The Last Hope

Chapter II, The Tragedy

I woke up with a feeling of dread. I knew I had slept through something awful, just from the dream I had just before I woke up. I tried to remember what the dream was, but it escaped me. I couldn't recall. I pushed the thought aside, and convinced myself it was just another perfectly normal and happy day. I got up, heard a gunshot, and immediately jumped back in and threw the covers over my head. There were sounds coming from downstairs, I could hear my parents yelling at someone. This pattern continued for some time, with gunfire, and my parents trying to resist. I heard something fragile break, and my mother scream

When I started to go down the stairs, all I heard was the constant drip... drip... drip... of a faucet somewhere. "Mom? Dad? Where are you guys?" Usually, I could hear them hustling about in the kitchen even before I got to the top of the stairway, but now, silence. I looked everywhere inside, only to find the frequent bullet holes in the walls and floor. As I walked through the house, looking for my relatives, I was wondering, "What happened here?" That was one of my main questions. The windows were always open to keep the house cool. Now they were closed, and a few shattered on the ground. Maybe they were closed to keep something out. That would explain the bullet holes. But where were my parents? I decided to look in their bedroom, in case they were still asleep, or maybe just relaxing inside. I knocked on their door to see if they were there, but the door just drifted open when I touched it.

When I got to the front door, I immediately noticed that it was completely annihilated. It was in complete shambles, two of the three hinges torn out from the wall. Most of the door itself, although it was hollow and was made from tin, was torn to shreds. There were fragments scattered all across the entryway and even into the kitchen ten feet away. My mind started to race, trying to come up with some plausible explanation for these frightening things... and for my missing parents. I looked all around the perimeter of the house, and the thought struck me. My parents had been taken. I knew that whoever hated my family enough to attack us in our own house knew where we lived, so I knew I wasn't safe at my own home anymore. Knowing these things, I started packed up to go look for them and walked outside, when all of a sudden something horrifying jumped out of nowhere.

The thing charged, and I jumped to the side, getting my shirt torn like paper by one of this beast's horns. With dread, I realised that I could have been dead if my reflexes had been any slower. This creature kept moving forward from momentum even after it had passed me, and it crashed into a wall of my house. There was a strange metallic clang, and for a moment, there was nothing, and only dust and debris were moving. A can of peaches rolled out from the wreckage, along with several apples. In the dim morning light, I could just make out the shape of the rising bull. Then, it charged again from the rubble that was once the food pantry. It was then that I did something I didn't think was possible. I let myself fall onto my back on the ground right as the beast reached me, and as it ran right over my stiff, frightened self, I grabbed onto its neck. Again, it kept moving after it thought it had passed me, and it hit a small tree. There was another almost metallic noise, and the wood splintered and snapped. One of the larger pieces got lodged into my right shoulder. After a few moments, and what I was sure as the moment the bull realized I was underneath it, this creature started jumping and crashing about, trying in vain to knock me loose from its stomach. Several times, I nearly fell off and got trampled, and only by a miracle did I keep my grip. I knew my right arm was useless for fighting, so I tried to get my knife loose with my good hand.

Using one arm to get the knife weakened my grip enough that I was thrown clear of where this monster was still bucking and kicking. I landed on my back, almost hitting the house, the wind knocked out of me. I reached back into my pocket for my knife- but there was no knife. It had flown out of my pocket when I was catapulted away from the monster. Luckily, the adrenaline the fight had given me helped reduce the pain of my shoulder wound. I then realised that if that piece of wooden shrapnel was sharp enough to bury itself into me, then it should be fine to help me in this life-or-death conflict. The horned beast had not noticed that I was gone yet, so I had time to stagger to my feet and prepare myself for ripping out the large wooden chunk- bigger than my knife- from my dominant arm. With a quick jerk, I pulled and got the shrapnel free. It was the most painful thing I had ever experienced before. My vision blurred, and I almost blacked out. I keeled over, clutching my stomach, and vomited from pain.