Left Alone

• Latoya Sullivan, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2017

Coldness slowly trickled down her cheek, like a speck of shine sliding down her face. The blend of mascara and tears slipped of her chin, falling like a raindrop to the ground. Her makeup smudged under and around her eyes, covered in tears. Her pale ruined face, only slightly visible, could be barely seen between the gaps, amongst the strands of her hair that was dangling over her face. An expression of sudden devastation, pain and horror was displayed on her face, and tears rolled down her pale cheeks. As she looked down, she saw a splat of blood across her white dress. Her parent’s blood. She went through a moment of horror as she was reminded of the few seconds when she witnessed her two parents fall to the ground after several bullets were fired. Her throat goes dry. Her heart slows down. She stops crying. She could hear a loud irritating noise, as her breathing slows, stopping for a split second. The noise finally stopped as her breathing speeds up to a normal pace, though mixed with the crying she had resumed. She was simply lost. Lost with words. With thoughts, feelings. She had to watch the two people she loved the most die. Gone forever.
It was pouring down rain. Her long black curls sat heavily on her shoulders and some started clinging to her skin. Her clothes, so damp and wet now, weighed her down, making her body become buried in the puddle of rain surrounding her. For several hours she sat there, her skinny knees digging into her forehead and her body shivering in the freezing rain. Her long dress was flowing around in the rising water, like flower petals surrounding her. The sound of gunfire was echoing in her ear. The sound that killed her parents. The sound between the life and death of her dead parents. The very sound that meant that at this very moment two corpses with bullet wounds lay dead on a cold steel tray in a quite dull room with an unpleasant smell, full of dead bodies. The single sound that will haunt her for the rest of her life.
Her parents are dead and now she is strapped down on a bed at a mental institution, her last memory being the awful cry she let out in the silence in the dead of night. Now dust hovered in the air, and marks wrap around her wrists in pain. There was no memory within her of her rather violent performance from last night. An outrage of screaming and scratching at walls, while strong men with blue uniforms pulled her away into her room. A room of emptiness and grey. The bed, a piece of rusty metal and a thin uncomfortable mattress, sat in the far side of this small room. The bare walls now appear with scratches near the door. From a night of screams and struggle to a morning of quiet and confusion. Then she hears voices again.