Family Short Story – Red Sky
Photo credit: mvictor from morguefile.com
I was just taking a walk that day and for as long as I have been living there, I knew that life in that place was nothing very amazing. I had left the house thinking I was taking one of those walks before lunch that was absolutely sundry. My wife and I had just fought in the morning. I felt suffocated while she just stood with her back to me and made me lunch. I had to get out and frankly, I was quite tired of our usual pan-breaking.
I passed by the shops and the florist’s. I dazed at the gardenias and thought about getting them for my wife to make nice. But then I thought about all the awful things she had said that so I left them there. I was walking towards the old card shop when a young girl ran by me very quickly. I entered the shop and looked around. It was one of my favorite places. The very smell of the vintage made me feel better.
“Another one for the missus then?” the owner, Jimmy, asked me and I smiled and said that I didn’t need one. I was looking around the shelves when I noticed the same girl again. I saw from the window, rushing past moving cars dangerously. I rushed out to find her but the minute I got my eyes off her, she disappeared. I asked a few people around where she might be and I was failing miserably.
I walked about half a mile to find her in a park. She was dressed in a plain purple dress with a black bow on her head.
“Hey, little girl,” I asked her. I saw her backing away, startled, as I approached her but I was reassuring her that I was going to do no harm. “Are you lost?”
She shook her head and wanted me to mind my own business but in some sort of way, she wanted me to help her. She could not have been more than six years old and I was afraid she had lost her way.
“Are you lost? What is your name?” I asked and she didn’t answer.
She turned away and looked at the sky as if she had found what she was looking for. She started to follow it and I began to follow her. She was focused on a balloon that was floating in the wind. It wasn’t floating on its own but was being blown away by the force of the wind.
I kept following her only to know if she was safe. I followed her far and she did not seem to care that I was on her trail because she was determined to catch that balloon. It was red in color and looked like a dot of color in the gray sky that day.
I stopped for a while to catch my breath and even as I did, she was running. I looked to the ground and then towards her path and she disappeared again. My heart started to feel anxious for I was worried she might get herself hurt. I started to run again but I failed to find her. Every second was feeling shorter. I had to find her.
I would call out her name if I knew what it was. I was worried more about her than anything or anyone I ever did. I looked about everywhere with horror and hope– horror that the worst had happened and hope that everything was alright. I was focusing my tired eye at towards the grave plainness of the place when I heard the shrillest cry ever.
It was the girl’s and I followed her voice.
She was over by the edge of the park, trying to climb the fence that separated the river from the park. She was broken. Her dress all muddy and her hair dishevelled. Her heavy voice summoned me to her and I held her in my arms. She was crying profusely and shaking. Her cries were heartbreaking and I was doing all I could to stop her from crying. She was trying to reach out to the fence. I noticed her extending her arm towards a piece of red hanging on the edge of the fence. It was the balloon that she was chasing. The pointed edges of the fence had burst the balloon; reducing it to nothingness. I removed the piece of balloon from the fence and handed it over to her. She put it to her cheek and kissed it and cried.
“No, no. Please, no,” she was crying to the balloon.
“What has happened? Please tell me, dear?” I asked her as I tried to calm her down.
“The balloon… it… it…” she was trying to speak past her tears. “The balloon… my mother…”
“We’ll find her, okay? Do not worry,” I was trying to reassure her.
She looked at me with the most painful eyes ever; swollen with unspeakable sorrow. “My mother… died yesterday. And this balloon… she gave this to me, it… had her last breath in it.”
I don’t know what it was but my heart melted. Not melted. It shattered. It ruptured. I saw her break down and found myself doing the same. It were the little things that mattered and I felt absolutely devastated.
“Where were you?” my wife said, furiously for I was way too late for lunch; I wasn’t even hungry anymore. “Wha… what is this for? Are you alright?” she said as I handed her the gardenias. And I broke down in her arms.
__END__
