1- The Beginning
944 Words
My name is Meadow-Rose, I'm almost 18, and my loving Father, me and my 3 older brothers are on the run from an unknown evil force, always hopping from city to city, even moving to different countries. Never planting any roots or making any connections with other humans.Though my Father never tells me why we run I know to listen; as whoever it is, already has my Mother. All I wish for is to stop running, live a normal life, fall in love, build a life! But there's a strange feeling building inside me, like a small fire slowly rising and I don't know why but I think our next move is going to change everything.
1. The Beginning
We've been running for as long as I remember. Never staying in one place for too long, definitely not long enough to make friends, to even really meet anyone. I mean, I turn 18 in three weeks and I've never had one friend, not a one, I've never even been on a date. My father would always say "Never get too close, they could be the enemy, to be close to anyone but you're family is a weakness and we can have no weak links, they cannot find us" I've heard this too many times to count, to the point where I could recite this to my Father before he even had time to say it himself, he would smile, a sad smile and nod his head slowly "i'm glad you understand My Rose, I wish it wasn't this way."
I haven't thought about that in a while, and remembering his nickname for me pricked tears in my eyes. You see my Mother and Father couldn't decide on a name for me at birth. My Mother, I should mention first that me and my siblings are the product of two earth child hippies, lovers and protectors of nature so we all have nature related names, My Mother wanted Meadow as I was born at a time of struggle in the family and she saw me as the calm serene Meadow in the middle of an unforgiving and wild woodland and when My Father held me for the first time he called me his little Rosebud and subsequently wanted to call me Rose for similar reasons as my Mother had. They could not decide and so they turned too their three Sons; the eldest, Forest and the middle twins River and Reed who decided that I would be called Meadow-Rose.
I don't remember much about my Mother, only what my Brothers have told me, Forest would say that she was flighty, anxious to keep moving very confrontational and not very Motherly but once she had a goal she was so passionate about it, like and snake she would lunge and not let go until she got what she wanted. River and Reed didn't like to talk about her, maybe because they don't remember much about her like me, or because the memories they have aren't too great. Father would tell us all that she loved us fiercely but she had her problems, he would say she always struggled to get that mother/child relationship with us and after my birth grew more and more distant, withdrawn. It wasn't long after my 3rd birthday that she was taken.
Just before my birthday she apparently got extremely paranoid that the entity that we where running from was close, unable to cope with her own mind playing tricks on her and the constant threat we were under she stole a neighbours minivan, brought it home in the dead of night and quietly moved each one of us kids into the car as to not wake us up, how she did this I will never understand as we are all very light sleepers, taught to always be alert. However Reed remembers waking up being in the car with Mother hushing him quiet when he tried to ask what was happening, he said that he doesn't remember much other than her crying and profusely telling him that she was sorry she held his face in her hands and he doesn't remember what she was saying, but her lips where moving at an incredible speed with words he couldn't quite understand her eyes darted to look out the back window in the car and her eyes, terrified fixed onto something in the dark coming towards them. Her lips moved faster and Reed started to feel strange, he said it was like he as exhausted, so sleepy. She then turned back to Reed, kissed him on the head and said "I knew it" then it went black.
We all woke up in the car a full twenty four hours later, dazed, confused and freezing. We were buckled into the seats all the windows were broken, front seats torn up, wing mirrors torn clean off but we were unscathed. Forest was the last of us to wake, we were crying and screaming for Father and Mother but no one came. Forest let us out of our car seats and anxiously carried me out of the car and back into the house, searching for our parents. We found Father sitting in his office, behind his desk, facing the wall and he was not moving. Forest moved us into his room and told the twins to hide me and themselves. He walked back into my Fathers office to get a closer look at him, as he got closer hi worry grew, he couldn't tell if Father was breathing. He spun Fathers chair round to face him and saw no movement or reaction, until he touched his cheek...
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