Shooting Children - Melody Cryns

I crouched down by the gray wooden backyard fence hoping he wouldn’t see me, hot, hyper-ventilating and out of breath and totally terrified. My body felt as if it would explode at any moment and I shook with fear. I didn’t want him to see me – the one advantage I had was that I could run faster than him. My stepfather was a big, fat slow-moving pig, I thought. This time I’ll tell my Mom everything – I’ll stop this craziness, or I might as well die. I don’t want to see him. I looked around the cut grass and the wild rose bushes which would usually delight me in a backyard. I wasn’t even sure whose backyard this was. What am I doing here? I’m too old to be jumping fences like I used to do as a kid – I’m like 14 now.

But he scares me, that stepfather of mine. I don’t want to see him and I don’t want him anywhere near me. He tries to punish me and say it’s for my own good – yet I know in my heart that what he’s doing is wrong and I need to tell somebody, my mom, my Uncle Jim, but I don’t know how because somehow I think it’s all my fault.

As I crouched down lower, still breathing hard, a feeling of sadness washed over me and the tears began to flow. When will this craziness end?

Maybe I’ll never leave this spot – then I won’t have to go back home or face any of it – face him, face anyone. I can just die here in someone’s backyard, shaped like a neat square like all the backyards here in our neighborhood of San Francisco. Life had been so good and then suddenly it had all changed.

I finally slowly, ever so slowly, lifted myself up and peeked over the fence almost expecting a monster to jump out at me. But no one was there.

I ditched him – again. How dare he tell me I can’t go to the school picnic or out with my Dad because I was bad and being “punished.” I told him so and ran – for my life. I didn’t want to be alone with him, ever again. So I told him off and I ran and he chased me, but he’s too slow and he can’t catch me. He uses children as targets – that’s the kind of person he is – shooting children, taking away their innocence and rendering them helpless…

I wasn’t going to let him do it to me anymore – I’d rather he shoot me down than go through it again. This is it, I thought, I’m running away. I heaved myself over yet another fence and ran – just keep running, keep running…