I hope you like this. I wrote it myself... it's the first part of a book I'm writing, called "The Flight Of The Spirits". I have been working on it for almost 2-3 years now.. but, of course, on and off. Now that I've gotten a better computer, I'll be able to continue my quest. :P

Some people do not understand the wonders of the supernatural. Most just do not believe, but the rest of us, the rest of us live it. My story begins at an old abandoned farm house. It is a somewhat medium-sized house with a low sloped roof and two floors. There's a large porch surrounding the front, seemingly enlarging the old home. Large windows overlook acres of farmland, from pastures to fields, to stables and barns.

On each side of this establishment are two century-old oaks, swaying in the wind. There is an old tire swing that they have hung limply from the largest oak's branches. The duck pond out back overflows with the croaks and chirps of bullfrogs and young ducklings, which attracts other animals and oddly enough, many types of foreign insects.

A young girl is sitting on the front porch steps; she looks to be about four or five years of age. She is wearing a bright yellow dress and black shoes with white socks. Her long golden hair is held up by two long, yellow pieces of ribbon in ponytails on either side of her head. She is staring up into the sky, watching the flocks of birds migrating south, for the winter would hit this area soon. She looks down and notices a small lady bug that had flipped over onto it is back. She gets up and gently flips the tiny creature back over, and watches it crawl into the overgrown flowerbed. A smile flickers across her young face and suddenly, she vanishes in a puff of a smoke like substance, an eery silence enveloping the farm.

Her story is of a terrifying life, of pain and suffering, and a harsh father who beat and punished her for no complete reason, as he was always high on drugs and dead drunk on cheap alcohol. Her mother had died when she was just a baby, but not before giving her a name. A horrible, gruesome, cursed name in which she unknowingly bestowed upon her small daughter. That name is no longer used, for it binds the soul of the name's wearer to the unfathomable depths of Earth's own tormented spirit. That name is Shimargorea; the Devil's own daughter's name is that such profanity. Shimargorea is trapped here on Earth, for she died a horrible death at a very young age.

When she was only three years old, she had already begun to help around the house, doing pretty much whatever her father told her to do, while he lies on the couch drinking. When he told her to feed the pigs, she would run to the kitchen and dump any leftover food into a large white bucket, and drag it to the front door, down the porch steps, and across the yard to the barn that the pigs were kept in.

Shimar spent most of her time at the duck pond in the back of the house. She would watch the ducklings hatch, and grow up. Listen to the bullfrog family croak to each other through the thick pond grass and cattails. Gaze at the huge white clouds drift lazily overhead, to new places. She had always wished to go to the city with her father one day, but he would always come up with some reason or other for her not to go with him. When he came back, he would have spent most of the little money they had at the bar and the drug dealer's. He usually came home with a different woman each night. They always smelled like men and beer to Shimar, and she would just go outside and sit at her duck pond. Shimar would ignore the noises coming from the house, as she did not understand what they would have meant anyway. After about an hour or so, the woman would leave the house with her hair tangled and her clothes on all crooked, with a cigarette in her slim fingers. (Now, not all of the women did this, but this one was the last one that Shimar had seen before her death.) The woman would gaze at her with a crooked smile, and turn to walk back to the city. This woman had large, purple bruises on her left leg. Shimar shook her head at the woman, not understanding why she was there in the first place. Shimar turned to watch a bullfrog jump into the black water.

After the woman had gone, Shimar's father burst from the house, in frustration. Shimar had forgotten to wash the dishes that night, and her father was not pleased. She looked up quickly, terror and loathing in her young eyes. Her father stormed over to her, and grabbed a handful of her long hair. She shrieked vociferously, but he paid no heed, for he was in a red-hot fury. He dragged her to the house and into the kitchen, where he hurled her into a nearby wall. She crumpled into a heap on the floor sobbing quietly as her father nearly burst his lungs blaring at her. He had told her once before that if she did this again, he would cast her down into the basement with no water, food, clothes, or warmth from a blanket.

Her father looked down at her with pure anger in his eyes. He stooped over and tore off her clothes. He picked her up and carried her over to the basement door on his broad shoulder. After dropping her on the top step, he turned and slammed the door in her small tear-streaked face.

She looked down the long staircase, already shivering. Fresh tears made their tracks down her face as she slowly made her way to the bottom of the stairs. Shimar notices a small box in a corner and walks over to it. She flips it over and crawls inside it, not caring about the centipedes and the hairy eight-legged spiders crawling over her body. Each day that passes, she grows weaker and weaker from lack of food and water. She can hear her father walking around upstairs when he wakes up sometimes. When he brings a woman home, she hears those weird noises again, thinking that he must be beating her horribly for all the screaming that she was doing.

Shimar drifted in and out of consciousness for almost two months. She thought of the things that her father had said to her about her mother. She had long shiny golden colored hair that flowed when she moved. Her eyes were a light blue that sparkled when she smiled. Shimar couldn't remember any of this of course, and didn't know if her father had been lying to her about her mother or not. Shimar also sang to herself when she could get enough energy. Songs about love and happiness she'd heard on the radio in the kitchen. Where she couldn't remember the words, she made up her own, or hummed instead. Sometimes her father would yell at her to keep quiet, and she'd lower her voice enough so she was sure he couldn't hear it. Though her father treated her badly, she still respected him; not as an elder or even a human being, but as a beast. A beast that had no soul, and knew nothing but hatred and pain. That knew no other way to fix that problem then to take it out on his own daughter.

The last hour of Shimar's life passed slowly for her. She could feel the different parts of her body slowly shutting down one by one, her body slowly spiraling downward. As the spinning sensation grew, she closed her eyes and tried not to cry. She knew she was going to a better place; perhaps to where her mother had gone. Shimar, although close to death, knew she had to get her father back for all the things he had done to both her, and her mother. So, she prayed that upon her death, she'd be granted one hour to come back to life when her father found her body, to do him justice. She also prayed with all her heart for the pigs on her farm. She prayed that they would be able to fend for themselves, and not take any trouble from anyone. Shimar lost her strength quickly as she prayed, and closed her eyes for the last time.

Two weeks after Shimar's death, her father noticed an extremely vile stench coming from the basement. He walked over to the door and opened it. A waft of odor hit him like a sledge hammer, almost knocking him out cold. He gagged and vomited on the floor in front of him; of course, he was also quite drunk by then. He
wiped his mouth with a corner of his sleeve. Covering his nose with a pillow case, he slowly crept down into the rank basement. He walked over to a small figure in one of the corners. He blacked out then . . . his own daughter, dead. Her skin was starting to fall off her arms, and there was no face on her skull. A large rat was gnawing on her leg, ripping large chunks of meat from it like a rabid dog. Her eyes had already been picked out by the beast, and maggots were falling out of her open mouth.

When her father came to, he got up off the floor and looked again at his daughter's corpse. He turned and ran up the stairs; when he got to the door, he heard Shimargorea's laughter, dry and menacing. He then slowly turned around to see her standing right behind him, with the maggots still clinging to her face. He screamed and ran into the living room. At the sound of his daughter's laughter again, he turned again and there she was, standing no less than five feet from him. Her skin was falling off onto the floor, along with maggots of all sorts. The rat was on top of her head, gnawing on what was left of her earlobe. Her father backed into a corner, his eyes growing wider with every step she took closer to him. She walked jerkily closer to her father, stretching out her arms and extending her fingers in the strangler's position.

The last anyone had seen of that family was the year of 1865, but a year after that, one of the now cannibalistic pigs had gotten loose and had attacked and killed three young children playing in their own backyards. The police had killed the beast, and had identified it to belong to Shimar's father's farm. When nobody answered the phone, the police went on an expedition to their home. When they got there, they saw that the pigs were killing each other, and any other animals that may have gotten inside their pen. There was a dog's carcass in there too, and the pigs were dragging it around, ripping the flesh off it. There was also the unmistakable shape of a human body there as well.

When the police entered the farm house, the horrific stench of rotting flesh greeted them. When they walked into the living room, they saw Shimar and her father piled into one big heap. Shimar's hands were wrapped around her father's throat.

They were buried on May 16, 1867. Nobody showed up for the funeral that day. Shimar was never lead to the next life, or lead to the horrible after life of the heartless, where she was sure her father was. No, she got to stay at her farm house, watching the animals and insects of the day of her death, repeatedly, reliving the happiness that she had never really had when she was alive. Occasionally, her mother's spirit would drop by for a visit, and they would sit on the front steps together, laughing at the imaginary cloud shapes that drifted lazily by.