literature

The End of a Story

Deviation Actions

TheElectricMonk's avatar
Published:
425 Views

Literature Text

Dear Story,

I miss you. I'm sitting here in the computer lab at school and I have two assignments due in an hour. But my eyes keep welling up and all I can think about is you.
Remember the day we brought you home? A thirteenth birthday present on the thirteenth of August. My brother picked you out of the saw dust, the little white one.

"Shhhh…" we told each other on the drive home. "She is probably tired and scared." But you crawled up the back of the seat to attack the cinnamon rolls encased in plastic in the back window. You wanted those cinnamon rolls.

When we got you home we couldn't take a picture of you. There wasn't a camera in the house with a shutter speed fast enough to catch you. You kept showing up as blurry white lighting.

You danced with my brother. You were tiny, not the size of my foot, but you used to dance, laughing, like a slinky gone insane. You were all teeth and fur and blazing black eyes.

Oh, Story, your eyes were black, weren't they? Now I'll never really know. Not from asking you.

You always beat my brother in dancing. You loved him.

He named you Story, after the Queen of the Narfs. Because we always knew there was more to you than your seven ounces.

Fuzzy white goddess!

I want to be just like you someday. I've never met another living thing with the audacity to stick its head into a running vacuum cleaner. Twice.  You weren't afraid to know what was inside. You didn't know fear.

I once saw you kill a rat twice you size. You chased it from where it had broken into the garage. You dispatched it in two seconds, beating your tail like Ricki Ticki Tavi. You had the kind of bloodlust in your little eyes that I've only seen once or twice in my life. Only you could stand proudly, red blood dripping onto your white chest and still look cute. You killed them all. You kept the house safe.

Huntress. Guardian.   

Do you remember when you disappeared for two whole weeks? You were in your prime. We thought you were dead, that some rat had finally bested you. Or a pack of them. Then one day your little white arrow head peeked down at us from above an unfinished wall. We were so glad to see you we almost threw a party. But it took you a week to soften your subtle weasel-glare at my sister for catching you. You had been having wonderful adventures inside the walls. You went where you pleased.

I remember opening the door, one year, to get more firewood. There you were on the other side, standing in the snow and blinking at me casually as if you had just knocked. How did you get outside? I still want to know. No one knows how many times you have come and gone.

You give Perry the Platypus a run for his money.

One autumn night, at 9:40, we were taking a drive close to home, listening to classic rock. And there you were! A long skinny phantom, bouncing uphill and laughing. My brother didn't even wait for the car to stop moving before he leapt to chase you in the headlights. He almost didn't catch you. Where were you going?

No challenge was too great for you. I once watched you sort through a pack of thirty pencils, that you had to open yourself, just to find the one you liked and hide it under the couch. Then you hid all the rest of them anyway. You loved pencils. When I got a new mattress I discovered you had ripped your own door into my box spring and built a fortress inside. Complete with my necklace, some socks, a ten dollar bill, and of course, pencils.

You were an agent of chaos! You must have destroyed around twenty potted plants.  Somehow you could throw the dirt over the entire room. Once I woke in the middle of the night with you inside my pajamas. I almost killed you before I woke up enough to recognize you. I tried everything to keep you out of my room. You raced me to my door when you saw me headed that way. I would get there first and take my eyes off you just long enough to shut it. I would lean against the inside of it, panting, only to turn around and see you behind me jumping up and down and doing your victory twist.

Maybe no one will understand how a grown woman can sit in a computer lab and cry over a small white ferret. You weren't even my pet. But you made me think about life in a different way.

Even when I saw you growing old and your coat turned yellowish and you would stretch your beautiful dragon's body and yawn more often, you still had never met a person or animal you didn't like. You still thought you could kill the big rooster if we'd only let you have the chance.

We found you early yesterday morning. "Get your brother," my dad called to me, in that hurt grave voice that only ever meant one thing. My little brother woke up to see you before I did. He gathered you up and we all crowded around, silent, as he cradled you. We could see you were finally slipping away from us.

I'm not going to be there when they bury your body. I have to be here at school. So this is my only chance to reach out to you. To say goodbye. I know we'll meet again. If anything proves a wild fire of a soul doesn't stop at a small frail body, you do. You're proof that God is an artist.  

Thank you, Story. I love you.
A submission to the Writers--Club contest. :iconwriters--club: "Reaching Out"
© 2011 - 2024 TheElectricMonk
Comments4
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
Nrace4's avatar
Nooooo! Poor Story:/ I remember when we would play video games or just be hanging downstairs and she would come up and we'd play with her. At least her life was full of adventure, and I'm sure she knew how lucky she was to have you guys!