Once upon a crime.
Dug under the Thyme
No matter how hard I shouted, no one was ever there to answer to my cries of help.
I felt lost, so lost. I am lost somewhere. Being lost is, after all, "To be left alone". Granted, that I am not totally alone. But I do am lost, nevertheless.
My head is heavy from it, as my heart and my feet when I walk. I feel a constant heft on my shoulders.
I am fighting against invisible enemies or even against myself.
I must survive, but why?
I must be brave, but to what end?
So many unanswered questions twirling in my head whenever I hit the sack to sleep that I pass roughly half of my night thinking, and the other half truly sleeping.
Bu yet, inside, I got a strong conviction that I am doing the right things. That propels me, which hold me together. That, despite I felt like I am walking on a tight rope. More over one that I can't see because I am caught in a foggy place, a thick fog stirring over. Sometimes, I see more. Other times I see less. That rope is part of a network of them. Where I will end up depends, thus, on each decision I am taking. I knew it. I fear to drop and fall without the reach of hope.
I briefly had my eyes on a newspaper. They made a link between the body they found in the trash (the one that they thought was me) and the trace left by the abductor in my bedroom. They established that one was the mother, the other the daughter.
This pricked me, so I asked my sisters if they were having any other siblings. They were all categorical at negating it. I would have asked more questions to my sisters of fortune, but during that night, Queeny had her kittens.
All went all right. She had seven of them. She broken each pouch and they searched and found the teat immediately after. Seven fluffy wet balls of fur, we were at naming them when Mother erupted into our room.
She did a lot of bizarre things since I was sheltered her, but that very early morning; she hit a new high score on my scale of awfulness. What she was about to make us do was to haunt me for years to come.
"Now, What is all that noise about?" she shouted, all reversed at seeing us all crouching around the she-cat and playing with the kittens.
"Queeny had her kittens!" We all exclaimed at about the same rate.
Kara was held behind, but she soon joined us in the rejoyement.
"Perfect!" declares Mother without a trace of emotion. That was as dried as it could be."Now that you experienced what giving birth looks like. How painful it can be, you learned all you needed to learn from them." She added, taking one of them in her hand.
Queeny's ears gets horizontal and she emitted an odd growling.
For a moment, Mother manipulated the kitten like she was petting it. But, suddenly, we heard a 'crack'.
We froze in what ever movement we were at.
We gasped with difficulties to grasp the unthinkable. Queeny reacted faster than we did. She hissed grabbed the one left to her and she fled her offspring in the mouth.
All the events after went faster. We all covered the kitten we had already in hand and we ran to escape Mother reach.
"Strangle them or I'll strangle you myself!"She snarled.
My heart skipped a beat when I realized I obeyed to that order. It pinched. I thought I was the only one to have done it in that commotion. The only one that had snapped.
I kneeled, feeling the lifeless body in my hands. I filled up with remorse. But yet, I had no time to think of it. My hands acted on their own.
Mother was all in congratulation toward Kara and me. No matters how hard the other girls tried to comfort me, I felt pitiful. I lost my appetite.
Mother forced food into my throat, but I was unable to swallow it.
This sentiment became stronger when she made us buried the animals beneath the thyme.
The night after, I was sick.
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