“Father, forgive me.” she whispered even as she brought the weapon in her hands down over his head.
The old man slumped over in his chair, the book that had been in his hands hit the floor with a dull thump. his head tilted against the side of the wing-back armchair he had been sitting in before the fire that continued to crackle on in front of him.
The old man had been kind to her in a way that not many had ever been. He wasn’t her father, but he had been someone’s. Even now she could see the pictures hanging on the walls with faces smiling at her from still frames.
He had never talked about the children he and his wife had before her death, but she could tell that he had loved them. She didn’t know why he was alone during this time of year, but he had taken her in off the streets and given her a place to stay during the blizzard that continued to blow even now. She glanced out the window at the wash of white that reflected the light of the fire. It was bright out tonight, as bright as it had been when she’d first slumped on the porch, no knowing that it even was a porch. He’d found her when he’d gone out to fetch more wood for the fire, but she was unconscious by then.
For all his kindness, there had been an evil in him that he hadn’t been aware of. An evil that she could feel and she mourned having to do this, but knew that he would break free of whatever it was that was holding in the evil before the snow had finished settling and the blizzard had passed.
She didn’t like thinking about how she knew this, just accepted the fact that she knew it and needed to take steps in order to stop it, no matter how distasteful those steps were.
She would burn the body once the blizzard stopped, but until then he would be placed in the woodshed where his frozen body would not decay.
With trembling fingers she closed his sightless eyes.
“I’m sorry, Father.” she whispered once again.
Written for this week’s Trifecta challenge and no I have no idea where this story came from. It demanded to be written as vaguely as possible and wouldn’t leave me be.
http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/2013/12/trifecta-week-108.html
Breathing In 