Broken Free

We slowly walked down the steps, holding hands,groping our way through the dark. There was a pang of fear gripping my whole being. It was our first night home alone. Our parents were away for a business trip.

Of course. Work. It's always work. I was starting to believe that they valued their work more than they valued us.

There were two men in our house. In the middle of the night. That couldn't be good. One of them was rummaging through the kitchen drawer and the other was on the phone.

"Ouch!" I stepped on a nail with my bare foot. Where did that come from? I blew our cover.

"Hey! Who's there?" The man who was on the phone tried to find where the sound came from.

We started to run back upstairs to our room.

"Quick! Get in." My sister pushed me into the closet. I thought she was going to get in too,but she closed the door and locked me in.

"What are you doing?" I whisper shouted.

"Protecting you. Don't say a word, no matter what.I'll call the police."

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"

I peeped through the key hole to see who was talking. It was one of the two men. My sister was out there, alone with them. They both had pistols.

"What do you want?"

"We already got what we wanted,but we now have some unfinished business."

"What do you mean?"

What did they mean?

"We can't go, someone having seen our faces. We have to end you,once and for all."

I felt a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat. End her? They wanted to end my sister? I felt tears run down my cheeks.

They couldn't kill my sister. She was going to find a way out. She always did.

"Now,who were you with?" They were getting closer to her. She was moving away from them.

"No one. I'm home alone."

"Well,in that case, good for us. It only gets easier." The man took out his gun and pointed it to my sister's head. The terror in me at that point rendered me paralyzed. All I could do was was wish. And I wished that there and then, I would wake up and it would all be gone. I would wake up beside my sister. My best friend.

But someone once said that we don't always get what we wish for. I confirmed that when I heard a gun shot and my sister scream.

My sister was murdered. Right before my eyes. I didn't do anything to save her. I just watched. I was never going to forgive myself.

Sydney's lifeless body fell to the floor,beside her cell phone. That's the last thing I saw before waking up in a hospital bed.

My life was not going to be the same again.