A Changing World

Chapter 1

I woke up with the sun just shining through my curtains. I looked at my alarm clock on my bedside table; the screen displayed 6:07am. I woke up earlier than I should. My alarm doesn’t go off for another 50 minutes, more or less. I put my head back on the pillow, trying to bring sleep back to me.  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off with me. I couldn’t describe the feeling. It felt as if there was something physically wrong with me, as if I woke up as a completely different person.

I got out of bed and walked to my window. I could hear the birds singing. Listening to the song of the birds always made me feel calm, as if such beauty was put on this planet just to calm the souls of the people around them.

I already felt better when I went downstairs a couple of minutes later, but I still felt odd, perhaps breakfast would shake the feeling? I went straight for the kitchen, because my stomach was grumbling like a ferocious dog, and took a box of corn flakes from the cupboard and poured them into a bowl. When I took the milk from the fridge, I heard my mother walking down the stairs. It was odd to hear my mother walk down the stairs. She doesn’t work, so she’s never needed to come down early, she doesn’t believe that if there’s already one person in the household working, then why have two, which, of course, means that my father is the one that brings the income in the household for us to live off. My father is a bartender, working at the local pub that isn’t far to walk to. Neither of my parents owns a car.

When my mother walked into the room she was wearing her pink nightgown over her pajamas. Her pajamas had bears on them holding a heart, a present my father had given to her for Christmas.

“Kaitlin, what are you doing up before seven?” my mother said with a worried voice, she looked tired, as if she had been crying all night and hadn’t had much sleep.

“I couldn’t sleep, mum. Go back to bed. Everything is fine.” My mum often worried that someone was going to break into the house. This wasn’t much of a paranoid thing, since our house got broken into a few years back and she had gotten attacked by the intruder. It was one of the worst days of my life as far as I can remember. I was in English, and my father had phoned the school to come collect me, I was so scared, I had no idea why my father was coming to pick me up, he never bothers to take me home when I’m ill, it has always been my mother that came to meet me.

I had no idea that something had happened to her, I didn’t even know she was in hospital until I asked my father what was going on, and all he told me was that she was in hospital.

She had gotten stabbed in the stomach. The nurses had said that it was touch and go at first, but afterwards she became stable. I remember thinking about what would happen to me if my mother did somehow not make it out of this alive, and it scared me to think that she may have not come back home again. I didn’t want to live with my father, alone. It’s not as if he bothered me during the day, he always left me alone, and he never bothers with me or asks to see how my day had gone. It was the thought of living with someone that didn’t care about you, and trying to live your life without a mother, who always made sure I was okay, was unbearable and heartbreaking.

“You’re lucky your father is in work early today. Just don’t let your father catch you up early; you know he doesn’t like it when either of us is down earlier than we need to. Don’t do it again, okay?” My father had given my mother and me a timetable for when we are allowed to go downstairs and when we had to go to bed. You weren’t allowed to go downstairs on a school day before 7am, and on the weekends you weren’t allowed down until 10am, my father liked his sleep on the weekends, he always had them off.