Underneath The Withered Tree

Chapter 1

My nose wrinkled as the rancid apricot squished against the palm of my hand. I shoved the remains of the fruit into my apron, even though majority of it landed on my hand and dress. The aroma of week old bug eaten fruits surrounded me.

"Breathe through your mouth." Victoria mumbled from next to me without looking up from the ant covered apricot in her hand.

"Than-" I stopped myself remembering what happened to Abigale last month when she socialized while working. I shivered at the thought and just nodded my head. We both continued silently with our work.

"Children!" He yelled from the kitchen, "Five o' clock!" We all hurried to the house and into our rooms.

Lining the hallways were 3 rooms on each side. On one side we had all the girls rooms, and on the other my mothers room, my 'fathers' room, and an extra room that none of us were allowed into just like majority of the house, but this room especially for a reason that none of us knew.

I filed into the second room after Charlotte, Lucy, and Grace. We all quickly stripped from our sweat and fruit stained frocks and into our supper dresses. Mine was a floral print that almost exactly matched all the other girls dresses except for mine had a small amount of lace hemming the neck. We all splashed our faces with cold water and retied our hair into braids, before he had called us out again this time into the dining hall.

"Girls!" He called, his voice bouncing off the walls and down the hall, "Supper!" We all walk down the hall patiently, our  hands laying at our sides.

We swayed into the dining hall as neatly as we could taking a seat around a long wooden table. Two chairs sat at each end that were taller and much more embellished than the rest and 12 other chairs lined the sides of the tables, squished in like sardines in a can.

I felt the rug brush under my feet which made a small dragging sound, earning me a brooding glare from the older girls. We all sat in our specific order. The youngest starting closest to father; Meredith, Alexandra, Aria, Kennedy, Grace, Lucy, then me, Charlotte, Rachel, Bryanna, Victoria, and the oldest was Sophia, who also happened to be the brattiest.

I sat one chair away from mom making my meals almost always filled with silence, while she stared forward with those hollow eyes that used to be so bright and brilliant until he had drained her of all she knew. She used to knit us clothes and take us for walks and now she just sits in her rocking chair watching out the window like she is waiting or hoping for something to change.

After supper, we were immediately ordered to our rooms to prepare for bed. We changed, once again, this time into our pajamas, which were pink and white striped. I never really liked pink, but father always had us wear them because he 'liked it when we matched' he thought it made us look sophisticated. I thought pink always made me look dumb, but father didn't think so, so I listened to his every order over and over again.

Before falling asleep on my cot on the bunk below Lucy, I read Gone With The Wind for the fifth time since I got it. Mother used to buy me new books every week, but ever since father came back she stopped, so I'm stuck with the same old books. Then, I slowly drifted into the abyss of my imagination.