The Ghosts

Jaquelyne Frost

Colombia.

The girl was covered in red. 

It looked quite funny, actually. Like she was covered in paint. Cars would slow down to look at her. People would be laughing their heads off at her.

But it wasn't funny.

It wasn't funny at all.

She went into the pool of red liquid. To most, people would assume that it was a slaughter-house, but the three year old girl knew better. 

It was a Massacre. She would know. This place was a place of death, murderers, theives,

And soldiers. 

Columbia was a war zone. She would know. After all,

she grew up here.

She stared into the red pool. She heard the gunshots. She saw her face in the reflection of the red water.

She saw her tio's face. She saw when they dragged him off. She was when her madre fell to her knees, she saw when the planes came,

she saw everything.

The men saw her and laughed. They grabbed her arm and pushed her into the red water. They called her savage and bruja and whore and it kept on going on and on and on and on and on. She wanted to put her hands over her ears and scream as load as she could. When she got up, her blond hair was red, along with the rest of her. She walked through the mountains of bodies, through the red, and washed herself off in the river. Now she was cold and wet, but at least she wasn't red.

God, she hated that colour.

As she walked barefoot through the streets, it started to snow. She saw children, not much older than her self fighting over the crust of a single slice of bread. The Americans all laughed. Never had she felt so much hatred.

The girls saw movement. It was a conejo. Unusual for this time of year, it must be someone's pet. But she didn't care. She hadn't eaten in three days. As if she'd let food of any type pass.

She ran after the conejo, and caught it with her bare hands. The conejo was struggling, but in a single move, she broke it's spine and snapped it's neck. 

She was red again.

She put the conejo in her pouch she had recently aquired. She needed a new cuchillo though, and didn't have the time to make one.

She saw more bodies. 

One of them had a nice, warm fuzzy coat. 

It was much too big for the tiny girl, but she figured she could cut it up and share it with her sister.

They had cuchillos too.

But no more food.

She would have to take the long way. If she was seen with this, she could be killed in the quest to claim the items.

Jaquelyne Frost was three years old then. When she was four, she was taken and put into solitary confinement for sixteen months. When she returned, two months later, the soldiers returned, killing everything. Her madre told her and her hermanas and hermanos to run.

She never saw them again.

She was a child who was foreced to look after themselves from a much to early age. By the age of two and a half, she was picking pockets and locks, stealing and hunting small creatures. The first dead body she could remember was her brother's. She never asked for this. But Jaquelyne didn't have a choice. She was born into this world.

She was unlucky. 

Translation:

Madre - Mother

Tio - Uncle

Bruja - Witch

Conejo - Rabbit

Cuchillo - Knife

Hermanas - Sisters

Hermanos - Brothers

Pronounciation:

Bruja - Bru-hah

Conejo - con-e-ho

Cuchillo - Cu-key-yo