Entity

Chapter 1: First Day Jitters

  I woke up to the sound of my old fashioned radio playing Scars by Abstract.

   It had startled me enough for me to have fallen off my bed and onto my cold linoleum floor. The pressure from the metal had hurt enough to have given me a headache that I had known would last for the rest of the day.

  "Ow, my nose!" I said to myself, with my voice echoing throughout the four plain cream-colored walls I called my room.

   I then realized what day it actually was and my mood immediately became somber.

   Not is it only the first day of my Junior year but exactly 11 years ago, Dad died and had left me alone with Mom. They had told me as I grew old enough to handle the truth that he had been shot on the way home from work, not really understanding because I was only 5 years-old when he died and they had waited so long to tell me. I had always wondered before they told me.

  I remember my 5 year-old self question why my Dad never came back home from work.

  "Mommy? Where's Daddy?" I asked, my high pitched voice echoing throughout the strange place with a bunch of square shaped rocks with names and numbers.

  "He's in a happy place now," my mom cried, a tear slowly trickling down her cheek.

  "Well, is he coming back?"

  "You aren't going to see him for a while, honey."

  "Why?"

  "Because he got a scratch and he got better then left us, okay?"

  "Okay, Mommy. Is that why you are crying? Because you miss him?"

"Yes, Alma, because I miss him," she sniffled.

  I hugged her until all of her tears went away.

  We left the strange place a while later. I ran into their room hoping to find Daddy there but found it empty. His side of the room was empty with nothing but a few shirts laid on the bed to show that he had been there at all.

  "Mommy, where did all of Daddy's stuff go?"

  "All of his stuff went with him, honey."

  "Oh."

  I felt a wet trail on my cheeks and tasted the saltiness in my mouth. I wiped away my tears and sniffled.

  I was confused as a little girl but I never believed them even then and I had good reason not to. I knew that The Brotherhood, our worldwide government, could not be trusted because all they told us were lies.

  At least that's what Dad told me before he died.

   He used to have these theories that The Brotherhood was hungry for power and would do anything to get it. He would tell me all these things about them but I guess he would forget that he was a part of them.

  My dad was part of The Brotherhood but he was one of the intermediate leveled Brothers. So it wasn't like he was taking a big part of everything but he wasn't as clueless as the lower leveled Brothers.

  As I looked through my closet full of various shades of navy blue, plum purple, and black, I started to think about how things would've been different if he had just taken a different route or stayed home that day, really anything could've happened if just the smallest detail had been different.

  I pulled my long, dark hair back into a high ponytail, picking out wavy parts to frame my face, while looking into the mirror with gray eyes that were red and puffy from crying, shadowed with sadness staring back at me. Once upon a time, they'd go so bright, people would be able to see the smallest specks of blue in them but not anymore.