Twitchy Left Eye

When Mandy woke up the next morning, her room was still mostly dark with specks of light peaking through the cracks between the stacks of planks behind her curtains.

She got out of bed and unenthusiastically dragged her feet on the thin carpeted floors of her room to her private bathroom.

She went about her morning as she normally would.

As she was preparing for to leave the house her mother stopped her and persuaded her to have breakfast.

Mandy grabbed the machete she would be using to chop wood, and also on the small farm they had in their backyard. Before she could step a foot off the porch, her shoulder was grabbed and she was pulled back. Taken by surprise she almost fell but the person who grabbed her helped her to steady herself.

"Mom? What are you doing I almost fell?" Mandy looked at her mother with a surprised expression on her face.

"I'm sorry, darling. When I got back to the kitchen I didn't see you there I panicked a little." Mandy now understood, her mother was a real mama-bear.

"Okay. Alright. Well I'm going now," Mandy turned to take a step off the porch but again she was grabbed from behind by the shoulders.

"Wait. Since early this morning my left eye has been twitching. Just be careful okay out there. Don't be afraid to use the machete and the fighting skills your father taught you, if you get in trouble right." Mandy nodded her head, she knew how good her mother's intuition was, both from experience and observation.

Her left eye had twitched when Ryan had been accidentally hit on the foot with a wrench, resulting in his slightly crooked foot. Her left eye had also twitched when Mandy had gotten her head slammed into a rock when she was much younger at school, by another kid who was from one of the more significant families.

It was no joke when Judy's left eye twitched. Understanding her mother's urgency even more, Mandy held held Judy's hands in her own and promised, "I'll be fine, mom. I'm be back for dinner later in the evening since it's a Saturday again. With the food we'll get if I do this right, we'll be good for more than a week if we budget."

Mandy finally took that step off the porch, she turned to look back and waved at her mother with a smile before heading into the part of the forest that was safe enough to prepare the fire wood.

Though she seemed confident, Mandy now felt a little down. But she kept on walking, because if she didn't cut the wood and bring it to trade in the central for food, the little food her mother had been given the day before would run out.

She was cautious of every step she took. Even the slightest sound would make her jump and ready to attack if necessary. Mandy was on high alert that day as she chopped wood to trade.

When she was tying up the pieces the blade of the machete was beneath her boot and the handle close to hand. Making sure the wood was tied up properly, she pulled the bundles up on her shoulder and carried them with relative ease.

It was always like this for her, she could carry what others would call 'too heavy to carry or hold' with ease. It wouldn't feel heavy to her. But for some reason her mother and father told her to pretend that it was heavy. Their excuse was that she become a slave if any if found out, this she believed when she was much younger but as she got older she started to doubt though she never asked about it, because she knew that they warned her for her own good.

Mandy dropped the bundles of chopped wood into a cart her parents had told her to use when bringing things to the central to trade. She pushed the cart, with her machete still close to her on the cleared out path that lead behind the central.

Mandy soon realized something was wrong with her surroundings.

'Where are the homeless? They are usually here raiding the trees to find anything to eat?' she thought.

The homeless are the persons from our community that can't or don't want to make some kind of contribution to the community. They made themselves shelters in the forest so they can hide after lock down. During the day they raid the trees in the forest for their own wood and food.

Today, how come they weren't there. If it were any other day Mandy would have jumped in joy to see those troublemakers nowhere in sight, but after she received her mother's warning she was cautious against anything unusual and not seeing the homeless wreaking havoc in the forest and trying to create trouble for her was very unusual. She decided to speed up.

*GRRRR*

Mandy stopped in her tracks, 'What was that!' she wondered.

Before she could ponder over it for all, she heard a set of stomping feet approaching her and approaching fast. Instinctively she grabbed the machete and ran.