Hey, this is the prequel to my story Nicole the Demigod, sorry it took so long to get posted. This is just the prologue and in past tense, the rest of the story is going to be in present tense! Enjoy and happy holidays everyone!
I had a completely normal, uneventful, boring life. I had never met my dad, but my mom and I were happy, and that's all that I really needed in life. I always had dyslexia and ADD, but I never went to one of those private schools and got through school okay enough. I was in band and played the flute, clarinet, and mostly saxophone, though I filled in what was needed in band.
Then, we got attacked by the Nemean Lion. I was definitely not expecting that at all, but my mom seemed to at least recognize what was going on in time to react. It was almost as if she had been waiting for Greek mythology to just walk through the front door of our apartment. She fought it bravely, but the knives in our kitchen didn't work so well against mythological creatures that aren't supposed to exist.
The lion ended up killing her and I got this huge scratch on my arm before finally managing to escape certain death. I ran outside into the street, and kept on running for about an hour before I finally stopped. Extremely tired, I decided to go back and search my room for anything that might be useful at all before leaving the apartment for good; I couldn't pay the rent anymore.
When I walked back up the stairs, it was as if no one had seen the Nemean Lion and everything was normal again. Unfortunately, when I walked through the door into the front room, I knew that it hadn't been a hallucination at all. The whole room was trashed and bloody and my mother's broken body was lying across the floor, spread-eagled. That was too much for me, and I ran to my room with tears streaming down my face the whole way.
My room wasn't harmed at all, and the only difference was a small package on my desk. I walked over to it and saw a small note taped to the top of it. It took me a while, but I eventually made out the words "To: Brittany I had hoped this could have waited until you were older From: Your father".
Well isn't that just PEACHY! My mom is dead and the dad that I never met, knew about, or saw in any pictures even left me a mysterious package with a note that explained absolutely NOTHING! Has that been in my room the whole time, buried under piles of clothes, and I just never noticed it, or was it something else? Tempted to throw it in the trash and never even open it, I decided that it was probably best to give my dad one last chance to make up for ten years of neglect.
Opening the present, I saw a small, shiny knife and a cool, new looking MP3 player. It wasn't an iPod, but it was pretty high-tech anyway, but the knife, who in their right mind would give a nine-year-old girl a sharp knife? I guess my loving father would, considering he has never met me and learned how awful I am with weapons and that my mom does-didn't let me use a butter knife.
I kept the gift anyway, because, honestly, who wouldn't take an amazing MP3 player that already has all of your favorite songs on it and a shiny knife? Okay, maybe the knife part is a stretch, but I kept it anyway. If I'm going to be fending for myself from now on, I will need some way to defend myself, especially if that lion comes back. Then, I went into the bathroom to try to bandage up my arm and try to stop the bleeding. It wasn't bad for a first try, if I do say so myself, and it had mainly healed up already by the time I actually was bothered to check on it like I should have and hour ago. I turned back to my room for the last time.
Gathering up some more stuff in my favorite backpack, I walked back out to the living room. My mom was still lying there, so I decided to phone the police and tell them about the murder of my mom, but leaving out the fact that I was the one telling them. It would be bad if they thought that I was the one who murdered her, so I said that I was a neighbor and that the "little girl" (me) was kidnapped. They would be able to take the necessary procedures to bury my mom because I couldn't.
Walking out the front door, I could tell that something had changed about me. I was no longer the nice, innocent little girl that I had been only two hours ago. Now, I had witnessed my own mother's death and almost died myself, and I would never be the same again.