Over the River: The Short Story

“Juniper, if you remember anything your mother or I tell you, remember to never go to the other side of the river. Do you understand?”

For as long as she could remember, Juniper had been told to never cross the river that bordered her home. There was only her house on that side of the river, no neighbors, no other children to play with. The order had never made sense before, but to avoid the wrath of her parents, she obeyed their wishes. But that didn’t stop her from going to the riverbank to look out at the land on the other side, hoping to see some other form of life there.

Years went by and still, nothing ever changed. Still, no one else came to live in the area, and Juniper still couldn’t go over the river. She had had enough. She planned on getting answers one way or another. She had a perfect plan; why not go across the river herself and explore for a little while? It's better to beg for forgiveness then ask for permission, anyways.

“Mother, what’s on the other side of the river?” Juniper was helping Mother weed their garden. Stifling under the heat of the afternoon sun, Juniper hoped that Mother wouldn’t be able to think and would spill some forbidden secret to her. She should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

“JuneBug, you know you’re not supposed to worry about the river,” Mother turned towards Juniper and smiled.

“I know, but Mother, don’t you sometimes wonder what is-”

“Juniper! Enough! You’re not to even think about that river!” Mother’s face had turned scary now, and she was starting to get a crazed look in her eyes.

Juniper held up her hands in surrender and backed away. “I’m sorry mother. I won’t mention the river again.”

“Good. Now get back to the weeds.”

That evening, Mother and Father went out to hunt some deer for dinner and had left Juniper to prepare the rest of dinner. After peeling some potatoes and setting them in a pot to boil, she decided to clean the house a little until they got back.

She had cleaned the living room and kitchen and decided that the attic could use a good cleaning. As she lowered the ladder, Juniper thought about how happy Mother and Father would be that she cleaned the house without being told.

Once she had climbed the ladder, she commenced to dusting the old boxes and picking up paper that was on the floor. One of the papers caught her attention. It was an old newspaper and the headline read, "Kidnapping Couple Finally Caught." Curious about where this paper might have came from and what it was talking about, Juniper sat down and began to read the article. It told of a couple who was on the run after kidnapping a baby girl from her parents' home.

The article said that the two were caught and were to be sent to a specialized environment where they could live separate from the rest of the world. The environment itself was an experiment where a specialized area would be surrounded by a forcefield that would restrict the prisoners from escaping. Juniper was intrigued. The experiment sounded like a good idea so prisoners wouldn’t have to be killed for their crimes.

Turning the page, Juniper gasped as she saw a picture of the couple; it was Mother and Father! Looking at the picture, Juniper’s blood ran cold, it didn’t make sense, but then again it did. The fact that they lived in an area with no other people and the fact the she wasn’t allowed near the river. The river must be where the forcefield was. It had to be, which probably meant there was a way to cross it. Just then, the front door opened as Mother and Father came in.

“Juniper! We’re home. Are the potatoes ready?” Mother called.

Juniper was still shaken up from her discovery, but she shook off the panic and decided that she would ask Mother and Father about the newspaper and see what they had to say.

When she got downstairs, Father was cutting up the meat into small chunks and Mother was stirring the potatoes. As she stepped into the kitchen, Mother turned and smiled warmly at her.

“I noticed you cleaned up, JuneBug. Good job.”

“Thank you Mother. I was cleaning the attic and I had came across an old newspaper article that had interested me,” Juniper sat down at the dinner table and watched her parents expressions.

Mother’s smile faltered a little and Father’s posture stiffened, but they didn’t pause in their activities. Juniper took this as the cue to continue talking. She put the newspaper on the table facing them.

“I know what you did,” Juniper started, “but I’m not mad. I think you have suffered enough for your pasts. Maybe we could find a way over the river-”

She stopped as she felt a hand strike her cheek. Holding her cheek in surprise, she looked up at Mother’s furious expression.

“How dare you disobey your parents!” Father roared. His face was turning red with undisguised anger. He turned around from cutting the meat and stalked menacingly towards Juniper with the knife in his hand.

“Father! Please calm down! I was just trying to make a suggestion!” Juniper cried, she scrambled out of her chair and tried to run out of the kitchen.

“Dear, why don’t you make sure that Juniper doesn’t get anymore ideas about leaving again?” Mother looked at Juniper with a twisted smile and an evil glint in her eyes.

Juniper turned and fled up the stairs to her room. Right behind her, Father was thundering up the stairs. Juniper tried to shut her door and lock it, but she was too slow and Father burst through the door. Trying to protect herself, Juniper raced to her bedside and attempted to jump over her bed, but she slipped on the floor and Father grabbed her by her legs.

“Thought you could get away did you? Well let me show you what happens to those that try to run away.”

Juniper kicked and screamed with all her might, but it didn’t do her any good. Her father pushed her to the ground and raised the knife. Without any hesitation, he stabbed Juniper in her upper thigh twice. When he was done, he wiped the blood off the knife onto his pants leg and left the room, leaving Juniper to bleed on the cold lonely floor.

Juniper laid on the floor and screamed from the pain in her leg. Shakily she reached her hand down to the wound to feel the extent of the damage. The wound wasn’t that bad, but she was losing quite a bit of blood and her body temperature was starting to go down. She only had a small amount of time to patch up the wound before she lost too much blood. Struggling to get up off the floor, she was finally able to kneel, resting against her bed. Reaching towards her dresser at the foot of her bed, Juniper randomly opened a drawer and pulled out the first item of clothing she could feel. With her hands still shaking badly, Juniper took the shirt and began to tie it around her wound to stanch the blood flow.

Now that she had patched herself up, next was finally getting away from her "parents." After years of lies and deceit, it was finally out in the open. Juniper was living with kidnappers who were banished to this never ending land of nothing, and they took her with them. The only way to escape from their clutches would be to go to the river and pass the barrier.

Juniper climbed onto her bed and laid under the covers and tried to rest. Sleep was slow coming as thoughts ran wild through her head. She planned to sleep until the moon was high in the sky, then make a run for it. She just needed to get some rest first.

A few hours later, Juniper jerked awake and jumped up from her bed. She checked her wound and, seeing it was still intact, she slid from her bed. Slowly getting to her feet, she tested if her leg could handle her weight. Thankfully, her leg seemed like it could support her, so slowly, as to not make any noise, Juniper crept to her door and seeing that it was unlocked, slipped out.

She could hear Mother and Father snoring from their room down the hall. Feeling like a deer that was being hunted, Juniper crept down the stairs and through the kitchen to the backdoor. Now came the hard part: actually getting out of the door. The key was no longer on the key hook that was beside the door, so now she had to find something else to open the door with. Frantically, Juniper looked around the kitchen.

"Think June, think! What in here can I use?"

Spinning around in circles, Juniper’s gaze finally settled on one of the knives left on the dinner table.

"Perfect!"

Grabbing the knife, Juniper raced back to the back door and stuck the knife into the lock. Jiggling the knife around, she started to get frustrated until the lock finally clicked. Filled with pride at having figured out this obstacle, Juniper yanked open the door to freedom. Unbeknownst to her, there was a string attached to the door which led to a bell that was, in turn, attached to the parents’ door. As Juniper opened the door in her haste, the bell started to ring, alerting her father to her escape.

Hearing the bell, Juniper raced out of the door and towards the river. Father had hopped out of his bed and was running out of the door after her, but due to the head start, Juniper was a good distance ahead. Even with the light from the moon, Juniper was still tripping over tree stumps and rocks, and this was slowing her down considerably. Finally, her legs got tangled in some roots that were hidden in the shadows. As she struggled to free herself, Father was able to quickly overtake her.

“Well, well, well. Looks like we have a runaway huh?” Father chuckled as he looked at Juniper’s frightened expression, both their faces illuminated by the moon.

“Please, just let me go. I didn’t do anything to you!” Juniper tried to plead with the maniacal man, but he just laughed humorlessly.

“You’re the reason why Mother and I can’t leave this place! If you had just been a good little girl and hadn’t made a fuss, no one would have realized that you weren’t really our kid. Then the authorities wouldn’t have shipped us here!”

Father was growing angrier with each word. At the end of his speech, he reached towards Juniper. But this time she was ready, and as Father leaned over to grab her, Juniper swiped at his face with the knife she had in her hand. The knife slashed Father across his eye, blinding him. Father roared and grabbed at his eye.

As he was distracted, Juniper got up and ran as fast as she could, her leg starting to bleed profusely through her bandage, but she kept going, the adrenaline pushing her forward. She looked behind her just once and saw Father still on the ground, screaming in pain, and Mother quickly running out of the house.

Reaching the riverbank, she hesitated for just a split second before she dove into the water. Swimming as hard as she could, Juniper quickly reached the middle of the river where the barrier was. Taking a deep breath, she dove under the water’s surface and the barrier. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Juniper’s lungs started to burn, so she swam back up to the surface. Ahead of her, she could see the other bank. The adrenaline was starting to wear off and Juniper was starting to struggle to keep her head above the water.

No, I refuse to die after coming this far, she thought.

Gathering her last bit of strength, Juniper burst out of the water and crawled onto the bank. She laid on the warm sand, her breath coming out in ragged gasps, and her leg still bleeding through the now wet bandage. As her eyes started to close, she sensed people gathering around her.

“Please help me,” Juniper cried, tears of pain and relief running down her cheeks.

One of the people knelt by her head and started to stroke her face softly.

“Juniper?”