- Joined
- Nov 29, 2011
This is a first draft that i did in one sitting not too long back. Someone wanted to publish it if i were to give this story a little edit. Those edits were a little bit more detail in two select sections and to make the character a little less sentient. I haven't really gotten around to such edits yet but if i get some nice feedback then i might go ahead and do them.
On the note of the character's age i have increased her age to eleven rather than the original six for this upload.
Enjoy
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Sunday
*© Keira Morrison 2012
Sunday, May 3rd 2134 A.D
My name is Caitlin; I am eleven years old and live in a big city with my mum and dad.
I’ve never really liked living here in the city though. The buildings are so tall and there are so many that the sunshine can’t get through, so it’s always really cold and dark and everyone seems sad… I’d much rather live where the people in this show on television live; in one of those little wooden houses on top of a flower covered hill, surrounded by meadows where the sunlight shines down all day and everyone is really happy that it does. If I lived in one of those wooden houses then I could have a dog and we would play outside together, we would have so much fun. If I could have a dog I’d choose the one from the television show, the brown shaggy one with the floppy ears and I’d name him Sam.
My mum tells me that she used to live in a house on a hill and the sun would always shine like it does on television, even when it was raining and cloudy it would still be bright, and then when the sun set at night the moon would be just as bright but in a different way. I loved listening to my mum’s stories, it was almost as good as seeing it on television but eventually her stories would make her a little sad so we couldn’t talk about them for very long.
I would always ask my dad if we could move to mum’s old house on the hill, either after the television show had finished or after mum had told me one of her stories, but my dad’s answer was always the same; Caitlin, you know we can’t. We have to stay here in the city don’t we? Do you remember why?
It was because of my condition that we couldn’t move away from the city... I used to feel really bad about it but now I only feel a little bad. My mum tells me it can’t be helped; it’s just one of those things that happen. It happens to a lot of people. So I believe her.
I guess it was lucky that mum and dad were already living together in the city when I was born. My dad works in an important building and to be with him my mum needed to move out of her small house on the hill, I don’t know what my dad does but he says it’s really boring, he has to sit on a chair all day typing on the computer and do the same thing over and over, and they always need to put the lights on because his building is surrounded by lots of others, much like we had to do in our home, since we lived in an apartment near the ground floor. My dad’s building is somewhere in the centre of the city and it was on the way to meet him from work one day with my mum that we found out about my condition.
I remember that the street was really crowded that day and even though I tried not to, I got separated from my mum and was lost between all of the people. I shouted out for my mum so that she could find me in the crowd, I heard her shout back but she sounded very far away so I ran through the crowd to catch up with her… I ran through the people as fast as I could before my mum got further away from me but I ran too far. I was scared but then I saw a ray of sunlight through a gap between the buildings shining on to an empty narrow not too far away. Because the street was empty I thought that if I stood in the sunlight then my mum would be able to see me clearly and come and get me but when I stepped into the sunlight it stung my skin like nettles and wasps, it hurt so much that I stood frozen to the spot under the light, screaming until mum found me. I remember her screaming too as she pulled me out of the light and into a hug.
Even though I was upset that the light had hurt me, I still thought it looked pretty, looking at it still made me happy and I knew that when it was on the television that it couldn’t hurt me, and I would continue watching my favourite show for as long as the channel played it, just so I could still see the sunlight on their home… I still wanted to live in a wooden house on a hill with a dog…
The television show finished, it would always finish the same way; the family would stand at the front door of the house, on the porch waving their hands goodbye. They always looked so happy and full of colour, it always made me smile. I felt like waving back every time but to say hello, not goodbye.
“It’s nearly dinner time, get your shoes on.” said mum, poking her head around the door of my room.
I smiled, hopped up off of the bed and switched off the television. Today was Sunday, I loved Sundays; it was the only day of the week when we would eat out as a family. The food was always so fresh and succulent, much better than what we had stored in the house; I’m going to have the legs today I thought to myself excitedly. My mum liked the legs too so sometimes we would argue, but I would always win. My dad would always have the breast though, he loved that part.
I dragged my shoes out from under the bed, slipped them on and ran out of my room to the front door where my mum and dad were waiting. My dad helped me with my coat and then picked me up and carried me out of the front door leaving my mum to lock up behind.
It was a long walk from our apartment to where we ate and the streets were always busy because everyone else ate out on a Sunday too. Sometimes it was a little tricky to actually sit down and eat since you had to avoid everyone and then hurry to find a table but my dad was strong and my mum was quick so we never really had much of a problem enjoying our meals.
On the way to our meal my mum and dad met up with the Kiernan’s, a friendly family who also had a daughter with the same condition I had, her name was Tanya. Tanya was thirteen and training to be a dancer, dancing had made her quick so she would always be tasked by her parents with finding and securing a decent place to sit in one of the nearby diners so that they could eat quickly and comfortably. Tanya would save seats for us too. They were nice people.
Kam Kiernan, Tanya’s dad, would always speak to my dad about things that I didn’t understand but they would always laugh while talking about those things so I didn’t mind that I didn’t understand, the best I could do was to remember words that they used often, words like ‘livestock’ and ‘importing’. Sometimes Tanya was really quiet and didn’t speak to me, especially if dad was carrying me but she would still look up at me and smile and I’d smile back.
Instead of talking to Tanya while in my dad’s arms, I’d look around and learn the different routes we’d take through the city. The city looked really dirty, maybe more than it actually was because it was so dark all of the time. The streets were always wet too and a lot of glowing neon signs that advertised the names of shops and opening times were broken. I’d often have a lot of fun trying to make up words with the unbroken lights and this would help me remember my way through the city, if I ever needed to go anywhere in case of an emergency...
The routes we’d take through the city en route to our meal would differ depending on how crowded the other streets were. I had committed most of the routes to memory but not all of them, and the route we had taken today hadn’t been a familiar one. As I looked around trying to find signs and other things I would remember, I recognised the empty narrow street where I had found the ray of sunlight. I couldn’t see the ray of light but I assumed it’d shine down eventually, it was odd that the narrow street was still empty but still, I smiled to myself and part of me wanted to hop down from my dad’s arms and run over into the narrow street, wait for the sunlight and hold out my hand under it to see if it would hurt me again. But I didn’t.
I kept staring at the empty narrow street until it was almost out of sight, then I felt my dad put me down on the ground. We had arrived and it was time for dinner.
Even though we had left early we still somehow managed to arrive with everyone else. The crowd would always gather from the bottom of the street in front of the three taller than tall buildings. From those buildings the crowd would lead back down to the other end of the street. Some people preferred to be at the back, others the middle and others the front. My mum and dad preferred to be at the front of the crowd, closest to the buildings but today we found ourselves in the middle, half way down the street. I guess it was best to be at the front since the food didn’t travel too far once it had been thrown but I preferred it here in the middle because I could see everything without having to look up and cause my neck to ache.
The city’s siren began to sound through the streets and then the hundreds of people in the crowd cheered almost as loud. I never used to like the noise of the siren, it used to scare me but now I found it exciting. I watched as handfuls of walkways of different lengths folded out from the largest windows of the three buildings. I had often asked my dad how high the walkways were off of the ground. He would tell me that they started on the twentieth floor and went all the way up to the thirtieth, which was very high, even though the buildings themselves were so much taller than that.
I wondered to myself if the people on the highest floors of the buildings could see the sun from there…
I felt Tanya’s hand take mine, she led me away from my parents and through the crowd into a small diner. The street was filled with diners, some were several storey’s high, it was smart for so many diners to be on this street, I thought. Tanya had led me into her favourite diner which was owned by a man called Jameson. The diner was only one floor and quite small, our families had eaten her lots of times but I still didn’t see why Tanya liked it so much.
Almost without looking, Tanya ran to the left side of the diner and knelt by the first table where she took off the brakes and wheeled it into a corner next to another table so that we could all eat together. The table were long and silver with a flat top for our meals and shelves underneath for our cutlery and condiments. It was difficult for Tanya to push properly so she would instead, push one corner forward then run over to the other and push that and then would repeat until the table was where she wanted it.
“Are you rearranging my tables again?” asked Jameson with a smile as he stepped out from the back room and stood behind the counter.
“Yeah” Tanya replied with excitement.
Once Tanya had pushed the table into place she re-locked the wheel brakes and untangled the three lengths of straps that were hung in a loose bow at the side and then moved on to the other one. As Tanya rearranged and prepared the tables, I hurried over to the counter and rattled in the cutlery baskets, picking up knives, forks and other sharp looking silver tools.
“Be careful with those, Caitlin.” He said to me in a firm voice.
“I know.” I responded as I wrapped up the knives and forks and other utensils into napkins from the end of the counter.
We always tried to prepare the tables as fast as we could so that we could watch out of the window before the siren ended. Stuffing the cutlery into the compartments on the shelves of the tables, Tanya and I ran over to and clambered on top of the windowsill in the diner’s alcove near the entrance. I stood and Tanya knelt so that we could see both over the net curtain which hung down from the middle of the window and under the writing that read Jameson’s Diner on the glass. Even though we only had a little clearing to see through we could still see everything that was about to happen outside.
Outside the siren stopped and so too did the cheering of the crowd. I glanced at Tanya during the brief silence; she was smiling and her eyes were really wide, she was gripping the cord that the net curtain hung from as she watched. I turned back to look out of the window and saw my mum. Even though my mum loved me and my dad and the city she would still only really smile while telling me stories of her old home or while she was waiting for her meal. I loved seeing my mum smile. My mum spotted Tanya and I in Jameson’s window and waved at us, we waved back.
All at once the people in the crowd began to poise themselves, some knelt down on one knee, some, like my parents took a few steps back and held a pose, and others like Tanya’s parents prepared to give the decided member a boost.
Loud metallic clanking noises were met with sporadic cheers from the crowd as they began to leap over one another in the hopes of catching the first of their would-be meals that had been launched from catapults on the walkways above. It almost looked like a wildlife documentary about frogs in the countryside leaping to catch their food… only different.
My mum and dad would move so fast as they leapt that it was hard for me to keep my eyes on them. Sometimes their dark clothes would blend in to the dark walls of the buildings or I would lose sight of them in the shadows, but today I was able to keep my eyes on my mum. My dad was able to jump higher and faster than my mum so I would rarely be able to follow him as I watched from the window, I didn’t mind though because my mum was prettier; her long blonde hair would blow in the wind and sometimes, if I looked hard enough, there would be a few seconds where she would close her eyes as she moved through the air, and in those few seconds her smile would become bigger. I decided to myself that she was imagining her old wooden house on the flower covered hill… Her smile would disappear as soon as she opened her eyes.
Today it was my dad and Tanya’s mum who caught our meals. Tanya’s mum was always one of the first to catch their meal; being a dancer herself made her very agile and the boost from Tanya’s dad meant that she could reach further and higher than most. Sometimes it would take my mum and dad a few attempts but today my dad had been lucky. It was always best to catch a meal before it hit the ground because if it did then it would be spoiled, the streets weren’t very clean to begin with and there would always be less of it to eat after the impact. Though most of the time people just tried again and again to catch their meals and would leave the spoiled ones for the homeless to feast on later in the day, Sunday was a good day for them…
Through the window Tanya and I saw our parents heading back towards the diner. We hurried off of the windowsill and over to our table where we held the straps straight, so that they didn’t get tangled when our parents came to use them.
“So who got it this time?” Jameson asked.
“My mum” Tanya replied.
“And my dad” I said feeling as proud as always.
My mum and dad were the first through the door of the diner, followed by Tanya’s mum and dad; both our dads were carrying our meals over their shoulders. They joined us in the corner and placed our meals on the tables with a little bit of a thud from each of them.
Tanya’s meal was motionless but mine was still moving around, its chains were clinking on the metal of the table and it was making quiet groaning sounds from behind the block in its mouth...
My dad reached over the table and took one of the straps from one of my hands and stretched it over our meal’s chest and then did the same with the other strap, this time stretching it over our meal’s legs. Our meal today was very colourful, her hair was a light copper brown and her skin was a fresh pink peach like colour. She reminded me of the people from television who lived in the house on the hill under the sun. I stared at her as my mum and dad undressed her so that we could start eating. The woman stared back at me, I smiled a welcoming smile. I wanted to ask her what it was like to live in a house under the sun surrounded by flower filled meadows… so I raised my hand to her mouth and pressed my hand against the block between her teeth in an attempt to move it out of the way. My mum saw me and gently pushed my hand back down to my side.
“Get yourself ready to eat darling.” My mum said in a soft tone.
“We don’t play with our food now do we, Caitlin?” my dad added.
“No dad.” I replied as I reached for my knife.
With my knife in hand my mum picked me up and stood me on a chair at our meal’s legs.
“Now be careful and don’t fall.”
“Yes mum.”
My mum stared down at me with adoration and stroked my hair.
“Make a wish Caitlin.” My dad said from the top of the table.
We looked to my dad; he was holding our meal’s head in his hands.
I closed my eyes and made my wish; I wished to one day live in a small wooden house on a flower covered hill under the sun, surrounded by meadows with my mum, dad and my brown shaggy, floppy eared dog, Sam.
I opened my eyes and nodded to my dad with a smile.
With a quick jerk he made our meal’s neck make a wet cracking noise. I liked that noise.
A series of light-hearted cheers from around the now busy diner sounded out around us followed by a little laughter.
“Dig in” my dad offered.
I carefully bent my body towards our meal and sunk my teeth into its leg; her blood was warm and tasted like sunlight.
On the note of the character's age i have increased her age to eleven rather than the original six for this upload.
Enjoy
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Sunday
*© Keira Morrison 2012
Sunday, May 3rd 2134 A.D
My name is Caitlin; I am eleven years old and live in a big city with my mum and dad.
I’ve never really liked living here in the city though. The buildings are so tall and there are so many that the sunshine can’t get through, so it’s always really cold and dark and everyone seems sad… I’d much rather live where the people in this show on television live; in one of those little wooden houses on top of a flower covered hill, surrounded by meadows where the sunlight shines down all day and everyone is really happy that it does. If I lived in one of those wooden houses then I could have a dog and we would play outside together, we would have so much fun. If I could have a dog I’d choose the one from the television show, the brown shaggy one with the floppy ears and I’d name him Sam.
My mum tells me that she used to live in a house on a hill and the sun would always shine like it does on television, even when it was raining and cloudy it would still be bright, and then when the sun set at night the moon would be just as bright but in a different way. I loved listening to my mum’s stories, it was almost as good as seeing it on television but eventually her stories would make her a little sad so we couldn’t talk about them for very long.
I would always ask my dad if we could move to mum’s old house on the hill, either after the television show had finished or after mum had told me one of her stories, but my dad’s answer was always the same; Caitlin, you know we can’t. We have to stay here in the city don’t we? Do you remember why?
It was because of my condition that we couldn’t move away from the city... I used to feel really bad about it but now I only feel a little bad. My mum tells me it can’t be helped; it’s just one of those things that happen. It happens to a lot of people. So I believe her.
I guess it was lucky that mum and dad were already living together in the city when I was born. My dad works in an important building and to be with him my mum needed to move out of her small house on the hill, I don’t know what my dad does but he says it’s really boring, he has to sit on a chair all day typing on the computer and do the same thing over and over, and they always need to put the lights on because his building is surrounded by lots of others, much like we had to do in our home, since we lived in an apartment near the ground floor. My dad’s building is somewhere in the centre of the city and it was on the way to meet him from work one day with my mum that we found out about my condition.
I remember that the street was really crowded that day and even though I tried not to, I got separated from my mum and was lost between all of the people. I shouted out for my mum so that she could find me in the crowd, I heard her shout back but she sounded very far away so I ran through the crowd to catch up with her… I ran through the people as fast as I could before my mum got further away from me but I ran too far. I was scared but then I saw a ray of sunlight through a gap between the buildings shining on to an empty narrow not too far away. Because the street was empty I thought that if I stood in the sunlight then my mum would be able to see me clearly and come and get me but when I stepped into the sunlight it stung my skin like nettles and wasps, it hurt so much that I stood frozen to the spot under the light, screaming until mum found me. I remember her screaming too as she pulled me out of the light and into a hug.
Even though I was upset that the light had hurt me, I still thought it looked pretty, looking at it still made me happy and I knew that when it was on the television that it couldn’t hurt me, and I would continue watching my favourite show for as long as the channel played it, just so I could still see the sunlight on their home… I still wanted to live in a wooden house on a hill with a dog…
The television show finished, it would always finish the same way; the family would stand at the front door of the house, on the porch waving their hands goodbye. They always looked so happy and full of colour, it always made me smile. I felt like waving back every time but to say hello, not goodbye.
“It’s nearly dinner time, get your shoes on.” said mum, poking her head around the door of my room.
I smiled, hopped up off of the bed and switched off the television. Today was Sunday, I loved Sundays; it was the only day of the week when we would eat out as a family. The food was always so fresh and succulent, much better than what we had stored in the house; I’m going to have the legs today I thought to myself excitedly. My mum liked the legs too so sometimes we would argue, but I would always win. My dad would always have the breast though, he loved that part.
I dragged my shoes out from under the bed, slipped them on and ran out of my room to the front door where my mum and dad were waiting. My dad helped me with my coat and then picked me up and carried me out of the front door leaving my mum to lock up behind.
It was a long walk from our apartment to where we ate and the streets were always busy because everyone else ate out on a Sunday too. Sometimes it was a little tricky to actually sit down and eat since you had to avoid everyone and then hurry to find a table but my dad was strong and my mum was quick so we never really had much of a problem enjoying our meals.
On the way to our meal my mum and dad met up with the Kiernan’s, a friendly family who also had a daughter with the same condition I had, her name was Tanya. Tanya was thirteen and training to be a dancer, dancing had made her quick so she would always be tasked by her parents with finding and securing a decent place to sit in one of the nearby diners so that they could eat quickly and comfortably. Tanya would save seats for us too. They were nice people.
Kam Kiernan, Tanya’s dad, would always speak to my dad about things that I didn’t understand but they would always laugh while talking about those things so I didn’t mind that I didn’t understand, the best I could do was to remember words that they used often, words like ‘livestock’ and ‘importing’. Sometimes Tanya was really quiet and didn’t speak to me, especially if dad was carrying me but she would still look up at me and smile and I’d smile back.
Instead of talking to Tanya while in my dad’s arms, I’d look around and learn the different routes we’d take through the city. The city looked really dirty, maybe more than it actually was because it was so dark all of the time. The streets were always wet too and a lot of glowing neon signs that advertised the names of shops and opening times were broken. I’d often have a lot of fun trying to make up words with the unbroken lights and this would help me remember my way through the city, if I ever needed to go anywhere in case of an emergency...
The routes we’d take through the city en route to our meal would differ depending on how crowded the other streets were. I had committed most of the routes to memory but not all of them, and the route we had taken today hadn’t been a familiar one. As I looked around trying to find signs and other things I would remember, I recognised the empty narrow street where I had found the ray of sunlight. I couldn’t see the ray of light but I assumed it’d shine down eventually, it was odd that the narrow street was still empty but still, I smiled to myself and part of me wanted to hop down from my dad’s arms and run over into the narrow street, wait for the sunlight and hold out my hand under it to see if it would hurt me again. But I didn’t.
I kept staring at the empty narrow street until it was almost out of sight, then I felt my dad put me down on the ground. We had arrived and it was time for dinner.
Even though we had left early we still somehow managed to arrive with everyone else. The crowd would always gather from the bottom of the street in front of the three taller than tall buildings. From those buildings the crowd would lead back down to the other end of the street. Some people preferred to be at the back, others the middle and others the front. My mum and dad preferred to be at the front of the crowd, closest to the buildings but today we found ourselves in the middle, half way down the street. I guess it was best to be at the front since the food didn’t travel too far once it had been thrown but I preferred it here in the middle because I could see everything without having to look up and cause my neck to ache.
The city’s siren began to sound through the streets and then the hundreds of people in the crowd cheered almost as loud. I never used to like the noise of the siren, it used to scare me but now I found it exciting. I watched as handfuls of walkways of different lengths folded out from the largest windows of the three buildings. I had often asked my dad how high the walkways were off of the ground. He would tell me that they started on the twentieth floor and went all the way up to the thirtieth, which was very high, even though the buildings themselves were so much taller than that.
I wondered to myself if the people on the highest floors of the buildings could see the sun from there…
I felt Tanya’s hand take mine, she led me away from my parents and through the crowd into a small diner. The street was filled with diners, some were several storey’s high, it was smart for so many diners to be on this street, I thought. Tanya had led me into her favourite diner which was owned by a man called Jameson. The diner was only one floor and quite small, our families had eaten her lots of times but I still didn’t see why Tanya liked it so much.
Almost without looking, Tanya ran to the left side of the diner and knelt by the first table where she took off the brakes and wheeled it into a corner next to another table so that we could all eat together. The table were long and silver with a flat top for our meals and shelves underneath for our cutlery and condiments. It was difficult for Tanya to push properly so she would instead, push one corner forward then run over to the other and push that and then would repeat until the table was where she wanted it.
“Are you rearranging my tables again?” asked Jameson with a smile as he stepped out from the back room and stood behind the counter.
“Yeah” Tanya replied with excitement.
Once Tanya had pushed the table into place she re-locked the wheel brakes and untangled the three lengths of straps that were hung in a loose bow at the side and then moved on to the other one. As Tanya rearranged and prepared the tables, I hurried over to the counter and rattled in the cutlery baskets, picking up knives, forks and other sharp looking silver tools.
“Be careful with those, Caitlin.” He said to me in a firm voice.
“I know.” I responded as I wrapped up the knives and forks and other utensils into napkins from the end of the counter.
We always tried to prepare the tables as fast as we could so that we could watch out of the window before the siren ended. Stuffing the cutlery into the compartments on the shelves of the tables, Tanya and I ran over to and clambered on top of the windowsill in the diner’s alcove near the entrance. I stood and Tanya knelt so that we could see both over the net curtain which hung down from the middle of the window and under the writing that read Jameson’s Diner on the glass. Even though we only had a little clearing to see through we could still see everything that was about to happen outside.
Outside the siren stopped and so too did the cheering of the crowd. I glanced at Tanya during the brief silence; she was smiling and her eyes were really wide, she was gripping the cord that the net curtain hung from as she watched. I turned back to look out of the window and saw my mum. Even though my mum loved me and my dad and the city she would still only really smile while telling me stories of her old home or while she was waiting for her meal. I loved seeing my mum smile. My mum spotted Tanya and I in Jameson’s window and waved at us, we waved back.
All at once the people in the crowd began to poise themselves, some knelt down on one knee, some, like my parents took a few steps back and held a pose, and others like Tanya’s parents prepared to give the decided member a boost.
Loud metallic clanking noises were met with sporadic cheers from the crowd as they began to leap over one another in the hopes of catching the first of their would-be meals that had been launched from catapults on the walkways above. It almost looked like a wildlife documentary about frogs in the countryside leaping to catch their food… only different.
My mum and dad would move so fast as they leapt that it was hard for me to keep my eyes on them. Sometimes their dark clothes would blend in to the dark walls of the buildings or I would lose sight of them in the shadows, but today I was able to keep my eyes on my mum. My dad was able to jump higher and faster than my mum so I would rarely be able to follow him as I watched from the window, I didn’t mind though because my mum was prettier; her long blonde hair would blow in the wind and sometimes, if I looked hard enough, there would be a few seconds where she would close her eyes as she moved through the air, and in those few seconds her smile would become bigger. I decided to myself that she was imagining her old wooden house on the flower covered hill… Her smile would disappear as soon as she opened her eyes.
Today it was my dad and Tanya’s mum who caught our meals. Tanya’s mum was always one of the first to catch their meal; being a dancer herself made her very agile and the boost from Tanya’s dad meant that she could reach further and higher than most. Sometimes it would take my mum and dad a few attempts but today my dad had been lucky. It was always best to catch a meal before it hit the ground because if it did then it would be spoiled, the streets weren’t very clean to begin with and there would always be less of it to eat after the impact. Though most of the time people just tried again and again to catch their meals and would leave the spoiled ones for the homeless to feast on later in the day, Sunday was a good day for them…
Through the window Tanya and I saw our parents heading back towards the diner. We hurried off of the windowsill and over to our table where we held the straps straight, so that they didn’t get tangled when our parents came to use them.
“So who got it this time?” Jameson asked.
“My mum” Tanya replied.
“And my dad” I said feeling as proud as always.
My mum and dad were the first through the door of the diner, followed by Tanya’s mum and dad; both our dads were carrying our meals over their shoulders. They joined us in the corner and placed our meals on the tables with a little bit of a thud from each of them.
Tanya’s meal was motionless but mine was still moving around, its chains were clinking on the metal of the table and it was making quiet groaning sounds from behind the block in its mouth...
My dad reached over the table and took one of the straps from one of my hands and stretched it over our meal’s chest and then did the same with the other strap, this time stretching it over our meal’s legs. Our meal today was very colourful, her hair was a light copper brown and her skin was a fresh pink peach like colour. She reminded me of the people from television who lived in the house on the hill under the sun. I stared at her as my mum and dad undressed her so that we could start eating. The woman stared back at me, I smiled a welcoming smile. I wanted to ask her what it was like to live in a house under the sun surrounded by flower filled meadows… so I raised my hand to her mouth and pressed my hand against the block between her teeth in an attempt to move it out of the way. My mum saw me and gently pushed my hand back down to my side.
“Get yourself ready to eat darling.” My mum said in a soft tone.
“We don’t play with our food now do we, Caitlin?” my dad added.
“No dad.” I replied as I reached for my knife.
With my knife in hand my mum picked me up and stood me on a chair at our meal’s legs.
“Now be careful and don’t fall.”
“Yes mum.”
My mum stared down at me with adoration and stroked my hair.
“Make a wish Caitlin.” My dad said from the top of the table.
We looked to my dad; he was holding our meal’s head in his hands.
I closed my eyes and made my wish; I wished to one day live in a small wooden house on a flower covered hill under the sun, surrounded by meadows with my mum, dad and my brown shaggy, floppy eared dog, Sam.
I opened my eyes and nodded to my dad with a smile.
With a quick jerk he made our meal’s neck make a wet cracking noise. I liked that noise.
A series of light-hearted cheers from around the now busy diner sounded out around us followed by a little laughter.
“Dig in” my dad offered.
I carefully bent my body towards our meal and sunk my teeth into its leg; her blood was warm and tasted like sunlight.
