I'm not sure why I started writing this today. I've just had allot of muse leaking out of my head lately, so I thought I may as well roll with it and see where it takes me. I wanted the story to seem like it was through a ten year old's eyes, but in third-person, since I find writing in POV a little tricky. Basically it's about a little girl, who grew up with her dog, and her feelings towards the dog. Anyway you'll get a good perception of it if you read it, so I wont explain a whole lot. Amy stared out the passenger-seat window of her dad’s Statesman DeVille as they passed through street after unfamiliar street. Her long dark-brunette hair fell over her face as tears slid silently down her cheeks, and she made no move to brush either of them away. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been crying, and she didn’t care either. There was only one thing on her mind right now, and a dark black cloud of doom and resentment hanging over her head. She felt the car lurch forward her father slowed into a parking spot and pulled up the hand brake. Amy didn’t look allot like him. They shared the same dark hair and olive-complexion, but he was a tall, wiry man, with hazel eyes, and black hair that curled like long springs around his shoulders. Amy’s eyes were green, and her hair was long and straight. The reason was because he wasn’t technically her biological father. Though it made no difference to Amy. Before Amy’s mum met her dad, she was living in New Zealand with a previous boyfriend, called Mark. The two of them never planned on having Amy. It just sort of happened. Then again, a lot of things in life just happen, don’t they? Like Mark’s and mum’s inevitable split once Amy was born. But from the moment that Amy arrived, mum wanted her - the part of her life that concerned her at least - to be deliberate. Didn’t most people just let things happen to them? Do you think your parents meant to have you? Amy’s mum never thought of Amy as a mistake. It was true that she was unintended, but mum decided to keep her hadn’t she? Amy never got to know Mark for a long time. Whenever she asked her mum about him, she’d say that when she was older she’d tell her more, and then she could be able to make up her own mind about him. Now that Amy older, she wondered why and how they ever got along well enough to have her in the first place. It had been the spiral haired man who’d been there since Amy was a toddler that was the real dad. Even before she had even learnt to speak, he had always been, "Dad". He had been there for her since she was two years old, he had raised her as if she was his own. Wasn’t that what a real dad should do? But I digress. Amy didn’t look a whole lot like her mum either. Her mum a short woman, pale, with blonde hair and brown eyes. Amy was still staring out the window when her mum, and dad got out of the car and she heard them pop the boot. She had glanced behind her allot during their journey, anxious for the precious cargo that she had objected they lay back there instead of across her lap. "Stop itl!" A high pitched whine came from beside Amy. She turned her head slowly to look at her little sister, who was pouting at their five year old brother sitting in the middle of the back seat of the car. Her little sister looked more like both their dad and mum, but she had freckles, strawberry blonde hair, and Amy’s green eyes. "Stop it!" Amy’s little brother mimicked in a squeaky voice. He looked more like their mum, with fair skin, freckles, blonde hair and her brown eyes. You probably wouldn’t think, at first glance that any of these three siblings were related at all. They all looked so different from each other. The two of them were always bickering over the backset of the car. If it wasn’t about who gets the window seat, it was because one of them was breathing too loud, or one of their leg’s was too close to the other person’s side of the seat. Trivial things. All of which Amy had ignored on the way here. "Come on, Amy." Outside her cloud, she heard her dad’s voice calling her. Obediently, Amy opened the passenger door and stepped out of the claustrophobic back seat. Her arms unconsciously wrapped around her own chest; not so much because of the cold Autumn air, but because of the nauseating feeling at the pit of her stomach. Amy shuffled towards the boot of the car, keeping her eyes down as brown and yellow leaves danced around her feet, turning, gyrating and gliding to an unheard, mad rhythm. "Are you sure you want to come in?" Amy heard her dad ask as he lifted a large bulk from the boot of the car. She couldn’t take her eyes off of the furry bundle. He was large, with a domed forehead, a long square-cut muzzle and a black nose, speckled with white. His jaws were strong with a scissor-like bite, and eyes were medium-sized and brown, looking back at her with a lively, and intelligent look. The kind of look at made Amy wonder if he knew what was going on. His ears were large and stood erect, open at the front and parallel, again, the tips were flecked with white. His body was covered in tan/black fur, with ‘black masks’ around his face and back. He was a German Shepherd. Her Cam. Amy nodded stiffly, feeling fresh, warm tears run down her cheeks as her mum closed the boot. She then felt her mothers warm arms wrap around her shoulders and give her a squeeze. "I love you." She kissed Amy’s forehead softly before the woman slid back into the car to take care of her little brother and sister. Without a word, Amy walked beside her father, gently petting Cam’s head as they ascended steps and entered a small room with many shelves, and a single desk. As her dad spoke with a young lady behind the desk, Amy looked around the room, taking it all in. Her eyes caught sight of a small collar, listening to the ‘ting, ting, ting’ chime it rang every time she poked the belle at the bottom of it. She managed a timid smile behind the tears drying on her cheeks. "Come on, Amy." Her dad called her as the lady lead him into a creamy room. Amy followed, entering the room a few seconds later as her dad lifted Cam onto a steel table. The woman, who Amy realized was only wearing white, bustled around the room, but it wasn’t her that Amy was paying particular attention to. It was Cam. "It’s okay." Amy murmured to the canine, stroking the coarse fur around his neck and face. She felt a large, hard lump rise in her throat, and her vision blurred with tears, but she tried to hold them back. Wiping them them away with the back of her sleeve, she then leant in close to kiss him on his forehead. Be brave, for him. She thought to herself. He would want you here. You need to be here for him. And while she stared into his chocolate eyes, she remembered the most vivid memories she had of Cam. She was nearly two years old, still in diapers when her mum placed her down on the tiled flooring of Cas’s rental house in Kalgoorlie. The surrounding’s were new to the toddler’s eyes, and as children often do, within seconds she had left her mothers sight, and tottered straight over to an old beanbag sitting in the lounge room. Amy paid no attention to what was going on behind her. She knew full well that if she needed her mum, she’d be able to find her. The woman had never given her a reason to imagine that she’d ever not be there if Amy needed her. Amy had just dropped down on the beanbag, looking at all of the strange color’s dancing across the TV set when she felt something cold against the side of her face. Spinning her head to face the touch, her wide eyes boggled as a giant furry head sniffed her head. "Is your dog safe?" Mum asked another man sitting at the dinner table with Cas. There was a pitch of concern in her voice as she watched Amy reaching out to grab a handful of the furry face in front of her. "Yeah, Cam’s great with kids." The other guy with spiraling hair replied, insouciant. Amy continued to play with her new playmates fur as he lay patiently on the beanbag, sniffing her with curiosity every now and then. Before finding that Amy had taken over his beanbag, Cam had never met a tiny human in his two years of life. She remembered playing with him in her backyard in Kalgoorlie. They would have both been 4 years old. "Tah!" She wrapped a hand around a sodden tennis ball that was locked in the giant shepherds jaws, trying to pull it free. Cam dropped the ball, looking across at the girl as she pulled her hand back over her head, grinning widely. "Cammy, go catch!" She cried, throwing the ball as far as she could. She’d watch her playmate race after the ball, scooping it back up and trotting off, jumping onto the trampoline to chew at it. "No!" She’d scold him, clambering onto the trampoline after the canine. "Bring it back to Amy!" She pulled at the ball again, tossing it as far as she could towards the garden. A year later, Amy was playing in the garden, underneath a large mulberry tree, nibbling at the small black berry’s. Her mum and dad were busy inside with her new baby sister, so Amy had decided to wander off to play in the garden. Red stained her fingers and cheeks as she stuffed another handful into her mouth. She squealed with delight as Cam came trotting towards her. He licked at her fingers and cheeks when she reached out to him, squishing more berries onto her shirt as she toppled back onto the grass. She was nine in the next memory, resting her head on Cam’s stomach as they lay out on the lawn in her front yard, together. She listened carefully, hearing his steady heartbeat, and the gentle ‘whoosh’ as air filled, and left his lungs. "Cammy," she spoke absentmindedly, staring up at the clouds as they drifted by, "What do you think the clouds are made of?" She turned to face him as he slept beneath her. "I think they’re made of feathers. Or some sort of dust." He simply yawned. Later that year, Amy heard some commotion outside, and a dog yelp."Dont do that!" Amy yelled, storming out of the kitchen and hurrying towards her little brother and sister, who were pushing against Cam’s back legs, trying to jump onto his back. "Get off!" She growled, but recoiled when she felt something sharp bite at her knee. With a squeal, Amy jumped back, staring down at Cam as the realization of what he’d just done, hit her. With tears in her eyes, Amy ran inside to the kitchen. "Cammy bit me!" She ran to her mum, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Look!" She lifted her knee and pointed at a set of teeth marks just above her knee. "I’m sure he didn’t mean it," her mum said, scooping her up so that she sat on her lap. "He’s never been mad at me before." Amy sobbed, hugging close to her mum. The bite hadn’t really hurt at all. It was the fact that Cam, her playmate, would even think of biting her hurt so much more. The sound of toenails on the kitchen tile’s prompted Amy to look up to see Cam walking into the kitchen. She whined, tightening her hold on her mum as he approached her, his head and tail hanging low. Amy watched him as he sat at her feet and placed his head on her lap. Then, licking the knee that he had bit, he gave a little whine. With a sob, Amy broke into more tears as she dropped from her mum’s lap and buried her face in Cam’s fur. She knew that it had been his way of saying that he was sorry for hurting her. A few days later, her parents called her into the kitchen and told her that Cam was going to have to be put to sleep that week. "No!" She protested. "Cant we get him... one of those doggy wheelchairs or something?" Her parents looked at her sadly. "He’s very old." They told her. "His arthritis is getting worse, and he has a hard enough time walking as it is." Amy felt her world was falling in around her. Cam had been her best friend as far back as she could remember. More than that, he’d been like an older brother. Amy never answered them, she just ran back outside to lay beside his kennel. Amy continued to stroke Cam’s fur as her mind shifted back to the present, but this time her attention wasn’t on him as much, now it was on the nurse, who was now standing very close to the table with a pair of hair clippers. "He wont feel a thing." She spoke gently when she caught Amy’s stare, and started to shave off the fur around his right paw. Amy swallowed convulsively, trying to dislodge the golf ball sized lump that continued to grow in her throat. She stared with large, green eyes as the woman took Cam’s collar off from around his neck, giving it to her dad. She then took a syringe and slid the needle into Cam’s shaved paw, and pressed on the plunger to inject the liquid inside. Amy’s insides churned and she felt a sharp stab in her chest as she watched the liquid disappear from the barrel of the syringe. She felt as if that nurse might as well have injected the liquid into her own heart. With a shuddering breath, Amy tore her eyes from the needle to look back into Cam’s eyes. "I love you, Cammy." She whispered, stroking his left paw as he looked back into her eyes. Cam’s eyes began to droop as her dad began to stroke his head. "I’m so sorry, mate." He whispered, and it was then that Amy realized that he was crying too. When Cam finally closed his eyes, it still hadn’t fully sunk in that he was now gone. Amy continued to stare at him, waiting for him to look at her again. But he wouldn’t look at her, and she realized he never would again. She had lost the one friend, she had. She had lost a playmate, and she had lost an older brother. Did Cam know how much he loved her? Had she said it often enough? She could have stopped her parents from doing this. Why couldn’t her dog wheelchair idea have worked? Well, it didn’t matter now. Cam was gone. "Come on, Amy." She heard a distant, familiar voice and a warm touch on her hand as her dad’s hand entwined hers tightly. As he dad led her from the room, she still did not look away from her friend till they had both turned a corner and the door closed behind them. Amy didn’t say anything on the way home, only shooting the odd glare at her brother and sister as they squealed and argued beside her. But she couldn’t resent them for it, they were too young to understand why they had arrived at the strange place with their dog, and were now leaving without him. She wasn’t crying anymore, but her eyes were red, her face felt dry from the tears and she felt tired. Amy didn’t want to cry, she wanted to be brave for him. She didn’t think he would want her to cry. "Here." She heard a feminine voice in front of her, and she realized that her mum was holding Cam’s collar. Hesitantly, Amy took the collar from her mum and rubbed her thumb over the name tag. "Cam." She mouthed and wrapped her hands over it protectively, staring back out the window.
nice story love sad but well written and thought out, it made me cry... or maybe it was the stabbing pains in my stomach that did that... reguardless i love the story
