Could I really do it?

Could I do what had to be done?

There was no doubt in my mind…

The child was a cherub...

An Angel… Spawned from the pits of hell.

  When I first met the child – I was no more than a child myself.

  Though the passage of time blurs many things, those days are as clear to me as this morning's breakfast.

  The Great War was over, and England was beginning to recover. Picking up the pieces with a stiff upper lip and rebuilding as it were. Father had been a first lieutenant in His Majesty's Army. The Calvary unit, if I remember correctly. What that meant, I never did find out. I was a child with a child's concerns of the world, and the world was far away from the little farm I grew up on.

  Father had returned from the war, and I can still remember the day Mother and I arrived at the train station to meet him. I was dressed in my best frock, and my mother's red lipstick stood out starkly against her pale face. I remember how her brown eyes shone, and she clutched her handbag nervously, white gloves hiding whitened knuckles. She held my hand too hard as we stood with the other families, watching the train move closer to the station. The porters dashed to and fro with frantic energy preparing for the train's arrival.

  Her dark brown hair shone under her hat, perfectly done and not a hair out of place. The only indication of her fear and nervous excitement was the tiniest line of sweat marring her beautiful upper lip. We were lucky; we knew. Unlike other families in the village who had no one returning. Sons, fathers, brothers. All lost to the war.

  We were supposed to be lucky.

  When the train finally pulled to a stop in front of us, I remember nervously dancing from one foot to the other in white stockinged feet and my best Sunday shoes. Patent black leather shone gleaming in the grey morning light. The train was so much louder than I expected. The stack smoking with the burning of the engines sending acrid fumes wafting over us, the whistle far too loud for my small ears, the clanging of the tracks, and the men hanging out the windows waving and cheering their arrival. The train stopped with a deafening hiss, and the doors began to swing open. The first of the soldiers began to disembark. The crowds rushed to meet them. Happy families all around us raced to throw their arms around their men. It was glorious. It was terrifying. Would he remember me?

  Mother gave a small gasp.

  I looked up at her; what little color remained in her cheeks drained away. She let go of my hand amidst the crowds and ran forward, pushing through the throngs, desperately moving forward. I tried to follow but lost her when a porter with a heavy trunk on a dolly came between us. Looking up, all I could see were tan and grey coats, my only view being slacks and dresses, boots, and Sunday best shoes. I moved forward between them, pushing and calling out to my mother, utterly unheard through the clamor of so many people.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  My heart squeezed, and fear gripped me. I was lost.

  My chin began to tremble. The overwhelming noises and jostling of the crowds on the track pushed me this way and that. I was lost in a stampede, and Mother was gone.

  Searching desperately through the crowd, I grabbed every coat, peering up into strange faces, heart-pounding and desperately searching with arms held high to keep from being driven down.

  A large man knocked me to the ground, and I began to cry, curled up into a ball as the feet moved mercilessly around me.

  Large hands gripped me, and I screamed as they pulled me from the throng.

  "There's my little girl." I heard behind me. I turned around in terror to kick my abductor as hard as my little legs could in the shins. He dodged and quickly knelt so I could see his face.

  "Hey, Hey, Hey- None of that, little Bean. It's me."

  I turned my tear-streaked face towards the sound of the voice and sobbed; his tan face and brown eyes were as familiar to me as my own. "Father," I sobbed. I threw my arms around his neck and cried. My savior, my protector, my father was home.

  That was, oh, I guess... Two or three years before he truly died.

  Father had suffered in the war. He had taken a bullet to the leg and had shrapnel in his arm. He was lucky but had laid for days in the mud waiting for someone to find him. They tell me that he was lucky, that the infections hadn't taken him, but I knew better. My Father had died out there. What came back to us was something else. It looked like him, sounded like him, even smelled like him, but it wasn't him.

  That was not my Father.

  My mother could see it too. I remember watching her brown eyes, forehead creased and worried as he sat in his chair staring out the window. Wrapped in blankets against a cold that only he could feel. We cared for and tended to him. He sometimes disappeared for days, lost over the moors, eyes staring vacantly out the window, his body present, yet he was somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away.

  He would help with the farm on the good days, tending the flock of sheep we kept and working the fields. The herd was severely decimated, most of our animals had been requisitioned for the war, and we were left with only what would breed. Before the war, we had hundreds of sheep; their grey wooly backs dotted the hills as far as we could see. It paid for the upkeep of the farm and what we couldn't grow ourselves. We were lucky. Many had to go without during those days, but we had what we could grow, and Mrs. Hudgins was the finest gardener around. She could grow anything, and I hardly noticed when we went without. The blessings of childhood, I suppose.

  He would sit in the parlor on bad days, staring and staring, starting at the slightest noise and screaming at Mother for being too loud and me for walking too loudly or humming incessantly. I learned to tread lightly and hum soundlessly, terrified of the rage that would engulf him. Mother tried to protect me as much as she could, sending me outside to tend the garden with Mrs. Hudgins or to my room, where I would read whatever books I could get my hands on, working on my school primer to catch up on the education lost to the war.

  Then the cough and the fever came. At first, it would come and go, better most days than not, but as the days grew cold and damp, it would come on full force, and he would be in his bed for days, wasting away as the fevers ravaged him. There was no physical ailment that we could discern. Doctors explained that the stresses of war caused an incurable infection. He would scream and call out in the nights, gripped by the terrors, yelling at the phantoms only he could see.

  The doctors said it was an infection in his wounds, that the shrapnel buried in his body was festering and causing lung rot. He wasn't responding to the medications, and we should prepare ourselves.

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"I'm sorry, Mrs. Franklin. Do you need a break?" Sandra's worried dark eyes peered at me across the room as she paused her recorder.