W.I.T.C.H.: The Bloody Throne

Part 4

    It has been 2 weeks since Danny saw her cousin Irma and now, with only a few kilometers of road separating her from Heatherfield, the young teen was practically bouncing in her seat beside her sister Ella. Furthermore, she couldn't wait to get out of the old bus that she had been stuck in for the past 7 hours with her older sister Ella, her older brother Mike, her little sister Gwen, her baby brother Jack, Janet, and her alcoholic uncle Roger. Jack had been crying his head off for no true reason other than that he hated car rides and Gwen kept kicking the back of Danny's seat. The joys of siblinghood.

"Are we there yet?" Gwen asked for the 20th time in the past hour.

"Gwen, if you keep asking this, I will throw you out that window without hesitation." Snapped Ella from the driver's seat, brushing back a strand of her choppy, electric-blue colored, hair. She had been up for the past 18 hours and annoying drive with her siblings was the last thing she wanted. Furthermore, she hated moving back to Heatherfield. Besides a job at the local junkyard, she never managed to keep a position there; it also didn't help that they were moving back to another dinky, rundown, house with the added bonus of having to house their uncle Roger. With Roger, there was no true form of tolerating him; when he was sober, he was a creep that attempted to flirt with any female in sight and, when drunk, would lay around like a rock. The only excuse the old kook had was that he was pushing 80 and wanted to enjoy the twilight years of his life.

"Hey Danny," Snapped Ella while using the review mirror to look in the back at her sibling. "Remember, Tony, Sydney, Rodney, and Kevin are coming tomorrow at 3:00 pm when your school lets out with all our things. I'll need you home by then to help with the unpacking and keeping an eye on Janet. I know Irma is going to want to take you to all sorts of places in Heatherfield, but I need you home ASAP. Got it?"

"Yes, Ella." Replied Danny while packing away her Walkman. Now her hair was even shorter than before and was now sporting a pixie-cut, which gave her even more of a boyish look than she already had. "Is there anything you want me to pick up on my way home?"

"Are you deaf? I said come home right away." Replied Ella, her annoyance and fatigue sounding in her voice and her amber-brown eyes looking like she wants to throw everyone out of the bus.

"Oh, common Ella." Mike sounded from the back of the bus. Mike was a tall, blond, man, built like a brick shed, and friendly to the point of appearing slow. "We ain't got any food at the house. Danny can pick-up a few things." He was keeping Katja on his lap and was petting the old bobcat as though it were a kitten.

"She can pick me up a few cigars." Added Roger, finally waking up from another hangover.

"And Jack and I want some ice-pops!" shouted Gwen from her seat behind Danny.

"We ain't got the cash for cigars, it is too cold for ice-pops, and we got bread and milk in the cold-box. We will be fine until Tony and the others get to us tomorrow. With the house we got, we are gonna need all the hands we can get." Replied Ella through grinding teeth. This happened all the time; she would make plans, one of her siblings would make a suggestion, and then she would have to play the role of the party pooper because they couldn't do it.

"Guys, Ella is right. We will survive until tomorrow evening and we will have a lot of work ahead of us. Plus, I don't remember where all the stores are, so I doubt I would be able to find anything decent by the time our brothers arrive. I just wanted to have something to say." Replied Danny and slouched deeper into her seat. She knew what can of worms she had opened and regretted it.

After another five hours in Heatherfield winter traffic, the small family finally reached their new home. To say Danny was crushed at the sight of the dinky rowhouse would have been an understatement. They lived in the area for lower-income families, the front of the house was overgrown by vines, the roof looked like it was leaky, the wooden floor of the front porch was splitting, and the pain of the front door was chipping. Even the porch swing looked like it was giving up on life. The inside of the building wasn't much better. The carpet floor was worn thin in some areas, use to be an off-white but now looked yellow. The wood paneling sported a thick layer of dust, smoking grime, and smelled as though someone once pissed on the wall. The kitchen, which was open to the living room and entryway, was covered in dust and grease; a short investigation into the refrigerator revealed that a mouse had died in it. The bathroom was in an equal state of disgustingness. The mirror to the medicine cabinet was cracked, the floor was greasy, the bathtub was caked in lime, the toilet sported a mysterious black rim just above the water line, the sink was rusty, and of the three lightbulbs above the sink, only one worked. This was more than just a 'fixer-upper', this was Satan's dumpster on Earth. At least the heater was working.