‘I don’t like red. Pink is my favourite colour but--’ suddenly she started to remember how she got the red balloon. She remembered standing in the que at the ticket kiosk with her mother. They both had a bag each, her mother seemed frantic to get them both out of the city as quickly as she could. Lucy remembered the tall man standing near the kiosk selling balloons.
She had asked her mother to buy her one only to be sharply told no, which made her pout. The man had seen the exchange between mother and daughter and taking sympathy on her, had offered Lucy the red balloon for free.
‘--but what honey?’ Prodded Jason.
‘The man selling the balloons gave it to me for nothing, because my mummy wouldn’t buy me one. We were waiting to get tickets.’
The billowing smoke was growing closer as they continued to walk. Lucy was silently enjoying the warmth that was emanating from the Panthers body in waves.
‘What kind of tickets?’ This time it was Malcom who spoke up, after remaining silent for a long time.
Lucy had to think hard about that one. Her mind drifted back to the ticket kiosk and the man with the balloons. Even though red wasn’t her favourite colour it was still a balloon.
What Lucy couldn't understand was why they had to leave in such a rush in the first place. Her mother had looked like she had been crying when she arrived to pick her up from the play park near their home.
It had been her friend Sean who lived two house down from her, who had first noticed the red streaks down Lucy's mothers face.
‘Your mummy looks like she's crying,’ Sean had noted as he slid down the steel chute and landed with a soft thud on the rubber play mats.
Lucy watched as her mother brought their old silver ford to a stop near the park entrance. She did indeed look like she had been crying, and it wasn't the first time that week either.
The last time Lucy saw her mother looking distraught was when she had been playing down stairs in their small living room. She could hear sobs coming from upstairs and had decided to investigate.
She had followed her mother’s pitiful whimpering to the small bedroom which she occupied. Slowly pushing the door further open, Lucy stepped inside to see her normally beautiful mother sitting on the edge of the bed, head in her hands and her long blonde hair hanging limply like a makeshift curtain.
‘What's wrong mummy?’ Lucy had asked, and suddenly felt deep pity for the only woman she would probably ever trust in her life.
When her mother looked up at her those normally pinkish cheeks she always seemed to have where flushed red and the rims of her eyes looked raw.
‘Nothing is wrong baby,’ her mother said and offered a half-hearted smile that was as false as the nails she wore on her fingers. ‘I just can't get my make up to look right.’
Lucy remembered those words with crystal clarity and from that moment onwards had always associated her mother’s crying with the inability to get her make up to look the way she wanted.
‘She’s fine,’ she said turning her attention to Sean who was making his way back up the climbing frame and on to the landing where the chute started. ‘Her make up isn't sitting right.’
‘Girls are strange,’ that was pretty much the depth of Sean’s thoughts on the situation and it was his favourite saying any time he didn't agree with her.
‘Lucy, let’s go baby. We need to go now,’ her mother sounded frantic as she called from the car.
‘Can we give Sean a ride home?’ Usually she didn't even have to ask, her mother would simply beckon for the two of them to get in the car, but this time her head was shaking.
‘No we're not going back home,’ she shouted back, fresh tears welling in her eyes and Lucy noted her mother’s hands were shaking as she tried to dab her tears away.
‘Why aren't we going back home mummy?’ Asked Lucy as she reached the car.
‘Just get in the car Lucy. I'll explain on the way to the train station.’
Lucy mouthed the words train station as her memory of that time slipped from her mind.
‘So you were buying train tickets,’ came Malcom’s deep and soothing voice.
Lucy simply nodded as she glanced between the black smoke and her two new friends. She didn't want to talk anymore and her body was beginning to ache more as the journey continued. The pain in her wrist was growing and her head felt strange, like it was becoming lighter and her body was growing heavier.
‘I can see a workmen’s shack ahead,’ said Jason, scanning the horizon.
It took her a few moments to focus, but eventually Lucy could see the small structure protruding from the ground like a lone monument. As they neared the building, she felt a little disheartened.
It was tiny. Just big enough for maybe one person to stand in, or possibly sit in. There was no door and as they finally reached its entrance, she noted that there wasn’t much of anything inside it. There was certainly no one in it.
All of sudden she could feel tears well in her eyes and for the first time since she had started having this dream, she actually wished she could just wake up and crawl into bed next to her mother as she normally would when she woke from a nightmare.
But nothing seemed to be able to wake her up. Not the pain coursing through her body and certainly not the fear that was beginning to creep under her skin and into her heart.
The workmen’s hut contained pretty much nothing of interest to her, but there was a strange sound coming from inside. She recognized the sound as the noise a radio makes when it isn’t tuned to the station properly. Lucy always remembered her mother fighting with the radio in their car each morning to get some music going for them during the short trip to school.
She watched as Jason moved until he was inside the shack. It was then that she could see the small greyish lump of plastic with the metal rod sticking out from its side. It was the radio the sound was coming from she was sure.
Using the soft tip of his nose, Jason nudged the radio and for a brief moment the static seemed to get worse and then just as quickly it cleared to reveal an anxious woman’s voice. Lucy didn’t recognize it as belonging to someone she knew or had seen on TV. But despite the level of anxiety there was also an underlying sense of calmness and control that made Lucy feel at ease despite the way her body felt.
‘Authorities are still unable to confirm the number of fatalities, but a police spokesman said there was a possibility that the number could be as high as thirty dead. So far there have been no reported survivors, but the search and rescue operation is still ongoing,’ the woman’s voice exploded into static once again and the three where left with more questions than answers.
Lucy felt like her dream was rapidly growing into a nightmare that she desperately wanted to wake up from. Frustrated she wished she could have pinched herself, but her hand and the fingers attached to it wasn’t working. To make matters worse that strange, floating feeling in her head, was getting worse and she could feel the bottom of her stomach grow painfully tender.
‘What was that lady talking about?’ She asked, trying to find something that would keep her attention and distract from what was happening to her body.
Both of the big cats exchanged worried glances. Lucy got the feeling they both knew more than they were letting on and she couldn’t help but feel a little angry about that. This was her dream after all.
‘Why was your mummy in so much of a rush to get on a train?’ Asked Malcom, keeping his eyes on the smoke beyond the horizon. They were getting closer to its source and he wasn’t sure how the little one was going to take what she was about to see.
Lucy let her mind drift back to the red balloon. She wasn’t sure if it would help her remember much of anything, but it did help her feel her mother again. She could still feel the softness of her skin against her own as they held hands in the que to the ticket kiosk.
She remembered the look of worry on her mother’s face as she looked down at her from time to time. Even the smile she tried to put on just wasn’t working for her.
‘You know I’ll never let anyone hurt you again baby. You know that don’t you?’ Her mother seemed to choke on the words as she said them, and all Lucy could think to do was smile and nod at her.
‘I know mummy,’ Lucy had said, turning her attention back to the balloon she was holding by a small length of string. It made her smile even though it wasn’t her favourite colour.
‘Why are we going on a train mummy?’ She had asked, looking back up at her mother whose attention seemed to be on every face in the crowd of people around them.
‘I’m taking you somewhere safe where he can’t hurt you anymore.’
Lucy let the memory of that time slip as she turned her attention back to the falling flakes of snow. She couldn’t help but wonder if it would ever stop. The snow. It just seemed to keep coming from the heavens in wave after wave.
‘Who was the man who hurt you honey?’ Prodded Jason. His voice was soft and she could tell that he was trying his best to keep her talking, but she really had nothing more to say on that subject.
If someone had hurt her as her mother implied, she had no memory of it. The only man who had been in her life before now was her father and she had not seen him since her fifth birthday when he and her mother had a really bad argument.
She remembered him, his eyes full of rage and contempt, as he stood over her mother who was laying on her side on the floor sobbing and begging for him to stop.
Lucy never knew how her mother ended up on the floor that day, although she did remember hearing her mother scream as the sound of skin slapping against skin filled the air even upstairs while she was in her bedroom.
Sneaking out from her room, she made her way to the top of the stairs and angled herself just enough so that she could see into the living room of the small flat where she and her mother had lived ever since she could remember.
She recalled that the man who was supposed to be her daddy kept screaming at her mother to get up and yet he never helped her to her feet. Instead every time she tried to get up he would use his foot to knock her arms away and she would hit the floor with a loud thud.
‘Mummy!’ The word escaped from her lips involuntary. It was something that she always did when she either felt scared for herself or for her mother.
The man standing over her sobbing mother snapped his attention towards where she had been sitting on the stairs. Without warning he was moving fast, his eyes were like balls of fire as the rage seemed to grow more intense within him. If you enjoy this story and would like me to write more, please consider buying the ebook from Amazon using the link below. Thank you =)
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