Hers

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Sam was gone when I woke up.  The sheets where he once laid were still ruffled and his light still seemed to make everything glow.  He hadn’t been gone long, but nevertheless, he was gone.  The mere thought made me want to pull the covers up to my chin and not awaken until he was here again.  I couldn’t do that though, so I threw the covers away, destroying the indentations that he had left and forcing me to begin the day.

It was hot already, the sky reflecting my mood, dark and gloomy.  I took a bowl from the cabinet and poured some cereal and milk.  Sitting down at the table, my thoughts began to wander to the same territory they had a thousand times before.  To my life before.

I remember one time when it had rained for days.  No sunlight, barely stopping, thunder, lightning, the whole shebang.  I have always loved a storm.  But one night, it got particularly bad and thunder shook the windows and lightning illuminated everything, my mother ushered me into the bathroom and my father gathered up flashlights and blankets.  We all gathered on the floor in the bathroom with the family dog at the time, Simon, I think his name was.  Anyway, my dad turned off the light and I screamed, terrified of the dark, but my mother just clicked on a flashlight and shushed me softly.  Then my dad wrapped a blanket around us and pulled out a book.  A little chapter book, nothing major, I don’t even remember the name of it anymore.  My mother pulled me into her lap and shone the light on the page.  She started reading and never stopped, not even when the thunder sounded like a baseball connecting with a bat or when the lightening made lights shine under the door.

My mother read to me until I began to grow weary.  Then, she filled the bathtub with blankets and pillows and tucked me in.  They stayed by my side, listening as the wind made the windows on the other side of the door whistle and the rain pounding down on the roof.  Even the dog was quiet, listening as the monster of a storm passed over us.

I tended to go back to that moment whenever the skies were grey like this, with clouds tall and threatening to suffocate everything beneath them.  I thought about how my father cared enough to turn the lights out before the storm could do it and how my mother read to me to distract me from the storm.  To me, storms weren’t instruments of chaos and fear, they were the warm blankets my mother would wrap me in after we had been caught in the rain, they were campouts in the bathroom and extended story times, they were reminders of something that had more control than anything else in the world.

I placed my empty bowl in the sink and left it there to be washed when I didn’t feel so drained of everything.  Outside, the lightening turned everything an electric blue for a fraction of a second until it retreated back up into the sky.  At least now, the temperatures would begin to fall.

There was a crack of thunder and a loud banging noise on my door.  I screamed, startled by the loud knock.  Gathering my wits, I made my way to open the door.

On the other side, Sam stood with water dripping from his hair.  He stepped inside quickly with bags in one hand and a pet carrier in the other.

“What is that?”  I asked, pointing down to the pet carrier he sat down.

“This,” he said with a massive smile, “is your guardian.”  He opened the little door to reveal an orange and white cat with orange eyes that sliced through me.  It hissed, and darted from the kennel to underneath the couch.

“A cat is supposed to guard me?”  I asked.  Sam nodded and laid the bags down on the table.  He pulled out a cat bowl and a small bag of food.  “So does it turn into a lion or something?”

Sam chuckled and handed me a little blue collar.

“He’s been charmed by a witch,” he explained.  “As long as he’s in the house, he’ll keep unwanted spirits away.”