Untitled as of yet... (standard:Creative non-fiction, 2930 words)
Author: Clare Borror	Added: Nov 08 2004	Views/Reads: 3289/2193	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
This is the first part of a two or three part series. The first two remain unfinished, obviously, so please bear with me as I continue to update! :)

I couldn't believe that I was half-dressed and still groggy from my rude
awakening.  After my friend Sophia had shaken me to consciousness, 
blathering about a vision of Draven Francois being back in town and 
residing in the old house, I hadn't even bothered to strap on my 
leather boots. Instead, I kissed her small forehead blearily, slipped 
my platinum-hilted rapier into the sheath I had sewn into my old 
over-coat, and traipsed barefoot out into the streets. The street lamps 
hurt my eyes as I hurried along the sidewalk beneath them, their glow 
only reaching out so far before the spaces of shadow between each spot 
of light reigned supreme, eventually giving way to those dim fingers of 
absurdly dull yellow. 

I thought of Sophia, the little girl who had been orphaned when her
mother committed suicide by hanging herself. I had taken her into my 
own apartment, continued to school her at home; I was only nineteen at 
the time, her elder by a mere five years, but I loved her like I had 
loved my sisters and I worked three jobs to keep her healthy and fed, 
to provide her with what she needed and the things I had never 
understood to give to my sisters. If I died tonight, who would take 
care of her? Who would buy her favorite kind of billowing muslin 
skirts, the kind I had slipped into before leaving? Most importantly, 
who would love her as I did; I who had been orphaned by death as well 
and more hideously than any sane person could believe? 

Her small heart-shaped face flashed in my head, her long blonde hair in
knots and tangles despite my incessant brushing it. Her small 
blue-green eyes stared coolly at me in her unnerving fashion and though 
I had been walking for almost ten minutes, I almost turned back around. 


I haven't thought this through, my mind warned me. I'm half asleep and I
don't see the logic in doing this now. Enough, whispered a tiny voice 
of anger, it must be tonight or never. 

Abruptly, the sidewalk ended, greeted bumpily by the ill-laid asphalt.
My bare feet slapped against its surface, loudly announcing my 
existence in the still quiet of midnight. I quickly veered to the right 
side of the street, and stopped in front of an ordinary-looking house. 

The darkness around it made the grey paint look almost black; the white
trimming of the original Victorian scroll work glowed eerily in the 
dim, cloud-filtered moonlight; and I ascended the four concrete steps 
leading onto the property. As I stepped onto the lawn, my feet and 
ankles disappearing into the thick grass growing there, a soft light 
grew in the window of the second story balcony. 

I sighed heavily, knowing that as soon as I entered this house, my
chances of getting back out of it would be slimmer than the miracle 
chance I had been given to be here in the first place. Heavy clouds 
shifted in the sky, illuminating the simple cement square of porch for 
a moment before collapsing again against the weak light of the half 
moon; but I did not need to see it to know it was there. I knew this 
house well, provided that the monster now dwelling in it hadn't moved 
the walls in the past four years. 

Shaking my head slightly, my elbow-length white hair slipped from its
hastily fashioned pony-tail, spilled down over the brocade over-coat I 
had wrenched on in my hurry to get here. I ran a finger over the cold 
metal of hilt of my sword hidden against my back, and, satisfied that I 
might at least die fighting, I proceeded to make my way into the house 
that had so recently belonged to me and my family. 

The stairs were unlit, so my hands groped  the wooden banister and the
uneven stones on the walls. I counted the stairs under my breath, 
concentrating on whether it was twelve steps or thirteen. It had been 
such a long time since I had been on these steps; at the time, I had 
been running down them, screaming like a typical young girl of sixteen. 


It was on these stairs that the body parts of my parents and my little
twin sisters had been strewn carelessly. I had come home from a 
particularly nasty day at school to find a dark-haired stranger 
carrying on in the living room about certain plants that could help my 
elderly father's arthritis, explaining that this or that herb could 
somehow defeat my little sisters' deafness. 


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