La Mort et ses Merveilles ✔

1. Memento Mori

La Mort et ses Merveilles

Chapter 1: Memento Mori

All that is living will cease to live, that is just a fact of life that we must accept. But when someone is taken away from you so violently, so suddenly -acceptance is just something we don't want to think of.

I will never forget those sunken eyes staring intently at me. His hands were trembling, his finger on the trigger. The barrel of the gun pointed directly at me. The only sounds to be heard was the howling of the wind against the wooden shutters and my raspy breath. My heart thumped in my chest. The tears began to fill my eyes, clouding my vision. This was it, I was going to die.

The young man who stood before me gun in his hand, aimed at my head. One shot from that thing and I would be gone. If I was lucky, he'd shoot me in the head, ending me once and for all. Or it could as well land in my chest and leave me to bleed out. Either way I was pretty sure he was going to kill me.

Dad lay in front of me, motionless. The blood pooling on the floor around him. I watched him as he took his final breath, his dead eyes staring directly at me. What have we done wrong? What sins have we committed? I never understood. In a flash this monster took the man who had raised me away from me with just one pull of a trigger. I couldn't even rush over to comfort him in his final moments as he let out the last few breaths of life, as the dark crimson blood began to flow out of his mouth, running down his chin. His blood staining his shirt in a sea of red. The monster didn't shoot him once, no –three shots. Three shots to the chest. It's almost as if he wanted him to die.

I'll never forget that monster. His deep blue eyes glaring at me with evil and hate. His chiselled chin, and the scruffy excuse of facial hair that covered it. He wore a deep blue hoodie and grey cargo pants, and carried a backpack. A grey beanie hid away his dark brown hair. As our gazes met, at that moment I was pretty sure I was staring into the face of death itself.

And it was that moment Isabella began to cry.

The murderer frowned.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

He motioned me with his gun to move aside.

"It's my little sister," I blurted out, the tears streaming from my face. "She's just ten years old please don't hurt her!"

"Move," he ordered, shoving the gun in my face.

I complied, but I stood nearby. My heart thumping, and my breathing shaky, I was prepared. If he did anything to harm Isabella I was going to lunge at him. I don't care if I died, if it meant my little sister could live.

The man opened the closet and there stood my little sister, her face sticky with tears and her cheeks red. She looked at the man, before turning to look at me with her wide eyes. Paralysed with fear.

"Please don't!" I begged. "If you want to, kill me, just don't hurt her!"

Grunting, the young man motioned Isabella over to me. She ran over, clutching onto me with such force that I nearly fell. I pushed her behind me, shielding her with my own body. Even if I die tonight, I did so knowing that at least my little sister was alive because of me.

The man took his gun and pulled it up directly to my face. This was it. He was going to kill me for sure. I looked down and my sister, and gave her a small reassuring smile. At least the last thing I wanted her to remember by the way she made me smile. I loved her.

It was then when Isabella spoke up.

"Please," she said, her whimpering, shaky voice breaking the silence.