Nyranna's Short Story Collection

Non Fictional Life Account Story

All the general fear I've been feeling condenses into an immediate fear of this girl, this predator who might kill me in seconds. Adrenaline shoots through me and I sling the pack over one shoulder and run full-speed for the woods. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hike the pack up to protect my-

I pause to let out a yawn, the wind coming from one of the open windows flips through the pages not held down by my hand across the book I have set on my dad's bed. I blink for a moment until my eyes clear away the wetness left by the yawn, and lay down on my side, listening to the sounds of splashing and laughter that filter through the opened window and feeling myself be rocked gently as waves hitting the side of my dad's boat causes it to sway.

I sit up and stretch, knowing that if I fall asleep now I'll be unable to sleep very well tonight, but still feeling unwilling to cast aside the idea of falling asleep as the spray of water from people's landings mists onto my face and the sunshine makes sure that the moisture isn't cold enough to make me uncomfortable, the two working together to create something almost irresistible. I ponder for a moment if I want to keep reading or go meet up with my sister in our room, but I decide to just pick up my dad's phone and start playing games on it instead.

As I shuffle through the deck of cards on my Solitaire game I wonder if I should try spending time with my cousins, who are making up most of the people that and jumping from the roof of the boat into the greenish waters on Smith's Bayou. As I continue to ponder on this, I hear another loud scream of laugher from outside, and decide that while I enjoyed the noise in the background, I don't know if I could handle being in the midst of it. I wonder for a moment if this makes me a shut in, but try to focus on my card game instead and not worry about it.

After a few consecutive losses, I set the phone on the dresser adjacent to the bed and picked up my book again, shuffling my feet and tangling them in the checkered quilt as I read on.

-my head. The blade lodges in the pa- I backtrack a little in confusion, lost as the immediate image of the scene had left my memory. I can hear the blade whistling toward me and reflexively hike the pack up to protect my head. The blade lodges in the pack. Both straps on my shoulders now, I make for the trees. Somehow I know the girl will not pursue me. That she'll be drawn back into the Cornucopia before all the good stuff is gone. A grin crosses my face.

My eyes glaze over, not able to focus on the words any longer, my mind drifts among topics until it settles on one I find interesting enough to pursue. I wonder if dad would be okay with my reading this book if he knew how brutal it got, he always tried to keep my mind safely in the experiences of what he had been exposed to as a child, which lead to me having to watch a lot of movies and shows that were too young in theme for me. However, while he was willing to sit down and watch an episode of a show he knew I liked to see if he deemed it acceptable, he didn't want to go through each book I read to make sure it was up to his standards.

I burned through books, always have. I couldn't remember a time when I went anywhere without a book kept in my hand, the crook of my arm, or tucked safely away in a nearby purse with a parent keeping guard of it. I could read a couple hundred page book in one month, which was a great source of praise from my elders, and because of that became a great source of pride for myself, and became one of the places my mind went to first whenever I wondered about the worth of my person.

Therefore, a direct result of this appetite for text was that I read so fast that my parents and relatives couldn't keep up with my current world of residence. Some of them expressed how they wish that they could talk to me more about what I was interested in, but while I always nodded along politely, I was secretly glad that I could horde those words close to myself, and I took a fierce pride in my selfish protection of each of my books.