Growing up, I had everything a kid could want. Everything from friends to family and a glimpse of my old tabby cat Whiskers running around every so often. I guess I now see why he hid all the time, from everyone combing his soft fur constantly and me yanking on his tail to pick him up, I wouldn’t be too happy either. I was a normal child. That is, until all hell broke loose.
My father was a pilot; I suppose that’s where I got involved in things. He served the military years before I came along, and did as long as I knew him. My mother, on the other hand, she designed websites. I remember most of the sites she had done around me, including several different TV shows, the town bakery, an adoption center, and a soup kitchen, just to name a few. They both taught me different details and aspects of their jobs, so by the time I was nine, I knew how to fly several different kinds of planes like F-22 Tomcats and giant airline jets. And even before that, I could unblock sites my mom had blocked from me with ease and detect a slight problem with any computer, indicating some start to a virus. Teachers loved me and friends looked up to me. Living was almost not painful.
I think the thing I miss most is peace. I took quiet for granted, and always just got the easy way out of everything, my parents taking any hurt and harm from me like a shield. They took everything from me that they could, and tried to make the best out of what they couldn’t. Until my dad’s job called for a move. At the time, I thought it was a kid’s worse nightmare, being torn away from my friends and the local ice cream parlor. But I survived it, despite any other thoughts I had. It was there that I finished elementary school and became a Jackson Middle Peacock. Of course, with a mascot like ours, we got made fun of a lot. But our football team was definitely no laughing stock, and we proved it by winning every game but one four years in a row. I was never a huge fan of football, but even I had to admit the Peacocks were always an interesting game.
And then comes along Becky, probably my best friend in the world…even to this day. I was constantly over her house; I practically lived there. I still find it amusing that despite my stubbornness and constant talking, Becky listened and put up with it. She put up with me, I should say. We stuck up for one another. When one of us needed help, the other provided. We were a team, me and Becky. And a pretty good one at that. We graduated middle school together, and started high school, finally not a Peacock, but a Stinger. At least it was somewhat more aggressive. And that’s just where the excitement begins.
My dad was called one day to Panama for a “Special Mission: Mission S. Raid” over telephone. He hurriedly bought one way plane tickets and in a week, he was off to Panama. My mother and I thought nothing of it, because he traveled all the time. He always came back with a bouquet of flowers for my mother and a postage stamp from the place he’d traveled to for me. I was always eager for him to get back, as was my mother. And he always had. There seemed to be nothing special about this particular trip.
He had called us five days after his plane landed. I was the first to pick up the phone, and then he asked to be on speakerphone. I listened to him.
“Raven,” he took a long breath. I tilted my head and lifted my eyebrows, finally realizing that he couldn’t see me.
“Yeah?” I replied.
“Could you get your mother to speak as well?” He asked, voice somewhat tensed.
“Sure thing,” I held the phone on my hip, hoping dad couldn’t hear me yelling for mom.
“Yes?” She asked when she finally came to the table.
“Something important had come up here, and I don’t think I’ll be back within a matter of weeks…” My father took another breath.
“Is everything okay?” My mom asked, her voice calm.
“Yes, it’s all fine. Some uh… Small kidnapping took place. Once we arrest the kidnapper and free the children, we can resume our work.” There was a long pause.
“Oh,” I looked at the numbers on the lit up contraption, somehow transmitting the sound of my father’s voice into this room without anyone in between hearing our conversation.
“Well, I hope everything turns out alright.” My mother glanced at me, then back at the phone.
“Oh, I’m sure it will, in the long run, anyways. Everything’s for the good of another.” Me and my mother exchanged glances, not quite sure what he meant.
“Yes, that’s true,” my mother exhaled and leaned back in her chair.
“Well, I’ll have to talk to you two women later.” You could hear a quiet “boom” in the background.
“Honey, what was that?” My mother’s relaxed tone suddenly tensed up, like a stretchy rubber band. It’s loose, but when you pull it, it tensed up.
“What? Nothing…” My father’s voice changed, too. He sounded panicked.
“Dad?” I asked, suddenly afraid.
“It will be alright….. There’s just some small-” My dad paused.
“Hello, dad?” I asked after a few seconds of silence. There was another “boom”, louder this time. I heard someone screaming.
“It’ll be alright,” I heard my dad barely whisper over the phone. I shrieked, clutching the phone in one hand. My mother bit her tounge.
“We’re coming,” my mother ran off to the computer, probably looking up plane tickets.
“Dad?” I asked, almost in tears. No response. I hung up unwillingly.
We landed in Panama precisely thirty two hours after my dad’s phone call. The first thing me and my mother did was rent a car. Then we just drive. We drive in the silence of it all, at midnight, in the dark. It was almost peaceful. Suddenly my mother spoke.
“We’ll be fine.” She smiled, and I recognized the words as probably my father’s last. I nodded.
We rented a hotel about two hours away from the airport. Despite the soft pillows and great smelling sheets, neither of us could sleep. And then, at four in the morning, we heard a distant “boom” sound, similar to the one we heard over the phone. It was all too fast…the invaders…how they took us away…
And here I am now. A slave to the “invaders”. My father was found dead not too far from the hotel we had stayed at. I have no idea where my mother is, or where she had been for almost a year.
“‘Ere, darling,” a woman’s voice penetrated the silence of the cramped room. She handed me a small, dry looking biscuit. I took it forcefully out of her hands and took a bite out of it. It was disgusting. I spat it out in the small, outdated looking sink. “Now, yer better build up yer strength, young lady.” The woman’s brown hair was tied in a messy looking bun. I threw the remaining of the biscuit at her and she walked away. Then the door to my cramped cell opened up and light flooded the room.
“Ah, still locked up, are we, Miss?” The slim boy gave me a sarcastic smile. He was about my age, and one of the guards here. Although he had no uniform, he always wore a golden chain around usual jeans.
“Shut it, Alpha.” I grinded my teeth together. He smiled again.
“Just trying to start a conversation, Miss.” He cocked his head and again, gave me a fake smile.
“I don’t want to converse with you.” I walked toward him and clenched my fists.
“Oh? Too bad, Miss, because I would love to converse with you.” He caught my hand mid-punch and kissed the back of it. After he let my hand free, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve. I punched him.
“You sicken me.” I turned away, noticing that his nose wasn’t bleeding. I didn’t get him hard enough…
“Isn’t that my job, Miss?” He always called me “Miss”. I had gotten used to it. I rolled my eyes.
I awoke at four in the morning to screaming. Then the door to my cell opened. I hesitated for a moment, but it didn’t take long for me to leap out. The enemy must have had us under attack, and was somehow hacking into the computer system. I smiled, not wanting to miss out on the action. I crept into where all of the computer systems were and started working.
In twenty minutes, all of the gates and doors were open, and the security cameras were off. I smiled, glad someone else had hacked the password part first. I took a sprint out the door, and to the nearest exit, just to hear a bomb go off. That hasn’t happened in a while… I was just about home free when Alpha caught me. What luck I have. He grabbed my arm, which jolted me back a few feet.
“Where are you going?” He let his arm go, replacing it with a cuff.
“Out,” I did a back flip, my feet midway hitting Alpha in the upper chest. He fell, which gave me just enough time to search for his keys with my free hand. I unlocked myself and proudly smiled.
“No you’re not,” Alpha held me down with his knees and hands. I struggled underneath him.
“I can try.” I struggled a bit more, than gave up. He smiled and picked me up, and off to my cell I went.
“How much trying are you doing now?” He asked after a while. I blinked.
“As much as I need to be.” I answered stubbornly and tried kicking him. No use. Then there was a sound… It sounded like the buzzing of a fan, but it just became louder and louder… Finally, I realized something. It was a bomber plane. I jumped out of Alpha’s arms and sprinted toward the exit again. “Bombers!” I screamed. Alpha looked up and ran alongside me as we both headed for the exit, every last bit of hope that we would live pushing us to go further and faster.
We got out of the building and were running further when the bomb dropped. I figured we were a safe distance away. There weren’t even any screams… Everyone just dropped dead.
“Thanks,” Alpha said between gulps of air. I rolled my eyes.
“Why I said anything is beyond my understanding.” I put my hands in my pocket.
“No, I mean it. Thank you…you saved my life.” He bent down and kissed me. I hesitated, but then he pulled my hands out of my pockets and placed them around his neck. He put his hands on my hips as we just stood there, in the middle of a war, as enemies. Arm in arm, lip to lip. I froze.
I escaped the prison with Alpha’s help. After a while, things sort of cooled down, military wise, anyways. Until on the door of my new house was a quiet nock, and something that sounded like a computer buzz. I opened the door, and there was the biggest, and probably only, metal butterfly at the door. It looked gentle at first. But then it swooped into my house, dropping small bombs everywhere. I grabbed a gun and shot. The metal repelled the shot, bouncing it back toward me. Then I tried tackling it, and I had it on the ground for a few seconds, but then it escaped, just to try to drop more bombs on top of me. It was insanity, I swear… Then it just flew back out where it had came from.
“Sorry…” A voice squeaked.
“You will be once I find you,” I stomped out the door to find no one suspicious in particular. Sever nuns walking around on the summer day, one or two men, a child and mother. But none of them were looking at me. I decided to ignore the voice, and as I went inside, I saw a middle aged boy sitting there. He looked pale- but I knew I had seen him somewhere….. From school? A yearbook? A photograph?
“Hey sweetie, long time no see.” I gasped at the voice, and almost as on cue,
“Dad?” I pursed my lips in an attempt not to cry.
“You got it.” He stood up and smiled at me. He held the butterfly in his hands. I laughed at what he was probably trying to accomplish with it. And I just cried. Happy tears, sad tears, I don’t know what they were. But I didn’t try to hold them back. He was the person that knew me best. And he was here. My dad.
