25 Morrison Avenue

Chapter 2

Her head hurt. Why did her head hurt? And for a blissful moment, that was all she had to worry about. The throbbing in her head and the sunlight in her eyes. Then she remembered exactly where the carpet, and herself, was.

She struggled to her feet and cracked her back. It had been a while since she slept on that floor. When she was little nightmares used to be a regular thing for her, and she would sneak into the master bedroom in the middle of the night to sleep at the foot of the bed. Sometimes her parents wouldn't realise she was there until they had to get up for work. She smiled slightly at the memory of her parents making a fuss about her and putting her in their bed when they finally found her. But that was when her dad was still alive.

A lot changed when he died. Though her nightmares didn't stop - on the contrary it increased- she stopped going to her parents' room. Her mother said she should stop bothering her, and act like a big girl. It was her fault for bothering her mom when she was clearly very busy. She always thought that her mother's smile died alongside her dad, because she could hardly recall seeing her mother smile after that. There wasn't a lot to be said about her mother but her love for Kaya's father had been true. She hadn't seen anything like it before, nor since he died. A fierce and blazing love aunt Rosalind once called it, hardly expected for a lower class family like hers.

She hadn't noticed it yesterday, but the tiny house seemed bigger somehow. Maybe because she was all alone. Even after her dad died it seemed cramped with four people living there. Kaya was about to leave the room when she saw the file lying on the floor. Discarded, just like she was. She sighed, picked the file up, and left the room behind.

Walking through the empty living room still felt foreign to her. The entire house seemed... different, somehow. Tired, like it could no longer house a family, given the odd case that someone would like to here. Sure, it was still the same house. The same faded wallpaper, and the same ugly rug in the living room, and the same odd looking refrigerator. But life had left it long ago.

Kaya sighed, and shook her head. She was overtired, and overthinking. Houses couldn't live, and she was just being ridiculous. She squared her shoulders and set off to the kitchen table, determined to read through the file with a clear head and then decide what to do. Maybe she should have some coffee first, just to wake up.

She went over to the sink and filled the iron kettle with water, like a thousand times before. When the water was heating up on the stove, she went to the cupboard to fetch the coffee powder which she needed if she wanted to make it through the day without killing somebody. And found nothing. The same thing happened when she checked the pantry, and the fridge was empty save for some old crackers, which was a little odd, but she would worry about that later. Breakfast was served.

Stale crackers and boiled water in hand, she returned to the table to properly examine the papers. It entire stack consisted of 15 pages, made up almost entirely of legal babble that took a while to understand. What she managed to find out was that she and her brothers, Abel and Elliot, all inherited an equal amount of her mothers, albeit sparse, assets. The house was to be sold and divided amongst them, while Kaya got the car. It further stated that the worth of the car was to be subtracted from her share of the house money and divided amongst Abel and Elliot. Kaya didn't understand much of the rest except that her mother's retirement fund would not be paid out, and that she got a car. Which was more than she expected, to be honest.

Kaya glanced at the clock above the stove and was a little surprised to see that it was already eleven o'clock in the morning. That would place her last meal at about... twenty hours ago. No wonder the slight whitening at the crackers' ends didn't put her off. It was probably time to face the world again. Sighing, she made her way to the tiny bathroom, to wash her face at the tiny sink and use the tiny toilet. Still, she was used to it.

The mirror, no matter how tiny it was, did nothing to hide the state she was in. Her hair was a bright orange, with curly locks following al the directions the wind could possibly take, except for her right side, which was flat against her head from sleeping on the floor. Her eyes stood out a bit too much, and she could never tell whether they were green or blue. Although at the moment, she looked like a panda, keeping in mind that she didn't bother to shower nor change the previous night. To top it all off was her slightly-too-big nose above her slightly-too-pale mouth. All in all, she was stunning. Note the sarcasm.

One of her traits that Kaya considered a strong suit was that she perfected the art of not caring particularly much about her appearance. That is when the time came to leave all she had done to alter her appearance was washing her face, tying her hair with an elastic and putting on a clean set of underwear under yet another old t-shirt and jean trousers.

That being done, she stepped outside the door and pretended like her world hadn't just become a few shades duller.