The Small Assassin	  The Small Assassin

 by Amanda

 Written for Livia's Bradbury title challenge. Thanks to IcyFire719 for
planting the idea in my head. And as always, please provide me with my
drug of choice--feedback!!! 

 

  

 They should have known. 

 They should have learned. 

 They should have thought back to 1989, to the scarecrow that had fallen
into a coma before coming down from the cross. Of course, there had been
that one little aberration that year; namely, the meteor shower that had
forever changed the town and the lives of everyone in it. 

 Especially the lives of the two people standing in front of the coffin. 

 "Do you want to make a wish?" 

 A three-year-old girl in a fairy princess costume had managed to succeed
where God, modern medicine, and the government had failed--to grant one
simple wish. 

 She can still feel him in her arms, wrapped in a soft blue blanket, as
they stared in wonder at the charred black pod half-buried in the crater. 

 "We didn't find him. He found us." 

 We didn't find him 

 She'll never forget those last few days full of harsh words and
heartache, fear and relief and more fear crashing over all of them like
waves on a breaker. She'll wish forever that they could have just waited
one more week before turning his life upside-down and sideways, before
changing all of their lives so thoroughly that soon they would be unable
to remember a simpler time, a happier time. Shell wish forever that those
last few days could have been filled with hugs and laughter and warm apple
pie instead of space pods and suspicion. 

 Those last few days will be the rest of her life. 

 She leans into the strong embrace and knows that he has his own regrets
eating away at his soul. If only he had signed that permission slip. If
only he had let him keep the truck. If only he had kept his mouth shut
about the tablet and the storm cellar. If only he could have known that
those days would be his son's last, everything would have been different.
He could have been happy. He could have gotten his only wish--"to go
through high school without being a total loser." Of course, he never
would have gotten through high school, but at least he could have been
happy contemplating what would have been. That he could have won the big
game and gotten the girl. 

 He deserved that much. 

 At least. 

 He deserved so much more than that, though. So much more. And he should
have gotten it. He was meant for great things. They had been convinced of
that since the day in the field so long ago. He was meant for greatness. 

 Not for this. 

 Not for a mahogany box and trite, lifeless words on a stone. 

 Not for a rough, wooden cross and an agonizingly painful death by a
stone. 

 He glares at that stone, dangling so innocently from the slender neck of
the dark-haired girl who, long ago, had granted them their life-altering
wish. She had done so much for them. And, though she never knew it, she
had meant so much to him. As far as he was concerned, it was for her and
only her that the sun rose in the morning and set at night. It was for her
that birds sang and flowers blossomed. It was for her he longed, and for
her he was prepared to wait forever. 

 It was for her that he had died. 

 At the hands of another kid just like him, he had died for daring to care
for her. 

 It didn't make sense. 

 Nothing made sense anymore. He could see that in the faces of each and
every person gathered near him, like living, breathing mirrors. Mirrors
that he couldn't escape. They all had their own reasons for feeling the
way they did, but they all felt variations of the same sentiments--anger,
guilt, sorrow, loss, grief 

 Even those, he thought, who didn't deserve to feel anything. Who he
didn't think could feel anything. 

 They were all so strongly connected, yet so distant that they might as
well have been on separate worlds. 

 Separate worlds. 

 Had others grieved for him before, on another world? Had others once
gathered together to bid farewell to this sweet soul? Was it worse for
him, having lost two lives instead of just one? How many people had this
boy touched in his short life? 

 And were there more he could touch now? 

 Did yet another life await? 

 Was he still meant for great things? 

 "Yes," he whispered, laying the white rose gently atop the coffin. "You
are meant for great things." 

 finis	 
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