The Search for Redemption

 

            The harvest moon shone down in all of its orange glory. A marvelous sight to behold, it almost distracted Cain from his fatal position – tied to a lone wooden fence post out in the middle of a farmer’s field. The silent, melancholy breeze gently blowing his black hair reminded him just how lonesome he was. The ropes rubbed at his wrists every time he moved. Cain began to feel the slight trickling of a warm substance making its way slowly onto the palm of his right hand. He was bleeding only after sitting there for, more or less, twenty minutes. 

            Their screams echoed through the breeze, it seemed, and found their way back into Cain’s ears and into his heart as he sat in the dreadful silence of the night. His mother – whenever he would think of her he would think of her beautiful blue eyes, always gazing upon him lovingly no matter what wrong he had done. Now he could not get the image of that rusty kitchen knife pushing its way in and out of her stomach with ease at the hands of his neighbor. His father – always smiling proudly at the achievements of his first born son – now taken captive in his own home by their neighbors for questioning before they slaughter him as well. And here was he, Cain, a young man of 23 back from college visiting his parents, tied to the old fence post waiting for the neighbors that tied him up here to come and murder him too.

            All the emotions one person could ever feel in his entire life came flooding into Cain’s body all at once. His heart ached, his throat clenched up making it difficult to breathe, his stomach curled, and yet somewhere deep inside him – deep in the depths of his soul, into an area not yet explored by his own mind – Cain felt free.