To Tell a Tale (Season One)

The girl stared at the man before her. She saw him before—in her dreams—but he was covered in blood there. She blinked when he smiled at her.

“Hello, sweetheart. Are you lost?” he asked, watching her stare at him.

The girl swallowed a scream. What was she going to do? He was talking to her; she never saw him speak to her. What does she say to the man who is going to kill her mother?

“No,” she whispered.

The man looked around them, trying to find her parents, but he won’t find them. She came here alone. She had to see if her dream was real. Ever since she could draw, she’s had dreams about things that were to come. It’s hard to believe a seven-year-old doesn’t just have a wild imagination—but her paintings are real. Her dreams—even those she has while awake—are real.

He looked at her again, and that smile came again. He was real. But what did she do now? Should she stop him?

But how? She’s only a seven-year-old little girl who left her home in search of the man she dreamed was going to kill her mother.

“Should I get an officer to help?” he asked, still watching her.

She shook her head. “I’m not lost. My daddy knows where I am. We will meet up soon. Thank you, though.”

Why was she being nice to him? He’s going to take everything away from her if she can’t stop him.

He nodded. “I will wait with you. Don’t want you getting lost….”

“No!” she cried out.

The man’s eyes opened wider, and he stared at her. “Okay….”

He didn’t get to finish because she took off in the opposite direction, hoping and praying he wouldn’t chase her.

The girl huffed and puffed as she ran down the street, so familiar she knew where she was going in the dark without looking. She snuck through the back gate and tip-toed up to the porch. She looked around to make sure no one had followed her, then slipped into the house and fell to her bottom on the floor after she closed the door.

‘Phew, that was close.’

“Airie, what are you doing sitting on the floor?”

Airianna Williams looked up at her mother and smiled. “I was thirsty, then I thought I heard something outside, but it was just a cat….”

Britney Williams smiled down at her daughter. The girl has the biggest imagination and is constantly drawing the craziest things. Though her drawings were remarkable for her age, they were usually gloomy, and the girl insisted they were actual events. Once, she’d seen something on the news that was in one of her daughter’s drawings—but it had to be a coincidence. Maybe the girl had seen something about it on the news. That was the only way Britney could explain it.

“Come along, back to bed.” Britney smiled and held her hand out to her daughter.

Airianna took her mother’s hand, and they went up to her room together. Her mother tucked her in and gave her a goodnight kiss.

Little did Airianna know that would be the last goodnight kiss she would receive from her mother.

~🔮~

I never said she was yours!”

“Why else would she come out in the middle of the night looking for me?!”

The loud voices woke Airianna from a terrible nightmare. But what was going on downstairs was scarier than her dream. She leaped out of bed and snuck downstairs. She walked down the hall into the living room and saw the man from earlier standing in the middle of the room, holding her mother’s arm roughly.

“I didn’t know she left the house. She… she has dreams and sometimes sleepwalks.”

Airianna blinked. The man was here because of her. She’d gone out looking for him, and he followed her. But why does he have hold of her mother, and why does he look so angry with her? Does her mother know her killer?

“What kind of bullshit is that?” the man asked angrily.

Airianna watched her mother huff out a lung full of air.

“She has dreams and thinks they’re real. It’s not the first time she has gone after one of her dreams.”

The man dropped her arm and turned away. “Why didn’t you tell me? She must have dreamed that I’m her father.”

“Andy, she’s not yours. I swear, she’s not….”

The man turned on her, anger in his eyes. “Don’t lie to me, Britney!”

“I’m not!”

“She’s the same age our child would be if you hadn’t faked your miscarriage!”

“I didn’t fake it! I lost our baby. It wasn’t until months later that I got pregnant with Airianna. My husband is her father!”

Andy sneered at her, “you didn’t wait long to get hitched after you lost my child.”

Britney backed away from him. “You changed,” she whispered. “You weren’t the man I thought you were….”

“You killed our child!”

She slowly shook her head, “no, Andy. You did.”

Andy stopped, his mouth opening and closing as he glared at her. “How dare you blame me….”

Britney squealed when he grabbed her arm and shook her.

“I want my daughter,” he growled in her face.

Airianna watched tears run down her mother’s face. Was this crazy man really her father?

“She’s not yours,” Britney cried.

“You were a slut eight years ago, and you are a slut today,” Andy snarled in her face.

Britney sniffled. “I wasn’t one then, and I’m not one now….” Britney screamed as she flew across the room.

“Bullshit!” Andy bellowed.

Britney whimpered as she crumpled to the floor against the wall.

“Mommy!” Airianna cried out as she ran out of her hiding place.

“Airie, sweetheart, hide,” Britney cried.

“Come here!” Andy sneered, grabbing hold of Airianna’s arm.

“Let go of me!” Airianna screeched, kicking the man in the shin.

“Son-of-a….” The man let her go and rubbed his shin.

Airianna ran to her mother and knelt beside her. “Mommy,” she cried.

“Run, Airie, you need to run.” Britney looked up into her daughter’s grey eyes.

“No, Mommy. I saw this in a dream. He’s going to kill you,” Airianna whispered.

Britney looked past her daughter to the man she once loved. Before he destroyed her and their unborn child. Andy had accused her back then of being a slut and tossed her across the room when she denied it—just like he did tonight. She has never cheated on anyone, but he believed the rumors.

He’d beaten her until she’d miscarried their unborn child. She’d left him immediately and got with Airianna’s father months later. She’d known him a while and hadn’t known he had a crush on her.

When she got pregnant again, he offered to marry her and take care of her and their child. She’d agreed and never regretted it in all this time. But now, now she regretted not turning Andy in for what he did to her and their child. Now he thinks Airianna is his. She can’t let him take her.

“Run,” she told her daughter for the third time.

Airianna shook her head, “he’s going to hurt you….”

Britney placed her hand against her daughter’s cheek. “Go get help. Maybe you can stop this dream from coming true….”

Airianna turned and looked at the man, then turned back to her mother. She knows she won’t find anyone in time to help her mother. Her dreams are never wrong.

“Go.” Britney hissed as she tried to stand.

“Mommy,” Airianna whimpered.

“Go, baby girl. Find help.”

Airianna watched her mother get to her feet and tried not to panic when she leaned her back against the wall, pain evident on her face.

“Go,” Britney growled.

Airianna ran around the corner into the hall and headed for the front door. But she didn’t leave the house. She had to find a way to save her mother. Airianna ran into her father’s office and found the safe under his desk. She knew the combination—because she paid more attention than her parents thought she did. Airianna knew one day she would need to get into this safe. She opened it and pulled out her father’s gun. She had no clue how to use it, but she was going to try her hardest to save her mother.

When she returned to the living room, the man her mother called Andy was beating her. Blood was everywhere, and her mother wasn’t trying to fight him off. She lifted the gun and aimed it at the man.

“You won’t get away with it,” the seven-year-old said, then pulled the trigger.

The man hollered in pain as he fell away from Airianna’s mother. Airianna dropped the pistol and cried as she covered her ears. They were ringing so loud she couldn’t hear anything around her. She continued to scream as the pain in her hand and shoulder grew stronger, and the ringing continued until she felt dizzy and started to fall over. She watched as the man held his chest and looked at her, his face full of surprise and anger. He moved toward her, but before he reached her, he fell face-first onto the floor.

The last thing Airianna saw before everything went black was her mother’s eyes looking at her from the floor.

~🔮~

“Mommy?”

“Airianna, dear heart.”

“Mommy?” Airianna whispered again.

She was scared. She couldn’t hear anything; everything sounded like the ocean.

“Airianna?”

“Mommy,” Airianna cried, “I can’t hear you. Where are you, Mommy?”

“Oh, Airianna, love. Can you hear me?”

“Mommy!” Airianna screamed as she sat up in bed.

“Airianna, my dear one.”

Airianna opened her eyes and stared at her father, who stood over her, wiping her forehead with a cloth.

“Daddy?”

“Oh, sweet thing.”

“Daddy, I can’t hear you. I only hear the ocean.”

Jeremy Williams sighed as he pulled his daughter into his arms. The horrible scene he had come home to last week rushed through his mind for the thousandth time. His wife was on the floor—bloody and not breathing. The man he knew to be her ex was lying over her feet where it seemed she had tripped him. The amount of blood everywhere. And their sweet little girl lying on the floor, his gun on the floor beside her. She must have tried to save her mother.

The doctors had said there may be damage to her eardrums from the gun, but they wouldn’t know how bad until she woke.

“Daddy, all I can hear is the ocean,” his little girl cried.

Jeremy looked down into his daughter’s eyes and got lost in the deep grey. She had inherited his mother’s eyes. That was how he had known from the moment she was born that she was truly his daughter.

Then when she started drawing things that came to be, he knew she’d been gifted with the Williams sight.

“Mommy, where’s Mommy?” Airianna begged.

Jeremy frowned as he reached for the notepad he’d purchased when he’d learned his daughter may be deaf. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he wrote on the paper.

Airianna didn’t need to read her daddy’s words on the paper when she saw the tears. Her mommy was gone, and it was all her fault. She started to cry. Without finishing his answer, her father pulled her into his arms and held her as if he would never let her go.

~🔮~

Airianna Williams told herstory to the police, leaving out her dreams, just like her mother always told her to do. They believed the grieving little girl and filed it as self-defense.

Airianna grew up without her loving mother to give her motherly advice. But she had her father for anything and everything she needed. Being deaf wasn’t so bad. She didn’t hear the snarky comments from the mean children and could pretend she didn’t hear or understand her teachers when they asked her to come up front.

When she started painting her dreams, her father helped her solve the ones they were able to. She didn’t understand why he believed her; until she turned eighteen, and he told her of their family heritage. Her mother was a non-believer, so he had had to keep it a secret.

He explained that she could not be told until she turned eighteen. Her father warned her about talking to the police about it, and she promised she would never tell another living soul.

Until the day she saw him—and knew she had to save him.