the bet he made, there was no next time. And he had paid for his loss with a very high price and forced me and mom to pay what seemed to us, to be an even higher one.
It wasn't a price we would be able to pay off even if we worked for 10 years nonstop, without stopping to eat or sleep. It wasn't a price we'd be able to front even if by some stroke of luck we won first place in the lottery one day.
It wasn't a price we'd be able to pay off at all.
Author's Note
Thank you so much for reading.
I knew it was too good to last. It was days after my seventh birthday, when the piece of paper came through the mail, stating that daddy would not return. "It wasn't his fault he couldn't win them all." the mailman dimly remarked, trying without success to set us at ease as he passed the letter over with a trembling hand, and quickly left. "Better him than me." I heard the man mutter to himself sadly, as he slowly and clumsily drove away, clearly afraid to stay any longer.
Mom didn't start to cry like I thought she would. Her eyes were dry and her voice calm, as she placed an arm on my shoulder, as tears started to blur my vision and I closed my eyes not wanting to agitate my clearly distressed mom any further.
"Don't cry dear" she pleaded as the build up of fluid in my eyes began to force them open, "Please. Calm down. Your daddy wouldn't want to see you like this if he was here with us now. Please, for his sake, be strong."
Her kind, encouraging words had their intended effect and I managed after dabbing my eyes a few times with a nearby towel I found, taking breath after breath as I battled to bring my emotions under control, to calm down.
"But why did he have to do what he did when it was so dangerous." I asked, half mad with anger.
Out of the corner of my sight, my mother gave her own eyes a quick wipe with a sleeve, trying her best to conceal her own reaction to this terrible news in front of me. Then she looked me in the eyes and explained in a clear, unbroken voice that daddy was a hero who only did what he did because he wanted me and her to be safe.
That even if what he did for a living, seemed barbaric and cruel to some people, not to hate him for it, "You'll understand better when you get older dear." explained my mother, when I asked for what she meant. "What did he do?" I couldn't help but ask, since I genuinely didn't know back then what line of work could result in such risk and danger.
If there was one thing I liked about my mother, it was that she wasn't a good liar. She was a blunt, to the point speaker who did her best to speak in facts and not opinions or riddles. "It might be best if you don't know." she replied, clearly desperately trying to get me to abandon the subject which would come back to bite me harder than I could ever have imagined.
"Tell me!" I begged, desperate to know what a good man had sold his precious life to "I have to know!". My poor mother relented at that, and she told me everything, knowing full well that my young and inexperienced mind would probably not understand half of the things she said.
"Steely Dust was a good, selfless man who never had a chance to go to school." explained my mother, fists clenched, lips trembling. "Not many children in his parts did sadly". "Just like those factories in that story you read to me, where the rich snobby kids got to bully the poor working ones", I thought out loud.
She nodded slowly "There's more to it than that dear, but yes. Sort of like that."
I apologized for the distraction and asked her to continue. "He knew that nothing was right in the place he grew up, and desperately wanted to do something to change that. But... he just couldn't. And so one day, he ran away since he knew there was nothing for him there."
"Is that when you and daddy met?"
She blushed slightly. "About then, yes." she stated.
She went on to explain how she remembered that happy day like it was still just yesterday. A man in a mask pointed a gun at her and ordered her to come with him or else. She knew that whether she agreed or refused, the eventual outcome would be just as bad. She had said no, knowing that whatever life he would give her couldn't be worse than a quick, painless death. Or as painless as a barbarian like him could make it, since it was rare that they ever went straight for the head when they shot.
"No..." the man chuckled softly "Well then too bad... I gave you a choice." And it was then that daddy had come up behind him, and struck him in the head with a stone.
You can probably guess how the rest went.
"I did what any decent person would have managed to do. No need to thank me." daddy had said.
He agreed after some prompting, to come with my mom, since she had just about enough in her pocket to pay for a train for both of them to get away. "It's the least I could do for someone as nice as you." mom told him, as they walked hand in hand towards a nearby station.
"You don't have to give me anything for something anyone should have done anyway, but thanks. I do appreciate it." my father replied humbly, as they sat side by side in the crowded carriage they had managed to squeeze into, and he took her in his arms as she fell asleep to rest up for the long journey ahead. He kept his eyes open the whole night though to keep watch.
"The train took us to a station near here, where I thought it would be far enough from the place we came from to be safe. We came here next."
My mother did her best to find work around the village, but there was none available. The financial crisis had spread to even this part of the country, and a lot of companies had been forced to downsize, or even to shut down completely. So in the end, the only way she could make any money at all for the household was by standing in a rundown cafe some distance away from our house, washing the dishes that came through and hauling out the large stacks of rubbish. And sometimes if she was lucky, she could earn a few extra pennies by shoveling snow outside in winter, for the few neighbors wealthy enough to afford a car.
Daddy got his job one day when some very shady looking men in suits came around the village. They offered a tempting bag of money to whoever would come with them to fight for their country, they said.
And even though he was asked to not go so that he could be with his daughter (who to call a fetus by then would be generous). He shook his head, and claimed that this was the only way that we could make a sustainable source of income for the family since nowhere else wanted him as a worker and he hated seeing the mug on the mantle get emptier every day, especially when he realized what the bulge in my mom's stomach would soon mean.
He tried to make a few coins as the one who delivered paper around the block like a teenager trying to make some pocket money, but the pay was so small that he may as well have begged on the street in one of those big wealthy cities for all the good it did poor daddy.
My daddy wanted, he said, to be useful and to protect those dear to him and this job gave him the chance to do just that. And with a last goodbye to his crying wife who he had spent little under a year with, he and he alone stepped up from the crowd. "I accept this offer" he declared loudly, and with that Steely Dust became Private Dust. A brave and selfless protector, while at the same time a remorseless and relentless bounty hunter and serial killer.
"So he killed?" I gasped. "That's terrible. How could he?". "Yes I know it's terrible." soothed my mom, trying to be as understanding as she could "But he only did what he did because it was the right thing to do. He did it so that we could have a safe, and happy future free from worry. He wanted to protect you, Lightning. He wanted you not to lose your spark when those evil crazy lunatics got here too and took you away to do terrible things to you."
"But did he really have to kill all those people?" I demanded. The one thing my seven year old mind could fathom then was that killing was a bad thing that you should avoid at any cost and that talking through a problem was far preferred.
"Its difficult to explain dear. I know you probably won't understand now, but please don't hold anything against Daddy. He always loved you no matter what he did. And when you get a bit older, Lightning, you'll realize that even if violence seems bad most of the time, it is excusable under certain conditions and still better than any other alternative available."
It was then that my world turned completely upside down, and I spent the next few nights mulling over what my mom meant when she said that violence was not always wrong. It went directly against the moral of some of the nighttime stories I knew and loved about friendship and tolerance being the only acceptable solution to any problem.
It was a memorable tale, though would never come anywhere close to my favorite story, whose words brought a smile to my frowning face even after the news that daddy would never come home again had taken its toll on me.
"The man in the purple suit." it was titled, and it was a true,timeless classic at least to me. But that was a story for another time.
And the next time I read it, it would be me who read it to myself. And that upset me, since it was hearing my mom's angelic, song like voice and being gently caressed by her ,which made story time all the more special, cliched and immature as it sounded.
Not much could be said about Hope Sandreams that hadn't already been said. As the young woman's beautiful, poetic name suggested, she was a optimistic, cheerful woman who tried to make the best of every bad situation and tried to encourage others to lift their spirits too.
The second daughter of Mr Sandreams who had been told by her late father to flee after her elder sister had been seen led away by the masked men with the large, luxurious mansion in her previous hometown, after he started fearing for her safety.
She was in her mid twenties, by the time I left her, but looked even younger than that.
A professor in a university in fact, would have had trouble determining whether to admit her into a lecture room, or to tell her that a young thing like her should still be in secondary school doing her GCSE's and A levels before she pulled out her ID card to show him her actual age.
It was her tired eyes, and the deep lines on her face that gave her age away.
My mother was a strong woman, who refused to let her soft smile slip except during very special occasions. "Put bounds on your emotions or they'll put bounds on you." she would often warn me when she saw me about to throw a tantrum."And when emotions get the better of people, they do stupid things they never intended and go out of control".
How I wish I'd listened more to her now, as a loud ringing brings me to my feet.
She had lost her sister, her parents, even her friends she knew when she left home that day. Yet if it really left her with the deep depression she confessed it had, she certainly didn't show it in our day to day life together.
There was no school in the rundown village we lived in, the little I picked up in reading and writing was passed onto me by my mother. She told me that reading and writing were two very important skills that made the difference between whether a person grew to be wealthy or poor.
She couldn't teach me very much, only the basics, but by the time I left my old home I could sign my name and recognize most simple words as long as they weren't fancy words like "Xenophobia" and "Hieroglyphs". My spelling wasn't top of the class, but it was barely passable I suppose and still better than nothing.
She would have liked to teach Daddy too, but he was away from home too often to learn much and wanted to spend his time with me.
For a while after Daddy was gone, I still had company, I wasn't alone. I prayed for things not to get any worse, and for the rest of my childhood to roll by without further incident.
But any sane person who wasn't a whiny, spoiled brat knew that I want, didn't get.
Author's Note
Thanks once more for reading.
We should have realized that Dad's unfortunate fate meant more than the loss of a valued family member, and though this was a bad time to talk about money, a massive blow to our household income once the small sachet of notes given to us by the postman along with the letter as a consolation prize from the regiment leader who valued his best man highly had been used up.
No more of mum's perfectly cooked pancakes on Sunday, and no evening glass of milk to dull the feeling of emptiness that never seemed to ease even in my sleep. And no trip to the hardware store to pick up that pane of glass we needed to repair the broken window which was bound to let the cold, winter air in when November came. Which was soon.
My mommy's seemingly unbreakable smile was looking more and more dull and forced with each passing day. The bedtime stories stopped too, when I insisted she go to sleep early after seeing her stumble through the door after coming back from work, and nearly crashing head first into a cupboard near the doorway once. It was clear that sleep had died too for us, when daddy surrendered his life.
"Things could not get worse." I would even say out loud, trying my best to smile as I said it in a desperate attempt to set us at ease. And that was the second biggest blunder I ever made in my stupid life. The second dumbest thing I ever let slip because of my loose tongue.
I never really knew if the holy man some called god really existed. So I never really knew whether what came next was a punishment for being so fickle with my mouth, or a cruel joke that man chose to play on us since he was sadistic and liked seeing pain and misery more than he did happiness.
Or perhaps he just worked in mysterious ways, like the family down the lane who defended his existence kept saying he did. I didn't have the answer.
But it happened. We should have known, should have expected it all along but alas, perhaps the untimely demise of daddy had extinguished our lights to reality. Perhaps we let our emotions swallow us whole, and turned our back to what really would happen now that the war we had been hearing about time and time again was not going well.
Something about the people on the other side upgrading their arsenals. And something else to do with there being a lot more seeds around than before, since I clearly heard the words "Increased radicalization" being discussed by a group of neighbors who had gathered outside one morning in the square. Either way whatever it was, it really wasn't good.
It caught us by surprise.
I woke one morning feeling groggy and dizzy to the sounds of what seemed to be an abnormally loud roar of an engine of some sort. Surprised, I looked out of the window to find that the moonless night sky had still not brightened.
That was odd, I thought to myself, who could be out driving at so late an hour. And why was the noise getting louder and louder.
I glanced over to my mom's room to find her still asleep. She had become a very heavy sleeper since the news of daddy had arrived, and the stress of how she would now finance the household alone until I grew up enough to find myself a job really seemed to have weighed down on the poor woman.
Something in me that day made me make a fool. A moronic, selfish fool. Perhaps it was the grogginess of being woken up at two or three in the morning, perhaps it was the nihilistic view of life that began to blind me more and more to reality now that I realized that we would never be the happy family we once were. Or maybe a seven year old girl had no idea that something as simple as a revving engine meant that a convoy of large, armored vans each one packed with masked men was on its merry way down the street and that any sensible man in with even a shred of sanity about him, would have dashed away as quickly as his legs would carry him ignoring the fact he was wearing nothing on but a pair of threadbare pajamas and hadn't even put his shoes on yet.
But I was clearly not the sane sensible man in my imagination that day, since I yawned, stretched myself and crawled back into bed thinking that if my mother had not been alarmed by the outlandish noises outside that there was no cause for me to panic either.
How dead wrong I soon turned out to be.
Just seconds later, the noises had gotten even louder and a riot of blinking lights lit the blackness of the early morning sky. Incoherent shouts rang out from outside as my mother was finally roused from her deep sleep, and rushed into my room.
"What's going on mom." I managed to ask, yawning loudly as I clutched my aching head.
Instead of receiving an answer to my question, my mom thrust a pair of jeans and a jacket onto my bed. "Get dressed Lightning. Get dressed. Quickly." she shouted, more desperate than angry. Stifling another drowsy yawn, I began to change into the clothes as best I could, taking a while because of my shaking hands and blurry sight.
"But what is happening?" I asked once more, as I finished zipping up the jacket.
Mommy opened her mouth to reply, but was cut off, by another deafening roar of an engine, this time far louder. A few cries were heard in the distance, before a loud, ominous scream. Mysterious voices that I couldn't quite make out accompanied the whole ordeal.
"Go now!" my mum pleaded, motioning me out of my room and downstairs.
"But why?" I was about to ask, when she clapped a hand over my mouth, drowning out the noise.
"Just go, please! GO!" she begged once more, and I could have sworn that even in the dark unlit room, I could see a trail of tears spurting onto my mothers weary face.
"But what about you mom? I don't want to leave you behind" I managed to say, in my blind panic which this sudden turn of events had instilled in me.
"I'll be fine" she insisted, looking through me as she spoke "Now go. Downstairs, out the back door. Now!"
I took one last look at my mom, realizing full well that she was lying to my face despite being the one person I thought I could always count on and trust since Daddy was no longer with us. And that knowledge made my respect for this selfless woman grow several times that day as I followed her instructions and sprinted downstairs, and unlatched the back door, which opened to reveal a trail leading into a eerie forest full of tall trees.
As I reached the backdoor, stumbling slightly since I was not wearing any shoes, a loud banging at the door could be heard, followed by a shout which sounded something like "Open, now!". Another scream.
I felt tempted to cry at the prospect of being left orphaned and abandoned, with no one to miss me. It truly was a terrible idea, since unlike many I knew had it worse than I, my parents were mild, and honest people without a single bad bone in their entire body. They had confided in me, their daughter, rather than pushing their secrets under the mat. And their whole life had been spent so that I could be safe and happy.
To call them good, and respectable humans would still be an understatement after the kindness and unconditional love they had shown in the short time I had them as my parents would not be right to me. They were more than just people to me. I took one last look at mom as I stepped out into the cold, wet grass outside. And saw in her and my late daddy, two guardian angels who should have gone to that place called heaven a long time ago.
I never truly knew if that holy man called god who everyone kept talking about actually existed or if he was real, whether he really was the altruistic, reliable figure we all supposed him to be. But as I sprinted clumsily barefoot, putting my trust in the shadowy darkness to provide me cover, I prayed silently to the holy man named god to take his angel to be with him once more in his lovely home in heaven where she belonged if he was there and could hear me.
My thoughts were interrupted as the banging became louder still, and I hastened my run ignoring the pain in my feet as they brushed the branch littered ground.
Several times I very nearly tripped as I stumbled in almost complete darkness in the thick undergrowth, but somehow I scrambled and scrambled over logs, roots and rocks as I sped forward, only stopping when my breaths finally degenerated into ragged gasps and wheezes, and the pain in my feet became too sharp to shrug off any more that I finally came to a stop and considered my surroundings.
I had made my way up a steep slope and the path through which I had come was covered mostly by a thick layer of trees, save for one small gap where the trees were parted, leaving a small gap marking the entrance to the narrow trail that led into the woods.
Unable to resist the growing morbid curiosity any longer, I dared a look back. The sky was dark and moonless, but from my position on the hills, and the blindingly bright set of lights someone had put on. I could see almost perfectly what was going on once I had climbed a tree to get a better view, confident that I was far enough into the thick shelter the woods offered that whoever was banging on the door would not come and look for me.
I had suspected this all along, but now my worst fears were confirmed as I caught a horrid glimpse of my dear mommy being led away by a group of large men. Even despite the blur in my vision and how far away I had put myself between them, I could see as one of the men turned to face my direction, that his face was obscured by a mask so that only his eyes were visible.
His gaze did not shift like I hoped it would, instead it stayed fixed in my direction. I could hear words being shouted, though I couldn't quite discern what. But all this while, that one man who had turned to face the woods from which I made my escape seemed to step closer and closer to me. I couldn't tell if he had seen me or not, and I didn't want to find out as I jumped down, nearly spraining my ankle as I hit the ground with a thud and began to slink away quickly with my heart in my mouth.
Sweat coated my cold, shivering form, and my heartbeat felt like a maddened drum as it got louder and quicker with each step forward I took. Could that man hear the sound of my heart from where he was? Twigs snapped beneath me, as I took step after step forward not knowing or caring where I would end up. All that mattered was getting far away from here.
But even as I took a right at the next intersection, I found myself crying silently as I thought of the unthinkable things they would do to mom. It wouldn't be good, that much was clear and for a second, I felt tempted to run back the way I came screaming for them to take me as well.
Only the desperate plea, in her voice as she hurried me outside kept me moving forward.
And it was there, in that clearing where my legs gave out and I finally gave myself up to exhaustion that I asked myself a question that till this day, I'm just as distant from a satisfactory answer as I was when I first thought of it. "Just what was their goal?".
Just what could they gain from taking away the last family poor Lightning Dust had left in her life, so that Lightning had no where to go even if she lived. Why would people kill a woman that killed and wounded no one. A woma who always gave her daughter more than half of their loaf of bread at the breakfast table.
It was as sleep overtook me and I slowly began to drop off, that my fear of what would happen if they found me and took me along with my mom slowly turned to hatred as I clenched my fists. I didn't care that killing was wrong anymore. I didn't care that friendship was a better solution than violence.
I cared that my mom, my Hope Sandreams was gone, and so were my chances of a bright and happy future with my one remaining parent. I cared that if those men in masks were left to do as they liked, more children would be left like me to wander alone in darkness and cold.
And I broke into a sob as sleep washed over me, as I wailed for something, anything or anyone for me to follow.
And oblivious to me then, as I woke the next morning with clenched teeth and dried tear tracks over my dirty face, my future had been set in stone and nothing anyone said or did could change where I was doomed to end up.
Author's Note
Did you enjoy that last chapter? It took me a long time to think up and there are bound to be some faults and errors in it which I failed to pick out despite my best efforts.