Breaking Glass

Chapter 1- Up In Flames

It all started on my 15 birthday; my mom died. One moment she was on her way to get a birthday cake for me, and the next, we got a phone call saying that the car had swerved the wrong way, hit a lamp post and she wasn’t coming back.

I remembered feeling the sudden lack of air in my lungs. My throat constricted and I’d felt like I couldn’t breathe, like the world was caving in on me. My once perfect life was quickly slipping away through my fingers like sand, while I tried in vain to grasp it back.

My mum’s death was sudden, unexpected, and it shattered my world to pieces. I had glanced up at my father, expecting him to tell me that it was going to be okay, to comfort me like he always did. But he didn’t. He just stood there staring blankly into nothingness, and that’s when I knew that I had lost him too.

He wasn’t the same dad I had once known. He wasn’t happy, and when he moved, it was like something was missing. Something had died in him the day my mom died. There was no longer life in his eyes, he was looking, but he wasn’t seeing. My loving, kind, spirited father had turned into a heartbroken, mournful zombie. I might as well have been dead to him too because only occasionally did he acknowledge my presence with a slight head nod and glazed over eyes.

It was the same at mum’s funeral. Everyone else was sobbing their guts out but he simply stared as she was lowered into her grave with those same expressionless eyes. I had looked at him through my own tear-blurred sight, thinking that surely here; surely at her funeral he would have returned back to his normal self, but no.

It wasn’t long before he decided to end his life and join her in heaven, wherever that was. Everything had gone downhill from there, the two years after that is mostly a blur. I got put into foster home after foster home. Every single one had ended up kicking me out, abandoning me once again. I don’t blame them. By then, I really didn’t care anymore; all I did was cause trouble for everyone else. I was the girl nobody could love, a nuisance. The memories all fade together into one big messed-up spot of emptiness.

When I was little, my parents had told me that when people die, God would take their spirit and bring them to heaven if they were good. I was told that God would be there for me always, and I had believed it. I wasn’t so sure now. But every night, I still prayed that God would help me; take me out of this hell-hole, maybe even just put me out of my misery.

One night in August I snuck out of my foster home because I was having trouble falling asleep and I had remembered my mum once saying that “Mother Nature’s lullaby was one’s best sleep remedy” …or something like that. I had wandered to the middle of this little gathering of trees and sat down. For a while I just listened to the wind whistling through the leaves, and watched the moonlight glimmering down on the grass. I pulled out a lighter and a cigarette from the back pocket of my jeans. I lit the cigarette up and closed my eyes. I didn’t smoke, but the smell of the cigarette took me back in time, when I was 10 years old. My mom, my dad and I were picnicking out in the woods.  Mum had taken out a cigarette and Dad had frowned at her; he hated that she smoked. But, mum had given him her ever-so-charming smile and kissed him on the cheek, and he gave in.

As my cigarette burned out, I picked up a twig from the ground and was twirling it between my fingers, something I learned how to do from my dad, back in the day. Somewhere in the next 5 minutes, the clutter of mush inside my head called my “brain” decided that it would be a good idea to light the tip of the twig with my lighter. The dry summer weather had made the twig highly flammable. It burned out quickly, and as the flames licked at my fingers, I let out a yelp and dropped the still flaming piece of wood.

That spark of fire from the twig ignited scraps of dry leaves and branches on the earthy ground and suddenly burst into a massive blaze. I stood there, dumbfounded as the flare of red and orange flickered, growing, lighting up larger pieces of wood, and eventually swallowing up entire trees.

Clouds of thick black smoke started billowing around me, stinging my eyes, nose, and lungs. I ran as fast as my legs would take me, choking, coughing and gasping for air.

By now, other people started to notice too. It took them a while, granted, it was the middle of the night.

“FIRE!” someone screamed, and the next little while was all a foggy haze of sirens and flashing lights.

I was faintly aware of a hard metal being pressed against my wrists, before everything went black. 

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I'm sorry that this part's so short :P

But, I hope you enjoyed!