My Beautiful Phantom

“Daddy, what’s going on!” tears rolled down my face, as he set me back onto my feet in the middle of the woods.

He was looking around the forest, like someone was following him. He crouched down so he was looking me in the eyes; I wasn’t a short person but neither was he. He gripped my shoulder tightly, not so they hurt but so I knew the seriousness of the situation.

 “Phe, I need you to listen to me. Just listen all the way until the end, okay?” he asked, sounding a little rushed.

I nodded my head, taking a little comfort at his nickname for me.

“Phe, I’ve raised you to know the dangers you would one day face. I raised you to know all possibilities and all solutions I could possibly think of, and I was raised the same way. But the danger I’ve been teaching you to prevail, to stay away from has come here and one of us is not going to make it.”

 He took a pause for breath, and I knew exactly what he was talking about, and that just made me shake harder.

“Daddy, what do you mean one of us—“

“Phoenix, please you have to listen to me.”  I nodded my head, due to the urgency that was seeping from him to me by the second.

“Daddy isn’t going to be here anymore.  I’ve taught you soundly in what we have to live with, you know it all and do not need me anymore.”

“But daddy I do—“

“Phe, please; you have to listen!” his urgency faltered, and as he continued with a fresh breath he spoke in a whisper.

“You remember how I told you never to tell anyone our secret that it was special and we had to protect it?”

I nodded, remembering that day. I had been four, and so happy daddy trusted me with something that only we would know about.

“Well now you need to protect our secret. You have to protect it so you can protect yourself. Promise me, Phoenix please promise me you will never tell anyone.”

“I promise.” Tears, rolling from his face and mine.

“I love you, Phe. Don’t forget that.” He hugged me close.

“I love you too, daddy.” He put a backpack onto my shoulders, it wasn’t very heavy but had some weight to it.

The sounds of feet were coming fast and loudly near and an urgent feeling shattered through our final parting.

“Run. Phoenix, run as fast as you can and don’t stop until you get into a town far, far away. Get someone to connect you to your mother, her information is in your backpack, now run.” He pushed me lightly, and with a blurred vision I turn and ran between the trees.

As I ran, and stumbled through the forest and between the trees I looked back once, once long enough to see my daddy, my mentor, my guardian turn and black figures I had been fearing my whole life, black figures I couldn’t clearly see from here came at him like a cheetah to an elk.

I turned, just before I could see anything happen to hum. Unwilling to witness that happen to my daddy. I never looked back again.