One thing haunts me from that day more than anything else. The scream of crippling pain and horror Mother made when the Nazis shot my father.The memory of that sound aches more than the old bullet hole in my back, and stings more than the day I received it. I was holding my breath and squeezing my knees to my chest as I watched through a crack in my bedroom door all those years ago. I never understood why they shot him. One minute they were both on their knees, in our small, quiet living room, begging for the Nazis ' mercy, and the next my father was blown backwards. Then my mother screamed that scream, the variety of sound that makes your eyes burn and your soul wince. The next thing I knew I was bursting out the kitchen door, running from that sound. I didn’t know where I was running to, I just knew I had to get out there before I saw my mother shot, or get killed …show more content…
Regen was pawing in his stall when I ran to him, and he had kicked a hole in the wood on the back wall. As animals tend to do, he had sensed a disaster approaching. "Regen," I whispered, " take us away from here." I unlatched his stall, fear making my vision blurred and my hands tremble, and I swung myself up onto his golden back, grabbed a handful of his flaxen mane, and he ran. We burst out into the bright midmorning light, and I trusted him to take us away. His muscles under my bare legs tensed and flexed as he ran to the woods over the ocean of grass. I remember the blinding sunlight, the smell of the morning, and the sound of my broken mother as I clung to his long mane. The wind blew the tears from my eyes as we raced towards the woods. I never heard the gunshot, I just remember it like a punch in my shoulder blade, with the nasty sting following. When the bullet tore in to my back, all the pain from that day suddenly welled up from the depths of my stomach and surged in my throat and I let out a primitive howl of my