My birthday present

The girl lay in the road, clothed only in dirt. Her tongue, caked with dust, pushed out of her mouth and her limbs lay twisted. The soles of her small feet were scraped raw. 

Dawen, kneeling next to her, noticed that her pale skin was crisscrossed with half-healed welts and cuts. Those weren’t what killed her, Dawen thought; they were old wounds. Whatever stole her life had left behind no more than a frozen mask of fear and exhaustion; it hadn’t touched her, at least not in any place Dawen could see. She glanced up at the bystanders, seeking a face that showed something other than curiosity or dread. None of them seemed to recognize the girl any more than Dawen did. 

Her father wrapped the girl in an old blanket. Dawen grabbed the lower half of the bundle to help him lift it, careful not to touch the body with her bare hands. She was always careful when they died violently. As she struggled with her end of the awkward burden, the blanket unraveled and a small arm swung free. Dawen’s hand shot out instinctively to catch it but pulled back in panic. As she touched the slender fingers, laughing mouths flashed before her eyes and heat engulfed her body. She screamed and collapsed to the ground, shaking and sobbing. The laughter faded. 

She looked up and saw her father struggling with the unwieldy body. He recovered and set it softly into the wooden casket. Then he knelt in the dirt, taking both her hands in one of his. His other hand gently pushed the hair from her face. She looked into his eyes. They were filled with concern but rimmed with guilt. 

“I am sorry,” he said. “I should not have let you help with a murder victim.”

I'm pretty pumped that my daughter put together a few of the short stories I wrote for her years ago and published them on Amazon. I wonder, however, if should have chosen a nom de plume for the fiction.