I Lost You.

• Megan Little, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2011

I awoke to see the piercing sun beams breaking through the cracks in the wooden slabs that form my bedroom wall. As I rose my bed creaked under the pressure, and I pushed both my arms out to stretch. I took a deep breath in and out to relieve myself from the pain that was starting to appear in my chest. Grasping my jacket and wrapping it around my middle, I stood up and strolled over to the kitchen. The floor boards underneath my feet moved as the weight shifted, I walked slowly, cautiously, making sure not to alarm my younger brother. Mark was his name, and he needed to sleep where as I needed to cook him breakfast as I had to leave early so I could hunt for what will be our dinner and breakfast for the following morning.
I am Sophia Joyce, and I live with my younger brother Mark. I am 13 years of age and Mark is only 5. Our parents died long ago and we were left to fend for ourselves in the middle of the forest. We live in the forest and always have, my father would travel into the town to get food for us on the weekends and mother would look after Mark and me. They both died after being hunted down by the police – people such as myself refer to the police as hogs. Our family was an innocent one, we only got what we needed and knew how to do things on our own. Once mother, and father had died me and mark had to run off into the deep forest were they could not find and kill us. My only reason for being is to protect and raise Mark, if I fail, I would have failed Him and many others.
I started to cook for Mark what was left from last night’s dinner – dear rump, and stew made from herbs and other forest goods. It took me a good half hour to prepare everything and be on my way. The forest was always alive in the early hours of the morning, there was always something singing. Off into the distance I noticed a few deer, so I moved in on the creatures swiftly and unseen. I took my bow and arrow, took my ready position and fired directly into the buttocks of a large male. I didn’t want to kill the creature; I just wanted to disable its movement. I approached it to see if I could notice any infections that might have made the meat unhealthy. As I kicked the animal over I saw a dark, deep wound that might be infected. Deciding to leave the buck I wondered off to find a different food source. The tree’s were thick and it was hard to move around but I finally came to a clearing that was a hot spot for roaming animals. I waited in the long grass until something worthy of pursuit came along.
It grew quite and the animals stopped singing and chirping. Something was coming, something dangerous. I had heard stories when I was young that a dark, aggressive tiger haunted these types of plains, and now I was questioning whether it was just a story. I started praying to Him for guidance. I felt that I had to get up a tree, a tall tree. The closest tree was a sapling but another one a few yards behind it was an adult and it was tall. I ran like I had never ran before and was up this elegant swaying tree extremely fast. When the creature appeared I noticed that it was a tiger and it had an all too familiar shirt hanging out of its mouth. The shirt was covered in fresh, young blood. It was at this point which I realised who the shirt belonged to; Mark. An inhumane shriek escaped my dry mouth, and I jumped out of the tree. I found myself running, I kept running and didn’t stop. I finally reached our hut and no Mark. I searched everywhere and noticed his food hadn’t been touched. I finally worked up the courage to go into his room. There I found a mangled corpse. It took me a while to register who it was until I saw the necklace I had given to Mark around their neck. The moment I had dreaded, the one thing I wanted to never let happen, had.