The Rise of Night

Chapter 4:RACHAEL

RACHAEL

Chapter 4

I’ve been an orphan for as long as I can remember.

I lived in ‘Madam Isabelle’s Orphanage for Young Girls’ in Coquitlam, BC. It was a shabby place, and not very well known so we rarely got donations. Whenever we were lucky enough to get money it was always hoarded by Madam Isabelle.

Madam Isabelle is what you may call ‘a strict adult’. As far as I know she doesn’t have kids of her own, but she acted like she was the mother of the whole world. She was the kind of person who would pull you aside and scold you if you were playing rough on the playground and would remind you to ‘eat your vegetables!’ while at a restaurant. Madam treated the whole orphanage very strictly, but she seemed to hate me in particular. Whenever one of the kids was playing rough she scolded me. Whenever I snuck food she scolded me. It seemed that Madam went out of her way just to find some kind of fault, no matter how small or insignificant.

I didn’t really like Madam.

One day, after much of pestering about where I had come from, she explained that I was a ‘foundling’. Apparently one cold autumn day Madam had opened the door to find a small cardboard box on her doorstep. It wasn’t very large, not much bigger than a shoebox and had three holes in the top in the shape of a triangle for air. The only words written on it was Handle With Care in a thin black permanent marker. Madam opened the box to find yours truly, wrapped in a tiny light blue patchwork quilt. Tucked in a fold in the box was a small worn out slip of paper that read:

Baby Girl

8th February, 1999 2:30AM

That cold evening onwards Madam Isabelle took care of me and raised me in her dainty orphanage. It was the one thing I respected her for. After learning this I searched the entire orphanage from top to bottom until I found it.

The box was hidden behind old scraps of drywall in the building’s attic and I have kept it with me ever since.

I grew up in the orphanage, walking the younger kids to and from school. Though I didn’t go to school myself, Madam Isabelle tutored me herself at the orphanage. It was like homeschooling, but Madam didn’t follow the curriculum. She taught me whatever she thought was necessary such as survival skills, but focused mainly on mythology. Greek, Roman, Egyptian, I knew it all.

One spring day, when I was 11 years old, I was taking a walk. It was a beautiful day. There was a soft spring breeze that ruffled through the green leaves; the flowers were in full bloom, and the sun high up in the sky.

I was still an hour away from the orphanage when I saw the smoke.

Thick plumes of it rose into the sky, heating the air. I ran as fast as I could. By the time I got there, the entire orphanage was in ruins. The last flames of fire licked the walls, and the smoke rose higher and higher in the air. The siren of a fire truck wailed in the distance but I could hardly hear it.

I skirted around the orphanage digging around for anything I could salvage. But the entire building had been consumed. By now I was yelling out, crying and screaming at the top of my lungs. The orphanage wasn’t the best place in the world, but it was the only place I knew. The only one I could call home.