Eight — Micro Chapter 11

Eight

Part 1. Micro Chp. 11

Somehow, it didn’t feel right leaving them, whether they were dead or not. However, what else could I do, finding Tom had to take priority over my grief. Besides, my mum would never forgive me if she knew I had abandoned him. I felt a twinge deep in my chest, a hollowness that wasn’t there before.

“Move!” I made my way around the other side of the kitchen, making sure I’d miss her body on the floor and found the door to the garage.

Somewhere in the dark in one of the boxes, was a wind-up torch my dad got as a present last Christmas from my nana. I suddenly realised, I hadn’t even thought if she was okay.

No, she’ll be fine, I thought. Nan lived off solar power, no risk of her getting electrocuted. “Stupid,” I mumbled in a weak reprimand to myself.

I turned my thoughts to the torch, remembering how we’d laughed about the weird present that she’d given to my dad. Nan, a stickler for energy conservation, thought he needed a lesson in moderation, probably due to the thousands of lights he strung around the house every year.

Dad, a person not open to life changing lessons stowed the torch in the garage, to spend the rest of its life in a box marked ‘charity shop’, along with a few other discarded presents he‘d received and no doubt forgotten about.

Without even realising, my mouth had formed into a smile. I rubbed it away with the sleeve of my coat, as though I‘d something dirty on my face that shouldn‘t be there. What right had I to smile. What would people think of me.

No, smiling was definitely out. Forever. I adjusted my face to match the soberness I felt inside and began my search.

Copyright © by Sarah Neeve

Eight, may not be copied, shared or unlawfully used without the prior consent of the author.

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