Call Me Evangeline

• Chloe Hansen, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2016

Beyond the darkness in which I am held captive, my home stares back at me, the red soiled dust covering the land, with the drippling hazel leaves crunched up on the soil and the white ocean sky framing the home, in which I wish to return. My room is full of darkness and my head empty of thoughts, I endeavour to leave my cage and return to the image with on my walls.
They call me Samuel but I fear for that is not my name, I hear them whisper at every hour they refer to me as the alpha Lion, the hunter. One night when I was locked away, I awoke from my rest to hear them go on about the terrors of my crimes, crimes in which I did not know. I was an animal they said, tearing them from limb to limb, the women, my victims for all they were, where stories I heard whilst I slept away my fears. In my dreams, I’d see a land where the wind blows and the sky sparkles in the shine of the sun. It was a reality I wished to see, after all James and I would always return there.
Hunter they’d scream from the barrier in which they dare not enter, tormenting and teasing me as if they had something to offer, but this life of ‘Samuel’ this life I could not see, this wasn’t me this wasn’t my life and I was determined to return to my beloved James. When I’d close my eyes I’d think of that place hanging on my wall, I’d see his face and my love would rain through for he my love I missed so dearly, so close in reach but yet so far. The bars within my cell held me tight not a movement made not a cellmate in sight. Kept alone I was isolated from the world a life sentence, eternity kept in the darkness. You’d think one could only bare so much before the corruption began but it was that image that vaguely hang on my wall that kept me strong. Each time I’d see more and more a further glimpse into how my life unfolded before this darkened hole.
I waited for my beloved to capture me in his gaze, in our place eager to see my love. Before I knew it, my body was tugged at and a fierce grip was tightened around me, I looked into his bare and lifeless eyes and in that mere moment, I saw my life as Evangeline crumble away. Limb from limb he tore, me and my body he left mangled in the forgotten place. My soul to never rest, imprisoned for eternity, under the devil’s command I would now obey. To relive life again, I would but for I am one in him. I venture to leave but fear for I cannot as my death holds on as my screams bellow through the mountain capes and never die out.