Pale yellow lights flashed across the thin cold window in front of Ashlynn, her dark blue eyes blankly watching while they blurred into a single line that soon began to lack detail. As the sun descended below the horizon, one by one, each star began to peek out from the thick black blanket that stretched across the sky. Inside, the car was warm with the heater quickly shooting out warm air, but odd enough, she felt as cold as ice. It had been twenty minutes since the woman who had taken care of her for her whole life had pulled out of the driveway of the orphanage. They still had a long way to go.
Ashlynn shifted in the black leather seat that held no warmth for her small thin body, so instead, she pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her bony arms around her shins in an attempt to stay warm, her black sweater doing no justice thus far. For twenty minutes she had ignored the worried glances from the woman she considered her mother, pushed away the attempts of small talk, and hid back inside the jumbled unorganized mess of thoughts. Her small fingers curled around the fabric of her skinny jeans as a vivid memory resurfaced for the fourth time during the car ride, making her briefly close her eyes and let her reminisce in the last moments she shared with her loving brother.
It was a cold December night, one of the coldest that whole month; the roads were slick with thick ice too stubborn to melt, frost coated the thin windows and their warm breaths were visible. Two adolescents held each other in the back of a black Stratus, their attire consisting of the pajamas they wore to bed that night before they were woken up by screaming and yelling. The older boy, Aleksandr, had flat brown hair that hung just above his dark blue eyes, almost identical to his siblings'. He was 3 years older than Ashlynn who was 6 at the time, just a couple of weeks before her birthday.
"Dad, slow down." Aleksandr looked nervously out the window, even through the condensation he could see the trees and the world itself blurring into a single image by how fast their father was accelerating down the main road, not knowing where his intended destination was. His little sister's frame trembled in his arms, reminding him that he had to be a big brother and stay strong for her, which Ashlynn marveled at.
"ShutupAleksandr." His fathers' words were slurred together, giving away the fact that he had been excessively drinking before their little car ride; sour breath reeking of alcohol and trembling red hands with knuckles almost as white as the snow outside that gripped the steering wheel.
Alek barely flinched when his father used his first name, he had grown accustomed to his belittling words, words, that he would not dare utter in front of his mother and his little sister, but his father did not hesitate to. He instead directed his attention to Ashlynn who learned at an early age to never talk back to her father, but she was tired, cold and scared.
"I wanna go home." Her tiny voice held the well-known family stubbornness despite the fact that Alek chastised her, telling her to be quiet. Her pink lips soon shaped into another well-known family gesture, the famous pout that, to Alek's amazement, she had perfected over the years.
"Heat." She demanded, simplifying what she wanted into a single word as she slipped from Aleksandr's grasp around her and leaned over the counsel in between the two front seats, reaching to grab the knob while her teeth chattered.
Even now, to this day, she didn't know what she did wrong; words were passed back and forth and soon, a painful force hit her right cheek, her head colliding with the drivers' seat while her fathers words came rushing at her all at once, his large form twisting around in his seat and yelling at her, his words a garbled mess of letters. Tears gathered up together in her eyes while her brother wrapped his arms around her waist, trying to pull her back as his voice constricted with their fathers', insults were thrown and voices grew higher in an attempt to show the other male who means more business.
Tears rushed down her pale cheeks as she closed her eyes, her small hand raising to caress her stinging red flesh before she felt a warmer hand lay on top of hers. She leaned against that same warm body, finding warmth and comfort before she felt his embrace tighten around her. She opened her glassy blue eyes, her tears leaving behind a salty trail...but that was all forgotten. The pain, the crying, the insults, they all morphed into a complete mess as she stared at a pair of bright white eyes that grew larger and larger by the second, resembling that of a demon, the eyes disappearing for a single moment before her world shattered around her. Her lips parted and a blood curdling scream escaped her mouth as she felt Alek's body on top of her, their mangled bodies being thrown against the back of the front seats while glass shattered all around them.
"Ashlynn!!!" She closed her eyes tightly, waiting for the light to re-enter her world, but it remained a black abyss of pain.
"Ashlynn!" Her eyes snapped open, the worried female voice shaking her from her vivid memory before her gaze lifted to find that same woman standing out in the cold with the door open, a sharp gust of bitter cold air slicing across her skin. She blinked, feeling the heavy look the woman was giving her, causing her to glance away with a pang of guilt while she slowly released the fabric of her clothes, letting her legs down from the seat. Only then did she realize that she was trembling, no, not from the cold...but from the episode she had almost receded back into.
"Come on now, your new family is waiting for you." The woman said softly, a small smile being placed on the her lips, wrinkles forming at the corners and her eyes holding mirth...promise that this family will be the last.
With numbness spreading throughout her body, she stood up and squinted from the dry wind pushing against her, a slender hand on her back guiding her up the brick walkway to a foreign house where a couple and a younger boy with blonde hair stood in the doorway, smiles plastered on their faces and warmth resonating from the open door. She was soon ushered in, greeted with open arms from strangers she had never met in her life.
