Fire And Ash by Nia Davenport

sometime later. They wake me up and I want to go to my mother now that we are alone again. Kiss the sadness off her face that I know will be there, just like I’ll do with Dad when he comes home again before the sun rises. I love both of my parents and I don’t blame either of them for their constant fighting. Even at six I understand that they are different people, moving in different directions, with different desires. Mom is not a hunter. She knew the life she was signing up for when she married Dad, but she can no longer bear the weight of it. She hasn’t been able to for two years now. Not since my cousins’ mother, her closest friend, was killed on a hunt in the park. She doesn’t want the same thing to happen to Dad or to me someday. But Dad has sworn a duty and Mom doesn’t understand why he feels so compelled to uphold it. She often yells at him that if he loves us he will leave. Dad yells back that he can’t. I wait for the footsteps to come back up the stairs. When they never do, I assume that she is sitting in the leather recliner, staring bleakly into nothingness with swollen, puffy eyes. I go in search of her and the recliner is empty. Our back door sits ajar. Our back door is never ajar. It and the front door and the basement door are always triple bolted. Especially at night when only her and I are inside. Something crawls over me warning me against going into the backyard. It whispers to go back upstairs and get back into bed. I ignore it because I know my mother is beyond that door and go outside anyway. I see something. Something that I know I shouldn’t be seeing. But my brain can’t make sense of the image. It’s fuzzy and shrouded in darkness. Then the darkness envelopes the entire scene and everything starts over from the beginning. I hear footsteps, I hear a voice, I hear shouting.  
    The nightmare that is really a memory plays on a continuous loopuntil I finally wake up in a cold sweat, shaking with terror and gasping for air exactly how I would do in the months following Mom’s death. I haven’t woken up like this after the dream since I was six. But just like then I open my eyes to the feeling that I am being suffocated. I shoot up in the bed clawing at invisible hands. My lungs are on fire and my throat feels as if someone is crushing my windpipe from the outside in. I fight past the agony, dragging in one deep breath and then another.  
    Calm down, I tell myself. You were only dreaming. You weren’t really experiencing it again. Don’t let it get to you like this.
      “To be afraid is to be weak, to be weak is to be dead. Jacobs are not weak. Jacobs are strong. It is in our DNA to be.” I use my grandfather’s words to fight back the gut wrenching emotion that is beginning to take root.
    My mind dredges up the rest of the memory. The part that comes after the darkness. The part I never dream about. I am thankful that I do not dream this part. That I do not see my mother’s lifeless body periodically when I close my eyes.  
    I open my eyes a moment after the darkness claimed me. I realize I must have fainted   upon seeing Mom sprawled across the grass. I automatically know she is dead. I don’t know how I know but I do. I don’t cry, I don’t scream, I don’t fall apart. Even at six I know that death is a part of our life. If hearing Granddad say it wasn’t enough, I saw it with Cousin Linda, Sean and Gerard’s mom, and Becca’s uncle who was their father. I also know I should go inside and bolt the doors. It’s not safe to be out at night. But I don’t. I crawl to Mom and sit down beside her. Lay my head on her chest, and avoid looking at the awkward angle that her neck is bent at. I close my eyes and wait for someone to come home. I won’t leave her out here alone. While I am waiting I pretend that everything is normal. We’re not lying outside on a cold ground. We are inside, where it is warm. She is in the recliner and I am sleeping on her lap. I open my eyes to