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| Part I
A little over a year ago, my best friend and her fiance were killed mercilessly in their home. The man who did it was never seen again, but he did leave quite the mess. Melanie and Ty lived in a cute, two story house in the quiet suburbs of our little town. The house was a gift from Mel's mother, Anna who moved south for her career as a traveling nurse. She gave her the house as a gift for beginning college, and also because she didn't want to sell it, there were too many happy memories of raising Melanie there. I met Melanie when I was sixteen years old, at the country club where we were both waitresses. Serving small meals and drinks to tired and sunburned men and women who had golfed several holes. Ty worked at the front of the golf course in a gift shop full of golf balls, stationary sets, and neatly folded golf shirts. My own boyfriend was Ty's good friend and the four of us did everything together. In the Spring, there were endless beach bonfires where we would all cram onto an air mattress on the sand and laugh into the wee hours of the morning. Ty was always the comedian, although he was only really good at making Melanie laugh. Every so often Mel and I would meet up for a cheap dinner and yak about our boyfriends and daydream about the future together. One day, after dinner when she was driving me home, she asked me about having kids.
She asked, "If you could choose, would you have a boy or a girl first?" It was shared knowledge between us that just one wouldn't do, we never discussed having one child in the future, but always more than one. I never knew how to answer, because I'm incredibly indecisive. I always said I would want one of each, but never twins, that would be too much chaos for me.
She laughed and then became serious, "You know, someday when I have babies I want you to be their Godmother. I don't think I could ever trust anyone as much as you or Ty to take care of my kids if I wasn't able to."
I was ecstatic, I've never been close to another girl to the point that she would appoint me to such a wonderful position in life. If ever there were two friends meant to be friends, it was us.
That Summer, Ty asked Melanie to marry him under the full moon at the beach. It seemed to complete our storybook lifestyle. Mel was nineteen and Ty was eighteen, and that night the happiest nineteen year old in the world called me up and asked me to be her Maid of Honor in their wedding the following Summer. Her and I planned for the rest of the Summer; dresses, colors, flowers, rings, music, and everything else. Melanie's mother wasn't too pleased that her daughter planned to have a wedding while still attending college, but she liked Ty and knew she could trust him with Melanie. It was going to be a big day for her, she had been a single parent all of Mel's life, since her boyfriend left her with a pink bundle in her arms on the front steps of the hospital waiting to be taken home. Anna didn't like to talk about the wedding, but she had secretly planned on baking the three tiered cake herself, and was overjoyed at the thought of someday in the far off future of having grandchildren.
Days passed; filled with work, the occasional high school class, plenty of sleep overs, and above all they were filled with love and happiness. Looking back, I guess we were too happy. Life always has a way of balancing happy and sad, and none of us were ever sad around each other, and we were all inseparable.
Autumn came, and with the chilly weather came tragedy. In the middle of all the excitement about the future wedding was when an uninvited guest came knocking on the front door of Melanie and Ty's home. My boyfriend and I had just left, we were all on our laptops, hanging out on the couch for a few hours. We left minutes before the mad man came to their house, only because my curfew was 10:00 pm in those days. I hugged Melanie and said I would see her later that week, when she would come over to my house to play some card games, maybe Palace or War, something that would last for a while so we could have some girl talk. I remember how warm her hug was, even now, I really felt like Mel and Ty were my family. Ty was on his way from the kitchen to the stairs so he could go to bed while Melanie was turning off the lights downstairs. Mel didn't like being in the dark, but her mom would only pay the electric bill if it was reasonable while Mel went to school. That was when there were four loud knocks on the glass panes of the front door, causing the glass to rattle. Confused, but not too troubled as she was used to the security of her neighborhood, she walked slowly to the front door. It was a little creepy looking at the glass and seeing only darkness beyond, but she tried to gather her courage and started fumbling with the dead bolt lock. Ty quickly moved her hand and asked her jokingly but with a hint of alarm in this voice, "Are you nuts? You don't open the door this late at night when you don't know who it is."
She laughed and said rather nervously, "It's probably just a neighbor, I can't imagine who else would be banging on the door. I forgot to put the trash cans out tonight, it could be Rose from next door reminding me to do it. You know she likes to be nosy."
"Just the same, from now on let me get it if it's this late and you can't see who it is," Ty replied with a small smile. He reached for the dead bolt and finished unlocking it, and turned the key in the door knob lock so that would unlock as well. He opened the door just a crack and stuck out his head so he could look outside. Though their small exchange of conversation lasted only about 30 seconds, the guest was gone. Ty stepped out onto the front porch and looked both ways, spotting the flower beds that were becoming strangled with weeds to the right and the gravel driveway to the left. A light breeze fluttered past his face and rustled his hair just a little, and tugged slightly at this plaid pajama pants. It was a little spooky, but he turned around and faced Melanie who was now poking her head through the door and said, "There's nobody out here. Probably the boys down the street being idiots. Let's go back inside, it's too creepy out here." Melanie stepped back and opened the door wider to let Ty inside, when a dark featureless figure sprinted from the shadows and shoved Ty hard in the back with a large butcher knife and into the house. The initial shock of the blade piercing his skin made Ty's eyes widen and his mouth hung open and sucked air for a second or two as he fell forward into the house, tackling Melanie on his way down. The figure quickly shut the door and grabbed Ty. Melanie was so surprised that it took a few moments to fully register that there was a pool of blood on the white tile floor in front of the door. This was when Ty started to scream. It was a terrifying, ear splitting scream, and the guest straddled Ty's chest on the floor and covered his mouth with a gloved hand. Melanie stared in horror as this crazy man held down her screaming fiance.
She was only certain of one thing just then, that Ty was in pain and therefore so was she. Unable to catch a full breath, she could only whisper, "Oh my God! What the hell are you doing? Please stop, oh please just leave us alone!"
The man struggled very little to hold Ty to the floor, he was either a strong man or Ty was becoming much weaker. As Mel started to back away and run towards the back door, she saw the man take out a gun from the waistband of his pants and she ran as fast as she could towards the door. She tripped over the cord to her laptop charger and fell flat on her face, making her nose bleed just a little on the tile. She scrambled to her feet, still hearing Ty's muffled screams and as her hands grasped the back door lock she heard the gun shot pop and Ty went silent. As she successfully unlocked the top lock on the door, she heard the man's shoes making sloppy suction noises on the tile, coming her way. She began to cry and tears ran down her face instantly as she remembered the key to the door knob lock was in the front door at that time and the back door was locked up tight. The man laughed a quiet, but cold laugh that made the hairs on the back of Melanie's neck stand up. She turned and with her back to the door, began to beg to the masked man.
"Please don't shoot me! I don't know who you are but I don't know why you would want to shoot me. Please, you can take anything you want from the house, just don't shoot. Please, please, please!"
The man raised his gun and shot through the door behind Melanie, breaking the glass and sending a bullet through the backyard fence and into the neighbor's yard where their dog would find it the next day. Melanie yelped and jumped a foot or two to the right, knocking over a towering pile of clean laundry she had been meaning to fold. The man laughed and said in a voice tinged with a Spanish accent, "Why does everyone assume I come to rob their place? I don't want to rob you, I want to kill you. Why, you ask? Well, because I enjoy seeing the life leave a person's eyes."
Melanie whimpered and fresh tears dripped down her cheeks and onto the floor. She opened her mouth and all that came out before the gunshot was, "Please..." She clumsily stepped back and leaned on the wall, and slid down, a trail of blood began at chest height on the wall and ran down to the baseboards. As her heart stopped beating, she was wishing that God would allow her to see Ty wherever she was going. Then everything was dark.
The killer watched Melanie intently as her eyes rolled back, and lingered for a few moments before spitting a nasty wad of goo onto her face that mixed with the blood from her nose and dampened a strand of hair that had fallen across her face. He laughed again, satisfied with his work, and turned to leave the couple. On his way out, he gave a hard kick to Ty's ribs and when he didn't react, closed the door and disappeared from the area.
Part II
To Be Continued....
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| I've managed to get another UTI. My last one was in October of this year. This is ridiculous. I mean, I take responsibility for it. I am the one that holds it for hours just because I'm too tired/lazy/whatever to go. I have admitted that I'm like a camel and can go a long time without peeing. I knew this wasn't considered a good thing, but hey, neither is eating fast food. That my dears is a no no. Don't do it. Just get up and go because this is pure misery right here.
I've had it for about two days now, but I can't go to the doctor until Friday. My mom asked one of her nurse/doctor friends and she told my mom that she drinks vinegar and the infection clears up in the same day, and she never gets antibiotics from her doctor. Yippee, instant remedy I thought. It's harder than it sounds, to drink a few ounces of vinegar through out the day. I was told to drink juice or soda afterwords to get rid of the nasty taste. Have you ever actually had a gulp of white vinegar go down your throat? It is not pleasant, at all. Not like NyQuil, not like that disgusting cold medicine that warms your throat as it goes down... I might as well just drink whiskey. lol. The first try, I put vinegar into the large cap of my 1 liter Mountain Dew and threw it back. The burn was incredible, I wasn't sure if I wanted to puke, choke, or what. I quickly washed it down with Mountain Dew. Not bad, so I decided to mix the vinegar in with my Mountain Dew to mask the taste and be able to drink more at once. Yesterday morning, Mountain Dew was my favorite soda. Now I think it tastes like pee and makes me cringe. After drinking the last quarter of the bottle (and the only part that had the vinegar), I decided that if anyone ever peed in my mouth I'd throw up uncontrollably. I had a nap and whatever, went to the bathroom hours later and was considerably better. The burn was fading, yay! But I ran out of Mountain Dew, not that I want any more of it right now. So i decide, why not mix my two remedies together? Cranberry juice and vinegar. The bitterness of the cranberry juice doesn't bother me after the first half of the jug. So, I poured juice and vinegar into a glass and thought how much it looked and smelled like I was dying easter eggs. That taste was probably the nastiest and harshest substance I have ever drank. Don't disagree until you try it, it's absolutely disgusting. My entire face and throat were on fire and the taste was just nasty. So, that was the end of the vinegar treatment so far. I'm not sure if I will drink more or not. I really need to, but omg. Ew.
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| A while ago, I discovered what I want to do with my life. What I'm passionate about. What I long for. My calling in life. My destiny.
I want a ranch in Montana. I want to have horses, cows, dogs, cats, and maybe sheep. I want to work hard. I want to drive my cows to new pastures on my horses. I want to plant and harvest. Fruits and vegetables; apples, oranges, peaches, cherries, pumpkins, onions, potatoes, and other things. I want to can my own applesauce. I want to work in the hot sun and shovel snow and exercise my horses in the bitter cold. I want to go inside at the end of the day and look at my hard work all around me and feel accomplished. I want to cook and clean for and with my husband. I want to raise my kids on the ranch and when they grow up them and their children will visit for Christmas. I want to be chilled to the bone when I hear a wolf howling for the first time, and learn to embrace the remote wilderness. I know if won't be easy, and I don't care. Anything in life that's worth doing isn't easy.
Now I just have to get there.
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