Death
By: J. Annaliese Hawkins
Based on true events, (based is the key word here)
“Anna! Time to take care of the animals,” my mom reminded me.
“Alright!” I replied, irritated. I grudgingly put on my coat, checked for water containers (there was one) and grabbed the egg basket.
My mood changed dramatically as it often does when I step into the cheek kissing wind and dark starry night. I glided down the hill as if I was on a midnight stroll with some cute guy. (Nobody in particular was going through my head….)* Then, out of nowhere, death stared me in the eyes and smiled cruelly. The red eyes were piercing my soul like fiery darts of hades, snapping me out of my, I might say, lovely daydream.
I opened my mouth to scream, but found my voice choked up in fear. For once it had not been the goats that had scared me, but a large, fat, ugly, lopsided rat with red eyes. I looked around frantically to see if there was a stick or something I could use to scare it away, but to my avail I found nothing. Instead, I turned to my knowledge from reading lots of Nancy Drew books, and got ready to swallow my fear and make as much commotion** as possible.
Feeling uneasy, I slowly, but loudly, advanced.
........
............
.....
............
....................
.........
It was gone. I had only needed to stomp my feet once or twice and it wobbled off. I hadn’t wanted it to go into the coop so I looked around frantically using the powerful flashlight to survey the area. Nothing. I assumed it had just waddled off into the surrounding bushes, but I couldn’t be sure. Checking the coop for any sign of lopsided rats, I simultaneously counted six chickens. Fortunately no more dead ones. Despite the fact there was still no sign of the oversized rats, I rapidly closed up the goats and sprinted up the hill. Fortunately I had tended to the animals a bit sooner that evening, so I relayed my story to Mom, she was freaking out. Because Dad was in meetings, we had to wait up a bit to relay the story to him.
He took one moment for a thought to occur and said simply, “I think it was opossum.”
So now you know, death is simply an opossum staring you in the eyes.
Footnotes
* Actually, that’s not completely true...
** I challenge you to look up synonyms for noise. Some of the results may make you laugh.