Haunted Luck.

• Eleisha Perrett, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2009

I was a three year old girl. I look at myself in the mirror and I see a 2 foot girl with brown curls and baby blue eyes standing before me. She is wearing a dress that drags along the ground and has chest holes that are way to big for her. She wore a pair of prada heels that were way to big for hers. In her left hand she held a teddy bear. She carried this bear everywhere with her. This girl would be me. My name is Amy. I love to dress up in my Mums clothes and I love having tea parties with MR. Bear.
My family lived a good life. It was just me, my Mum and my Dad. My mum was so beautiful she always tied her short, brown curly hair up in a pony tail. She also had blue eyes and around her eyes she wore black eyeliner and mascara. My Mum would always wear the nicest, expensive clothes. She loved brand names such as Gucci, Prada etc.My Dad on the other hand was always about money saving. My Mum and Dad usually spent hours on a dreading fight about how much money my Mum had spent. But they would always end the fight holding each other in their arms and my Mum twirling a piece of dark black lock of my dad’s curly hair around her finger. And then they would always look into each others deep blue eyes. Focusing on all the good times they had together. Our family was a happy family.
The year the night mare happened I was just starting kindergarden.Not many people liked me there because I always hogged the dress ups.One day this guy named Billy got so annoyed with me he ripped MR. Bear to pieces. I was heartbroken. I felt as if I had lost my bestfriend.Mum would always drop me at kinder when the sun was just rising. As we drove in a little white buggy every morning in the sky you could see a round pink circle coming out of the sky. Mum had told me that it never stayed like that for long. She had told me as time goes by and the sun gets higher in the sky and the sun will change to a more yellowish color. And then at a certain time at night it would yet again set into its beautiful pink self. I was amazed by the detail, by the beauty of this sun. It made me smile and think about all the good times. Mum would usually pick me up from kinder at approximately 6 pm.When it was sometimes still bright but sometimes it was pitch black. Mum had told me this was because of daylight savings because it comes and it goes through different seasons.
Every night when Mum and I got home Dad would be in the kitchen cooking our favorite dinners. I would always run from the front door to the kitchen were Daddy was, with arms wide open and screaming “DADDY.” Dad would always be waiting for me at the end of the hall way. When I had reached him he would pick me up, spin me around then hugged me. My parents were such good parents they always thought about each other more then themselves. I guess you could say they were lucky they found eachother.So that’s what made it even more depressing that they both weren’t together to say goodbye.
The day of the dreadful Incident:
Mum had taken me to kinder garden like any other day. We both admired the sun. And Mum had said “It’s going to be hot one today.” As Mum turned on the radio we waited for the weather forecast to come on. As the man spoke I noticed that he had a funny voice, a voice that you wouldn’t hear on everyone. It was very individual. He had begun to say the weather forecast. “Today it is going to be a very hot 43 oC.I then tuned out from the radio and started out the window looking at the houses. Each house was different. Each house was a different colored houses , different roofs. Different everything. I than turned my head to face Mum and there was shocked look upon her face. She looked to be thinking so hard that her brain would explode if she thought any harder. Maybe there was something wrong but I was too young to understand at the time. Then the funny voiced man said “It is now a total fire ban.” “Mummy what’s a fire ban?” “It’s where you’re not allowed to light anything that requires fire.” We had now parked right out the front of my tiny kinder garden. I think there were only about 15 people attending my kinder garden at that time. But after this terrible disaster there were only 2. Mum and I sat in the car for a few mintues longer.
While my Mum was staring at the radio as if it was a real person talking to her. As I glanced upon her face she had her mouth open wide and her eyes were open and she hadn’t blinked in several mintues.I started to move my hand towards her and poked her arm. I think I startled her because she was so absorbed in her thoughts that she jumped when I touched her. As she got out of the car and walked around to my door to open it I asked her “Mum, Where’s Daddy working today?” “Marysville. His working on a person’s roof.” “Oh ok, what time is he coming home?” “Normal time. Im not sure sweetie.” I looked at my Mums face I knew something was wrong but I wasn’t sure what. She dropped me into kindergarden.And even something was wrong with the tachers.I went into the reading corner and read a book. I wasn’t quiet myself right then. I knew something was going on and I knew it was upsetting people but I didn’t know what. I sat there with my back against the wall and my legs up to my chest with my head and my arms resting on them. One of the kinder garden teachers finally came over to me tapped me of the shoulder and asked me if I was ok? I told her I was but I asked her if she knew what was going on. She said yes and told me “There are fires spreading all through out Marysville. And the winds are picking up and bringing the fires towards us.” I sat there for a few minutes thinking about what she had said.Hadnt Mum said that’s where Dad was working; in Marysville. I begun to feel pain in my chest, my heart was hammering against me. I couldn’t here anything but the beat of my heart beating 100 beats per minute. My eyes had begun to water. My face as burning up and I suddenly felt to hot and ill. Next minute I know I was laying head first in the ground.
I dreamt of puffy clouds, my Mum, Dad and me all happy all as we used to be. I than woke up to see that I was buckled into a chair with my Mum sitting right next to me, with a tear running down the side of her face, her eyes unbearably red. She sniffed every so often with her red eyes focused on the road.She had seen that I had woken up. “Oh good. Amy you’re alright. I have some bad news.” “Mum are you ok?” Her eyes had been inflating and were now flowing with tears more quickly. “It’s you father. He died on the roof at Marysville. There were leaves all through out the gutters of the home and the fire had trapped him on the roof and soon enough he was killed.” I felt myself stressing again but this time I begun to sweat. “Where are we going?” “We’re fleeing Amy. We have to get out of here.”
As we traveled for several hours east. There was no sign of anyone, no cars, and no people walking about. Mum drived slower and saw something burnt in front of her. She hoped out of the car and said “Stay here.” Once she was out of the car she was eager to see what the burnt thing in front of us was. She then looked at me with her mouth wide open. To me it looked like but bones. Then from her eyes I could see heavy drops fall from them. Then she turned around and behind her was a whole lot of burning red flames. As I had a closer look at the back of her she was on fire. I begun to cry and scream. I couldn’t look anymore. I covered my eyes mumbling to myself “I love you mum, I love you.” I finally looked up from my hands and there was nothing, nothing to be seen, no one in site .I sat in the car waiting, waiting for someone to come. I eventually fell asleep while crying my eyes out. I woke up the next morning to an ambulance man talking to me. “Are you ok?”
This was the worst day of my life. I am now 34 years old and I look much like my mother did. Even though this incident happened so long ago it is still fresh in my mind. Watching my mother die. It’s hard to think the worst can happen to the happiest of people. I will never forgive the person who started that fire. My life was saved but my parents weren’t. I consider my self lucky but haunted.