The Seven

Chapter 1

Larkin's nose filled with the dry scent of dust and dead grass as her feet carried her over the long dirt road that was her driveway. Not that her family had the luxury of auto transportation. She walked down it every day, and had been doing so for as long as she could remember. The same trees growing on either side of it seemed to always be browning, not quite dead but barely alive. Just like Larkin's family, she thought. 

The smooth, rounded pebbles crunched under her bare heels and dust billowed around her ankles as the previously untouched layer of sediment was disrupted by her toes. Holding her shoes in her hands, she didn't want to dirty them as she walked through the dust. The employers always expected their employees to be clean and kept, which Larkin didn't understand. After all, no one was going to see them anyway. The only people that came to the factory district were its workers and transportation managers.

A small tingle on her fingertip caught Larkin's attention, and she watched as a small ladybug, too small to have spots as of yet, fly up from her fingers to her palm, crawling across it slowly, as if to taunt her with its freedom. She shook the bug off and it made its way through the air onto her right foot. 

Coughing dust out of her throat, Larkin bent down to pick the insect away from her foot and a small rock caught her eye. Flicking the ladybug away from her, she wavered her hand over it before picking up a perfectly symmetrical stone. Its edges were rounded, and it was coated in a thin casing of dust on one side. Larkin spit on it, cleaning it off with her finger, revealing a brilliant grey with flecks of black. Flipping it over, the other side looked dull and colorless with the mixture of grey stone and bread-colored dust.

Bread. Larkin's mouth began to salivate at the thought as she continued down the driveway, slipping the stone into the pocket of her work coat. The once shiny black material of the coat that she had dreamt of at age 15 was now a symbol of her low status as a worker. 

Growing up, Larkin had wanted more than anything to go to work with her mother who was employed as a seamstress. However, what her mother had not told her was that at age 16, rather than choosing where you worked, a non-negotiable job was assigned to you and you were expected to continue with that work for the rest of your meager life.

Larkin had the poor luck of becoming a factory worker, and now her previously beautiful black leather coat was covered in scratches from factory machines and from general wear and tear- a newer issue was too expensive for her family to buy her. The joints in her arms and shoulders were worn down from constant movement, and her legs were endlessly worn out from standing at her position for so long each day- the factory didn't even have the common decency to provide chairs for its helpless workers.

Larkin never complained, however, because once you complained you got the boot. And with the steady flow of strong 16 year olds eager to work for the first time, one can imagine how difficult it was to find a new job, even at the age of 18. A year into the work and you were deemed used up, but facility owners weren't allowed to kick you to the curb without a real reason, so even the slightest of complaints, groans, or grunts could have you out of a job in an instant.

Larkin's foot stepped on an especially sharp rock and she hissed as it broke the skin in her arch, sinking in as she stepped. Bringing her foot up sharply, she slowly pulled out the rock and a steady flow of scarlet blood bubbled from the cut where the rock had lacerated her skin and smoothly poured down the curvature of her foot. Tiptoeing carefully to not further injure the gash, Larkin pushed open the door to her family's humble one-story house. More realistically, her family's one story shack.

The roof was falling apart, so during the rain season her father and brother were constantly up there trying to cover any gaps with wood planks, resulting in an uneven and unsightly roof to complement the thin walls, made from cheap plaster and a wooden foundation and frame. There was no air conditioning, and the furniture inside the house was just as bland as the home's outside. Larkin hurried through the house to the kitchen, trying not to get blood anywhere and ignoring her siblings' greetings. Tearing off a piece of taupe gauze kept on the top shelf of a cabinet, she pulled herself up onto the counter and bound her foot to stop the bleeding. Larkin had experienced much morse pain than a little cut in her foot, but she still couldn't walk perfectly straight as she made her way into the family room where her brother and sister sat on the tattered sofa.