Sacrifice

• Elizabeth Lewis, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2009

everybody makes sacrifices.
I walked slowly to my desk, producing a beautiful knife. I slowly brought It across the tips of my fingers, drawing dark red droplets of blood. My usual ritual was to slice down my arms, trying to produce as much blood as possible, and then letting it drip down my fingertips and into a sacrificial goblet. My small contribution to the dark lord: blood of a virgin willingly given. But not tonight. Tonight I would make the ultimate sacrifice. I walked outside, checking my clock beforehand, almost twelve. I walked on, letting the wind caress my bare skin, the only thing that I bring with me was my beautiful knife, reflecting the moonlight with a calming, silver glow, still dripping blood. I stopped when I reached the hole. The gaping hole in the earth: a direct portal to hell, my heaven. Just as I was about to make the fatal step, images of pure happiness ran through my head, my future, and alive. The life that I would never get to live. Meeting a lover, bearing a child… I paused; being a devil sacrifice was a great privilege… Suddenly, another series of images ran through my head, images of the other women, who had started sacrificing themselves since Eve without question, I should do the same... but the thoughts of a happy life pushed back, until something snapped. I suddenly had my own life that didn’t feel like anyone else’s but my own. It was wonderful, like seeing the world for the first time, the moon was brighter, the hole was darker… a moan struggle up out of the great pit, it was one minute past twelve, the dark lord new that something had gone wrong, I had to flee. The devil wasn’t happy about being cheated of its prey, it would come after me, the chase was on.
I ran, my pale skin streaking across the black background. Whether I knew it or not then, that act of independence would change my life, a the lives of the people around me, forever.