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The white teddy bear
#WritcoStoryChallenge
The letter carried brief instructions: 'Meet me at the corner of the street', it read. But who was it from? I looked around the corner and peeked to see if someone was there. But I saw no one. The darkness from the alley behind gripped my ankles and paralysed me on the spot. My heart beat raced faster and I couldn't move because of fear.
As I stood there, on the wet concrete floor outside a warm looking bakery, infront of a dark alley, I tried to decrypt the message. The handwriting, how curved the loops were, and how there was a small flick at the the end of every a and d. The letters slanted ever so slightly towards the left, and the writing was small and petite. So familiar and so strange. The paper was brown and small, with a coffee stain on one corner, and encased in a thin layer of wax paper. The was paper reflected the moonlight and made the raindrops look blurry. I leaned in, and caught a whiff of scent, which wrapped around my neck and coiled into my nose. It smelled like grass and the mud after a wet day.
I tucked the letter safely into my red coat, which I wrapped firmly around myself and tied my hair before walking into the alleyway. I was engulfed in darkness, and even the tall flickering streetlight gave up on me. As I walked further, I saw anothet streetlight illuminating a circle on the ground, in which there stood a familiar stranger wearing a grey football team hoodie and holding a umbrella over their head as they leaned against the wall. She looked up, revealing a tear streaked face with plump red eyes and red lips.
"Mina, is that you?"
She nodded slowly, and her dark dry hair greeted me from inside her hood. She bit her lip, and extended the umbrella for me to fit under. I stepped closer to her, my third grade best friend who stayed with me for seven years. The last I had heard was that her parents brought her into marriage at 17,
she then bore a baby and ran away.
It had been four years. She began sobbing, and I pulled her into a hug. She slumped down and buried her face in her hands. "I lost her Dari."
I understood whom she meant, even before she said "I lost my daughter, I lost my Zebba."
She continued on, puncuating every word with a sob. "I.... I ran away Dari. I didn't know how to t-tell you. Please forgive me. I wanted to raise Z-Zebba without him. But..... but one day I saw and.... Dari there was so much blood. It kept coming and coming and -"
I looked at her. She was a fragment of who she was before. She had become skinny, a skeleton in the night. Her eyes were clawing at every sign of help.
"and the doctor said I lost her. W-what did I do wrong? I saved some money but I couldn't buy her a crib so I-I bought this."
She held out a battered white teddy bear with a scratched out price tag and the remains of the previous owners name on it.
The teddy bear smiled at us, and it kept smiling over the years at Mina, who took her life into control. A year from then, she was in a relationship with someone who loved her, and she got married the following year. But the teddy bear smiles at her through all of that, and Zebba smiles with him.
The letter carried brief instructions: 'Meet me at the corner of the street', it read. But who was it from? I looked around the corner and peeked to see if someone was there. But I saw no one. The darkness from the alley behind gripped my ankles and paralysed me on the spot. My heart beat raced faster and I couldn't move because of fear.
As I stood there, on the wet concrete floor outside a warm looking bakery, infront of a dark alley, I tried to decrypt the message. The handwriting, how curved the loops were, and how there was a small flick at the the end of every a and d. The letters slanted ever so slightly towards the left, and the writing was small and petite. So familiar and so strange. The paper was brown and small, with a coffee stain on one corner, and encased in a thin layer of wax paper. The was paper reflected the moonlight and made the raindrops look blurry. I leaned in, and caught a whiff of scent, which wrapped around my neck and coiled into my nose. It smelled like grass and the mud after a wet day.
I tucked the letter safely into my red coat, which I wrapped firmly around myself and tied my hair before walking into the alleyway. I was engulfed in darkness, and even the tall flickering streetlight gave up on me. As I walked further, I saw anothet streetlight illuminating a circle on the ground, in which there stood a familiar stranger wearing a grey football team hoodie and holding a umbrella over their head as they leaned against the wall. She looked up, revealing a tear streaked face with plump red eyes and red lips.
"Mina, is that you?"
She nodded slowly, and her dark dry hair greeted me from inside her hood. She bit her lip, and extended the umbrella for me to fit under. I stepped closer to her, my third grade best friend who stayed with me for seven years. The last I had heard was that her parents brought her into marriage at 17,
she then bore a baby and ran away.
It had been four years. She began sobbing, and I pulled her into a hug. She slumped down and buried her face in her hands. "I lost her Dari."
I understood whom she meant, even before she said "I lost my daughter, I lost my Zebba."
She continued on, puncuating every word with a sob. "I.... I ran away Dari. I didn't know how to t-tell you. Please forgive me. I wanted to raise Z-Zebba without him. But..... but one day I saw and.... Dari there was so much blood. It kept coming and coming and -"
I looked at her. She was a fragment of who she was before. She had become skinny, a skeleton in the night. Her eyes were clawing at every sign of help.
"and the doctor said I lost her. W-what did I do wrong? I saved some money but I couldn't buy her a crib so I-I bought this."
She held out a battered white teddy bear with a scratched out price tag and the remains of the previous owners name on it.
The teddy bear smiled at us, and it kept smiling over the years at Mina, who took her life into control. A year from then, she was in a relationship with someone who loved her, and she got married the following year. But the teddy bear smiles at her through all of that, and Zebba smiles with him.
