Mist (youngwritersshortstory)

Mist Part 2

                  Fifteen years old, and finally free. She ran faster than she ever thought she could, running like she was going to nirvana, which she thought she was, but it was more like she was running away from something. And that something was following her. An AMBER Alert had been put out and Pritchett and the whole ten-officer squad were out there, searching for her.

                  Bella had collapsed, and with her, the marriage. Keith appeared indifferent; he long predicted that this would happen. But of course, he had kept that to himself.

“How could you not tell me what she had said?” Bella screamed in between her weeping fits.

“Oh come on, it’s not like there weren’t other signs!” He yelled back.

“But we tried, we sent her to goddamn Dr. Sanders three times a week!” Bella said, gesticulating at air.

Keith grabbed her waving arms and pulled her into his.

“I know,” he said, with one arm idly stroking her back. “I know.”

“This is it, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

*

                  Nine years had past, nine years spent in confinement; the greenest thing being the plastic pot plant used to decorate rooms, trying to imitate the glorious life that was seemingly forbidden in the city. But not anymore. And even though with those nine years memories had started to fade, nothing could rob her from the seared image of her home. And so she returned, to the berry-like cones that adorned the shrubs and the deep green leaves attached to crooked arms beckoning her home.

                  Nothing could ever compare to this. And when the night fell silent, her parents had arrived. Not men of flesh with tools and clothes, but those that comforted her: the warm mist that engulfed her, and the moon above; protector.

                  But it was never as simple as that. Pritchett soon found her, and was swiftly followed by scores of legmen. Stories about her filled the papers once more, with headlines screaming to people that the “MISSING NATIVE AMERICAN ORPHAN FOUND AT SITE OF ABANDONMENT.” News anchors, therapists, picketers on the street tried to contact her, get her home; but she just bared her teeth and growled, because they fear what they don’t understand, and they would never understand her.

        Years went by, but she found her way back, and soon they got the message. Bella and Keith had moved on to the next dirt-cheap town. Pritchett had retired. And her, well, she just retreated further into the forest of those northern hills, far away from civilization and the stir it brings. But she was never forgotten. Children grew up, raised their own. Those who had been classmates said it with honour, not disdain, for as wild as she was, she was always free. And from it arose the legend of the woman in the mist.

Total word count: 1063 words. 

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