Ｂｌａｃｋ Ｆｅａｔｈｅｒ
Tick-Tock-Tick-Tock
The minute hand on the clock continued to move around. I felt like I had been waiting forever. One of the candles on the chandelier had already gone out, and I was getting impatient. “Where the hell is she?” I said to myself, looking at my watch. My sister Sheila was supposed to be home from the office by now. Damn lawyers take forever. I was about to give up and go to sleep when I heard a knock on the door. Sheila. I opened the door to her, but something wasn’t right. She wasn’t gleaming with joy. In fact, she looked rather depressed. “Is everything alright?” I asked her. She just shrugged her shoulders and sat down on the floor. “What’s wrong?” I asked her. She looked up at me. “It’s nothing. I went over to see if I could get the partnership. And you know what they said?” I waited. “They said yes!” Sheila suddenly jumped up and burst into a grin.
I honestly believed she was lying. But she showed me the form (signed and all) and it read that she had been accepted for a partnership. I hugged her and brought her over to the dining room. She gasped when she saw the beautiful dinner, the chandeliers, the beautiful meal. “Oh, Danny! I always knew you were an amazing cook.” I laughed and led her over to her seat. "Ladies first,” I said, pulling out her chair. Sheila slapped me and told me she was perfectly capable of seating herself, before bursting out into laughter. “Oh Daniel. This is beautiful!”
I looked into her eyes and realized how lucky I was to be related to someone like her. She was strong, smart, kind. All my friends where jealous as a child when they saw Sheila pop a wheelie on her bicycle. I was about to start eating when someone rang the doorbell. “I’ll get it.” she said, as she went over to the door. I went over to the cooler and grabbed the champagne bottle, waiting for her to come back over. I heard a loud banging and muffled screaming coming from the door way and dropped the bottle, running over to her. And what I saw was terrifying. Sheila was rolling around on the ground with some kind of bird like mask over her face, which she was furiously trying rip off. She can’t breathe. I ran over to her and tried to pull the mask off of her face. I turned her around and used the pocket knife in my pocket to cut the tight straps off. After the straps where cut, I ripped off the mask.
I knelt down besides her and put my hand to her heart, without hearing a little beat. She was dead. My eyes flooded with tears and I put my head against her chest. That’s when I noticed that there was something in her pocket. It was a black feather.
A black feather....
