Supper

[Jaycy Ashleana]

My inner scream hasn’t stopped since the day.

Turbulent, swirling threads of horror confine me as I remember the world crashing, smashing down upon my daughter’s head. I was a shopkeeper and the most rare being in the old time. I was a native-born human scraping by to make a living, happily married to one man and the mother to one precocious angel of a scamp who had grown into a gracious young lady.

We were settling down to supper, a late event in our household. The typical buzz of the city thrummed weakly through the walls of our upstairs apartment; the store’s building clung to the outer reaches of the Marketplace and survived off of the nouveau riche – the demi-gods and vampires who feasted off the souls and blood of the not-so-lucky citizenry that lacked supernatural powers or high technology.

Those same suddenly-affluent paragons of excess were tramping and traipsing to the Governor’s Ball, a conceit of impotent figurehead Matthew Algiers Simon. We were near enough to the festivities to hear it as we sat at table to partake of our dragon chili but not so near we would be unable to sleep from the nuisance of revelry.

The droning stilled for a brief moment before it resumed, suddenly rising to a crescendo; within a matter of seconds the cornbread platter rattled from one end of the table to crash onto the floor with a tinkling that indicated its shattering. The chili pot thudded from the stove in our little kitchen shortly thereafter, splattering a violent painting of red-brown all across the floor and cabinets, a monstrous design foreshadowing the hell that would immediately descend upon us.

Arelia screeched; that is the piercing cry I hear every moment of my current life, trapped in this cell. She lurched from her chair, stammering something about saving the horses, and scrambled from the apartment. We had no chance to stop her, no chance to convince her that her life, as sad as it sounded, was more important than that of some animals.

No sooner had she closed the back door behind her did the wall slam down between us. The rain – or rather, the solid sheet of icy water – crashed through our little area hard. We only had time to hear an echo of her screech before she was taken away, lost in Sanyumato’s fury.

I saw it all from my window, at least what I could through the water. I screeched too. The deluge lasted only a few moments over our home, our lives, but it was too long, too quickly done, too violent to save her.

I went mad; I will admit to that. I threw myself out of the window; I hurled myself outside to grab her before she could be swept away from me forever. My fingers stretched wide in the rushing frigid rush of liquid to grasp at her, at anything. I rode the tide, gasping for life-saving air, and felt those fingertips brush against silken threads. My scream took water into my lungs, disturbed my concentration, made me cough. I reached harder, I closed first one hand and then the other around the silk so that I could bring her back to me.

We shifted from city area to city area in the flood, blind and unresisting of wherever the water might take us. Arelia could not reach for a branch, a pole, an anchor to ground us and I could not release my grip on her silk for terror of losing her again.

Finally, though, the water slowed, and rested more shallowly, and we were allowed to ease to solid ground once more. Only then did I let my precious daughter go and stand. I looked down to her, saw her lay still. I tried to help her up ….

She was gone, dead. Her life was destroyed by my very own hands; in seeking to keep her close, I threw her away. I screamed with the realization. My scream continued when they found me, and arrested me, and soldiered until my voice could no longer carry the sound. Then, the screaming went inside my own head.

They’re coming to kill me now. Thank God.