My Fiction Fix #01

Writing Idea #16: Don't Look Back

DON'T LOOK BACK BLURB:

I stare at the picture, the blood oozes out of her head in front of me. A ten year old sitting in front of her Mother's dead body, wondering why the world was so against everything she believed in. This woman was not my Mother, it's why I had to do it. The siren's echo, my black eye could be easily seen when Chicago's head police came barreling into the room, guns out. I looked like a six year old, more so than a ten year old. I was placed in an orphanage after three months of community service, but the police officer who put me through the system as an orphan didn't place criminal charges on me. He saw the knife scars on my abdomen. He saw the belt whips on my back.

I won't ever forget his face when I sat mutely on the desk in Illinois, Chicago police station.

I never lost the photo.

It was what kept me going. The kid brother, he was ten years old at the time, holding the little baby girl protectively. The two parents on either side of him, eyes down on the both of their children. Their names were at the bottom of the page. Claire Celeste. That was the woman's name. She wore a golden business suit, the man next to her, broad-shouldered and clearly powerful in his suit, blonde hair at the golden tips, Adrian Celeste. The wealthiest computer manufacturing entrepreneur in the world. The boy, Elrond Celeste, and the baby girl in his arms...Alana Celeste.

Me.

The family I was stolen from.

CHAPTER 1

EIGHT YEARS LATER...

The rain sliced into different units against the window. I smell bacon downstairs, a place where I am not allowed when customers are over. The orphanage looked as beautiful as the witch who lived in the candy house for Hansel and Gretel to find, to be choked up in. Too bad this place wasn't made out of candy either, I would have been all too tempted to munch on it like termites on wood. Another child was getting adopted. I was one month off turning eighteen years old. Close enough as I slide the rug from the floorboard in the rustic wardrobe. Thunder strikes outside.

Lightning too.

It sizzles and cackles above the rooftop of the witch's house. She vacates downstairs like a cherry top on a gingerbread cookie as she speaks with the clueless couples downstairs, looking for the perfect child. Great way to find those in an orphanage, most of us are rug-rat misfits, looking to make trouble at every angle. We were chosen to do so.

I grab the small bag in the floor, making no sound as I move to the already open window and familiarise myself with the roof, which wasn't troubling. Sunset was calling the horizon as I drop down from the roof, back to the orphanage, I promised myself some day I'd make enough money, steal enough from the wealthy...to finally leave this shit-excuse of an orphanage.

I could hear the train from here as I zip through the trees, running this far, something I had done before, just never got far enough to jump and I run like a deer from a lion, my instinct only to run, hiding right now was worthless.

I duck down when a round of toots echo and the train gradually turns from a dot by the orange sunset, to an actually moving machine and I leap, timing it just right as I grip the silver handle, it was a train headed straight for New York, but I'd be getting off in Ohio and straight for the local airport. I step inside the train at the exact moment one of the staff members step out. I close the door when he does and he pauses on the other end.

I duck immediately and roll to the side when he opens his door again, I stand behind it, holding my breath when he looks to the door in confusion, muttering about 'hearing things'. He closes the door, using his tag to lock it on his end, I reach for the bronze wooden desk and grab a random key card, waiting to see him occupied with a woman and her puppies on the glistening table, I slide out of the door, using the keycard.