Short stories

Number one

My legs are aching, my chest hurts so much, my mind is beginning to crumble, and my will is beginning to fade. Ever so slightly. Every day.
I am running.
I am running from the demons of my past and the demons of my future. Not a lot of us notice but, we're all running from something.
And we all struggle to relate.
There's the smell of burnt coffee in the kitchen. There are clothes thrown everywhere, the tv's on but there's nothing playing. It's cold, it's so cold but it's even colder in the back of my mind. There's a child who's just barely three. Just barely being able to speak and walk with eyes that only showed innocence, being cradled in a crib or somewhere wrapped up in a bundle of blankets. There's a mother who's nineteen, almost twenty. It's just them two now, against the world together, and somewhere there's a man who made a mistake. I imagine flashing lights of red and blue, a chaotic scene of men with guns, yelling, there's people crying, running, and someone dying.
I'm glad I wasn't there.
There's a lot left to understand. That child now almost an adult, asking questions they'll never get answers to and they know that. It's crazy how easily a man can be consumed by evil and how easily a child can unknowingly follow suit and its crazy how easy this story is going to form on paper, it's so easy to write about pain, now happiness is the real challenge. I applaud you if you can write about happiness, as well as if others were writing about sadness. That's a gift right there.
Time has passed and that man who had made a mistake earlier, made yet another. Not so big but not so small either. He's gone now, fading from the memories of those who once trusted him and who once cared. It's so easy to lose someone's trust or just someone in general and those are things that are so hard to get back. The man spoke words that I thought were true and I was so quick to forgive and forget even though I didn't know exactly what I was forgiving nor forgetting. His words to me were truthful and kind. They were filled with hope and soon those words filled me with the same hope but, the evils that once consumed that man were not gone.
No, because once you dance with a demon, you are bound to dance with the devil.
He was dancing with the devil but did not know it. He was a puppet. That's what I always thought, I tried, and I still try, to find a reason as to why he chose to dance with the devil and not an angel. I question if I was even enough, for the man had lost two angels that day, the day when the child was three and the mother only nineteen. A person's mind can be so fragile, and so can their heart. That a single memory that can't even be remembered can shape someone and change them forever. It doesn't take much to break a person and it doesn't take much to create baggage.
When a person breaks a promise, if you listen close enough, you can hear their heart begin to break. Clearly the man wasn't listening close enough to the sound of the, once three-year-old, child's heart breaking. Not only their heart but their mind. It's as simple as words. You don't need a hammer to break a rock. If you climb a mountain and let go, the fall alone will break it. Same with a heart. You can smash it right then and there or you take it on a journey, and trust me, that's the worst. To raise something up and watch it fall.
Seven years later, the heart and mind are still mending. The man left but another person came into place and filled the role that was missing. Sometimes when someone leaves, another person comes into your life and they fix you. Not right away but, it always happens, you must wait. When I was younger, love to me was roses and chocolates on any given day. I was still young and unexperienced. As you get older love becomes much more than a phrase. It becomes a person, family, or even an object. It becomes deeper than the four-letter word it is. It's hard to find sometimes, because, one day you can think you found love and it can seem so real but sometimes the realist things aren't. It's a game of give and take, you're just flipping the cards trying to find a match. You're wrong until you're right.
-Nico