Like Sheep...

Her eyes were the same color as the storm of the night she died. We thought the wind would pass through that afternoon, and settle in the eastern hills before the sun began to set. We were wrong. It carried into our village, from the spring of which all winds begin, their origin where animal like instincts are breathed into their strands, wild and relentless, evil. And though their temper was mild at first, brushing gently along our faces and playing with our hair as we worked in the garden, disturbing the leaves of the trees, there was malice and anger behind them, indwelling them, making them what they should have never been. It was almost like we could smell it- that evil, lingering so heavily in the air, almost like we could touch it with our hands, dusty and worn with earth. But we did not listen carefully enough to the warnings. The storm closed in around us like shadows at night, when all is still, and you can hear the sound of fear. The winds howled like a thousand wolves, ringing their haunting notes in the air, and letting them mingle with our own cries of distress and fright. We trembled like the trees out front as we listened from the cellar beneath the old, rustic house, which later, would not be standing so strongly; we had grown up there, the three of us- me, brother, and sister. We held each other together in a tight and constricting ball on the dusty floor, my face pressed into the baby-soft hair of sister, breathing the smell of soil and earth, and my hand resting atop the head of brother as he shook violently, as like the lamp above our heads, and the rows of jars filled with preserves which lined the shelves around us. I clutched the tiny forms of my brother and sister in utter refusal of allowing the twirling monster, in rage above us, to snatch them from my grasp. I could feel the warm tears on sister’s cheek as I brushed the matted hair from her face; it was then that she suddenly pulled from my hold and stood abruptly.
“The kitties!” she cried, above the scream of the storm, “we left the kitties upstairs! We hafta get the kitties!” With that, she rushed to the cellar door and unlocked the hatch before I could lift brother off my lap and stand. “No!” I shouted, so loud it made him cry. “No! Stay here!” Sister couldn’t hear me. Instead she left the cellar in a rush, toward the kitchen where we kept the kittens during the night. I followed after her, leaving brother by himself in the dark of the cellar, knowing he could not walk without help. So many images flashed before my eyes, that I could not see where I was going. I was dizzy. Confused. Afraid. I saw sister ahead of me, her tiny figure darting about and avoiding objects that were being thrown around us. She held her hands out in front of her, and reached for the kitchen door. “No!” I screamed again, until my lungs felt they were bleeding from the strength of my voice. I took hold of her wrist, but she quickly spun around and away from my grasp, into the kitchen. It was then that it happened. She entered the kitchen, but not too soon later did I see the wall break lose from its aging foundations, with the force of the angry wind behind it, and collapse in on her. I couldn’t see, the dust obscuring my vision. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t hear my own cry. I couldn’t hear hers. And I trembled at the image of her pulling away from my grasp on her life. She chose not to listen to me.

“We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” - Isaiah 53:6