Ancil“The door was locked,” Rajiv said. “That means that they are probably safe, right?”
Megan then pointed to a huge hole in the wall situated to the extreme left of the house. We couldn’t have noticed it from the front because it was at the side. The chairs were blackened and broken into pieces, pounded down with huge bricks that fell on top of it. Megan looked outside the huge hole in the wall with no expression on her face, but the tears were visible. She seemed more interested in figuring out what happened in the house and finding her family than mourning. But that didn’t last very long. After a few minutes of searching the house, her legs began to buckle beneath her. She then dropped to her knees so hard that I worried that she had broken her knee caps. Her head and demeanor fell and she shouted agonizingly. “They killed them!! They killed my mother and my sister. Those monsters killed my family!”
She let out a loud scream then fell over on her face. Rajiv instantly ran to her side and tried his best to comfort her. I, on the other hand, was really concerned about what had happened. I assumed Megan and Rajiv needed some time to themselves, so I wandered through the house. There were no bodies around. I explored the house in search of any kind of evidence of the slaughter, but there wasn’t any. Maybe they had taken Megan’s mother and sister away. A wide range of bizarre thoughts flooded my head, but I refused to believe any of them. Even though I had only just met Megan, I couldn’t stand knowing that her family was dead as well.
I knew exactly how it felt to lose loved ones, so her feelings were ones to which I could have related to. My mother died while she was giving birth to my little sister. I didn’t know what caused the complications, but they were fatal. My little sister lived a healthy life, but when she was six years old, she died during a hurricane while at school. My father sued the school, but nothing came out of it. That happened two years ago, and since then, I could have seen the change in my father. He rarely talked about it, but there were times when I caught him staring at photos of her for hours. Who could blame him? She was his little angel. It was definitely a sad end for my father but also a sad end for me, the fact that I lost everyone I called family. Everyone. It didn’t stop me, however, from having hope that maybe Megan’s little sister and mother were alive. I kept searching but couldn’t find anything, not even a trace of blood.
While searching, my hunger began to consume me. Only then I remembered that I had a bag full of goodies in the van that I couldn’t wait to enjoy. I went into the kitchen, grabbed whatever cup I could find, and filled it with water to fill the void in my belly. After I was finished drinking, I noticed that I was standing in a puddle of water that seemed to be getting bigger by the second. It seemed to be coming from the small cupboard below the sink. Maybe the source of the leak could have provided some clues to what happened. I opened the cupboard and saw a little girl hunched up under the sink near a leaking faucet with her face against the back wall. I heard a small screech come out as she twitched a little when she realized she was found. She probably thought that I was going to hurt her.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt you,” I assured her.
She slowly turned and watched me in my face. I could have seen the innocence in her big brown eyes. I could have also noticed that she was definitely Megan’s sister, just from how she looked. I couldn’t tell exactly how old she was, but she seemed to be around eight. Probably nine.
“Can I come out now?” She asked.
“Yeah, it’s safe now for a while,” I responded. “Your sister is Megan?”
She nodded her head.
I then shouted out to Megan and Rajiv to come into the kitchen. They quickly ran in.
“Look who I found,” I said boastfully. My find was probably enough for me to get a few points from Megan. Maybe it was enough to get a hug.
It wasn’t.
“Melanie!” Megan shouted in joy. She then ran up to her little sister and embraced her. Melanie accepted the hug with open arms but looked a bit uncomfortable with her sister’s hug after a while. Megan was squeezing a little too much, but it was tough love, I guess.
“Megan, I can’t breathe,” Melanie uttered with as much breath as she could have stomached.
Megan apologized and released her grip.
“You okay?” Megan asked Melanie.
“I think so,” Melanie responded. “Where’s mommy?”
Megan looked back at Rajiv and me as if she was expecting us to answer the question.
“I don’t know. I would have thought you’d know,” Megan said to Melanie.
“She told me to hide in the cupboard and not to come out for any reason at all,” Melanie cried. “I was hearing screaming and bawling outside, and I got scared. I didn’t know what to do.” She fell onto her sister’s shoulder and cried, “I couldn’t save mommy.”
