I think i'm all alone

I think I’m all alone.

Afternoon turned to evening, the sun hanging low in the reddening sky. Grasshoppers loudly chirped in nearby fields, and birds sang their joyful songs. The heat of the day was starting to die down to a perfect outdoors temperature. It was the kind of day to sit outside with an iced drink and lounge around, forgetting anything unpleasant floating through around your mind. Just thinking about it would ruin the perfection.

Leaves rustled in the tree shading Kristina, and the breeze chilled her skin—but not enough to warrant fetching a blanket. She wished the breeze away, wanting some of the heat to return. In one of her hands, she held a copy of æharry Potter—which had been on her list of things to read for months, but she’d never found the time to dip into it.
Her Dad had recently died in a traffic accident—his car totally wrecked.
Having never really recovered from the loss of her husband, Kristina’s mother became ill herself—leaving her daughter to take care of her little brother.
Nevertheless, she coped with it because she loved her mother, and knew that if she asked anyone for help, they’d be separated—her and her brother put into foster care, and her mother left alone.

Kristina could hear the crunch of footsteps behind her. Worried, she turned around. Linda, her mother, had not been this far from her bed in weeks. Afraid she’d fall, Kristina dropped her book, rushed to her and led her to a chair alongside hers. More worrying to the girl was her mother’s expression. She was smiling and inexplicably joyful grin.

Hesitantly, Kristina asked: “Mom…are you alright?” No answer.

She just sat calmly, looking across the plain outside their house. Scattered with wildflowers and bushes, it was still essentially a desert.

The girl tried a second time: “Mom, are you alright? Mom?”

“Is Kasper sleeping?” She answered after a few moments, her voice rusty from disuse.

Is this why Linda had come all the way out here? Kristina began to feel uneasy about the odd smile on her mother’s face. She wasn’t sure what to say, so she replied a simple “Yes”.

A few minutes passed before Linda volunteered, “May I have a glass of water, please?” still looking across the plain.

This gave Kristina a chance to get away from her mother for a minute, to think over what was going on—just this morning she’d heard her crying in the next room, as she did every day since her husband’s funeral.
It was when she turned the tap on to fill the glass that she noticed how eerily quiet the house was. Even when asleep, Kasper was a noisy kid—he fidgeted in his sleep.
She walked to his bedroom and flicked the lights on. The bed bar was down, and Kasper was nowhere to be seen.

“Kasper if you’re hiding, come out right now—this isn’t funny.” She tried to keep her voice full of authority, but it trembled as she spoke.

A yip from the closet not two feet from her made her jump and spill the water over herself. She jumped to the door, and yanked it open to find Kasper buried under a mound of clothes.

“What happened!?” She almost shouted, her voice getting increasingly high-pitched. She took Kasper in her arms, and could feel him shaking, totally silent, his eyes widened in shock. Tears began to roll down his cheeks as he relaxed in Kristina’s arms, still mute.

Linda! She heard footsteps entering the house. Kasper froze up again, still held in Kristina’s arms as she walked up and down the bedroom, her heart pounding. She tried to calm herself, but couldn’t. She knew her mother was behind this, and had come back into the house, was probably looking for her. There was no way to tell where she was, because her footsteps echoed from wall to wall and down corridors.

She took a deep breath and walked towards the bedroom door, still cradling her brother. The front door was wide open; as she had left it, but she could see the pink fluffy slippers her mother had been wearing outside, placed beside the entrance.

A loud thump broke the dead silence, Kristina jumped, thinking something in the room had fallen to the floor, but sharp pain spread up her leg. She dropped her brother and yelled at him.

“RUN!”

Kasper disappeared from the room and out the front door as fast as he could, leaving Kristina to collapse on her bum, clutching the leg where she’d been shot. She heard noises coming from the kitchen.

The young boy ran out of the house, but had no idea what to do from there. He ran to the garage, but that solved nothing. The red sun was diving below the horizon as two loud shots pierced the air. Kasper choked back a scream, but tears began to flow down his face once more—despite being young, he knew what it meant.

He was only four years old when the neighbours heard his knock on their door, and he told them:

“I think I’m all alone.”