Tears

• Tanisha Artz, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2011

Jaclyn Henderson shuffled up to the graveyard gates. Tears started running down her ghostly white cheeks as she thought about what she was going to see. She struggled to open the gates as she held her mother's flowers in her hands. She passed through and closed the gates behind her. They protested with a blood curdling creak.
She started walking up the overgrown path looking around for her mother's headstone. When she spotted it she sprinted over to it. She kneeled down and screamed in horror.
The headstone was smashed into tiny smithereens. She carefully picked up a piece of rock that was as devastating as the funeral itself. She turned it over and saw her mum's harmonic and spirit lifting and smiling at her.
She parted all the rocks to either side of the dirt patch that marked where her mother lay to rest. Then she saw a strange marking on the ground covered in rocks. She carelessly pushed the rocks aside.
When she saw the marking she was mystified about what it could be. She quickly got her phone out and took a picture of the oversized paw print.
Jaclyn knew everything that could be known about animals, even the ones that only scientists really knew about. But this paw print perplexed her.
She quickly kissed the stone with her mother's picture on it and ran back to the gates that blocked the cemetary from the outside world. The only thing that was running faster than her legs was her mind. When she reached her house she was exhausted. She hadn't run that far or that fast in her life and she wasn't planning on doing it again.
Jaclyn shivered. She had the feeling that someone was watching her and she didnt like it one bit. She looked around the street scouring for any watching eyes.
She hastily got the key to the house out of the front pocket of her jeans. She struggled to place the key in the hole that seemed to be growing smaller and smaller with every second that passed.
When she finally got the key in the hole she rushed inside and slammed the door behind her.
She bolted into her room and hid under the blankets for what seemed like hours.
Suddenly her stomach seemed to be saying to her, "Feed me, Feed me now!" First she just ignored it, but the second time she just couldn't fight it.
She tip toed to the out of fashined 70's kitchen that her dad refused to redecorate and got some chocolate to eat.
She went into the lounge room and turned on the TV. She merrily sat there watching Friends for ten minutes.
While it was a commercial out of the corner of her eye she saw a dark, black mark on the far wall of the lounge room.
She got of the couch and lazily walked over to the mysterious marking. As soon as she saw it she knew exactly what it was.
It was the paw print.