The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

In The Silence
by Melissa R. Mendelson 

I turned seven yesterday.

She knelt down in her pretty yellow dress, her hair pushed behind her ears.  Her little fingers reached out, hovering in the air.  She smiled as she knelt closer, staring at the long, green stem in front of her.  It has a baby, she thought.

Glitching was heard from behind her.  It reminded her of when her sister switched the channels on the old television set.  She only did this when the internet was down.

Her fingers paused an inch from the long, green stem.  She glanced down at her bare feet in worn sandals.  Brown and red.  So much red.

A helicopter flew overhead, low enough for her to see two men standing by the open door, looking at her.  They didn’t smile.  They didn’t wave.  They just stared, and she followed their path over the nearby woods toward town.

Thunder in the distance, but it grew louder.  The wind whipped around her, almost tearing the long, green stem with its baby from the ground.  She fell to her knees, covering her ears, waiting for the silence that would follow.

As she pressed her knees into the ground, she glanced behind her.  Her birthday gift, a new iPad was a short distance away, its screen flickering on and off like an old television set.

She stood up, dusted herself off and closed her eyes.  She then focused on the long, green stem with its baby.  Both were frozen, protected, immune.  She wasn’t.

She reached out and grabbed hold of the stem.  The ice cracked, but she stopped herself.  It’s not fair, she thought.  But it’s still wrong.  She let go of the long, green stem with its little orange and red baby.

She picked at a spot on her pretty yellow dress as she shuffled away from the woods, away from town.  She glanced at the red stain on her leg.  She sighed and sat down on the ground.

She looked over at the homes nearby.  Some were already gone.  The others were still burning.

.

Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

About Author Melissa R. Mendelson:

Melissa R. Mendelson is the author of the Sci-Fi Novella, Waken.  She also has a prose poetry collection called, This Will Remain With Us published by Wild Ink Publishing.  Her short story collections, Better Off Here and Name’s Keeper can be found on Amazon/Amazon Kindle.

If you’d like to learn more about Melissa, you can visit her accounts here: www.MelissaMendelson.com