I will never laugh again
Emma and Jack were on the frozen lake and he had just taken off his skates. Under the feet of both, the cold slab was slowly giving way, the little girl was frightened and looked motionless at his brother.
He reached out to her and tried to reassure her:
-It's ok, it's ok. Don't look down, just look at me…-
-Jack, I'm scared!-
The boy lowered his arm, but insisted:
-I know, I know, but you're going to be all right: you're not going to fall in. We're going to have a lot of fun instead!-
She trembled on her skates, saying:
-No, we're not!-
-Would I trick you?-
-Yes, you always play tricks!-
Hearing those words, Jack laughed nervously and continued:
-Not this time! I promise, I promise you're going to be all right. You have to believe in me… Want you play a game? We're going to play hopscotch, like we play every day! It's easy…-
Saying this, he moved one foot and shifted his weight.
-one, two…Three-
He arrived in a safe place, where the ice was more robust, and picked up his shepherd's staff, saying:
-All right… Now it's your turn. One…-
Emma took a shaky step on skates toward him, who continued to encourage her:
-Two… Three!-
Immediately the boy grabbed her with the hook of the staff, but he had to use a great force, for which the girl was thrown in his place and he fell on the opposite side, where the ice was unstable.
He stood up and smiled, not realizing that under his feet new cracks were formed.
Suddenly, when Jack started approaching his sister, the sheet finally gave way, causing him to fall into the icy water.
-JACK!-
-No!-
Emma gasped and sat up on the bed: she had a shocked expression and panted, then looked around and sighed, realizing she had had another nightmare.
Slowly got out of bet, lit a flaming torch and walked to the window of her room; she shifted the curtains and opened the wooden shutters to look out, and immediately a cold wind caressed her, making her shiver.
She closed her eyes, from which descended some tears: her brother loved that wind, he always said it was refreshing.
The girl moved toward some wooden shelves on which were some old yellowed sheets with drawings of her and Jack playing and joking.
She took one sketch and whispered, her voice breaking with tears:
-Jack…-
A tear fell on the drawing, ending up between her and her brother, and slipped away, making a damp vertical line that divided the two figures.
Five years had past since Jack had left her and his family, five years in which the girl, now fifteen, shut herself off without talking to anyone.
Emma was desperate, after all that time she still couldn't accept that her funny big brother wasn't there anymore and was still suffering as she suffered the day after the accident.
Slowly, she put the paper on her desk and picked up a stick of coal, with which she wrote on the same drawing this words:
"I will never laugh again".
Then, she took the torch, went, stealthy walking, in the house principal room and kissed the sheet on the point where Jack was drown, putting it on the table.
Suddenly, she came out of the house barefoot in the snow, without first taking a warm cloak; she started walking in the dark, looking straight ahead, with only the dim light of the fire that drove her.
A few steps from her home silhouetted flat and still the frozen lake that years before had inexorably swallowed her beloved Jack: after his death, the villagers had surrounded the water with a fence to prevent such tragedies from happening again.
As soon as she saw it, Emma hesitated, reliving that moment in a flashback, but quickly returned serious and approached the fence; she took a deep breath, beginning to croon the melody that Jack used to sing her when she was a child, and bypassed the wooden planks. Her feet touched the smooth and icy surface and the girl trembled, but didn't stop walking or humming.
With the flame in front of the face, she moved small steps looking for a place where the ice were more subtle: the winter was almost over and the temperature was rising up; now, only a few things were enough for breaking that frozen slab; Emma noticed a halo that looked more transparent and walked toward it, while slight cracks was forming.
There, now she had only a small movement to do and everything would be over, everything would be back to old times, joyful and cheerful.
She began to tremble even more, while her feet were moving on the fragile slab.
She looked down, noticing that the surface was cracking even faster, then she looked desperate at the starry sky and cried out with the loudest voice she had:
-JACK, TAKE ME WITH YOU!-
So the ice gave way under the girl's weight.
She made a last, muffled shout:
-Jack!-
Make way for me!
Hello everybody!
As you can see, I'm a lover of dramatic stories… But I swear I cried when I wrote this L
Well, I don't have much to say now. I hope you enjoyed my work and hope you'll leave some comments!
Thanks for reading
BlackyValix
P.S. I'm so sorry if my English isn't perfect, but I'm an Italian girl, I hope you'll understand…
Goodbye!
