What Lies Beneath

Chapter Two: Karen

Every story has its beginning. Not all are happy. In fact, most are sad. The story of Karen is one of the saddest stories to tell. When she was a young girl she lived in a beautiful home. She was constantly surrounded by the sound of her younger sibling's laughter.

You see she was the oldest of seven. Her mother was a very attractive woman, or at least that's what her father always told her.

Karen's father was the owner of a business called Michaelson's. It wasn't a very large company, but it was well known around their small town. He was employed to do whatever it was that the townspeople needed. He would often call himself a glorified handyman.

Karen had a happy childhood and was going to have a decently happy life. However, on the night of her fourteenth birthday, fate intervened.

In the middle of the night she awoke to the smell of smoke and the screams of her younger brothers and sisters. Her eyes burned from the smoke that had entered her room from the crack underneath her door while she had slept. She could barely hear her father's deep voice over the screams. He was yelling for everyone to get out of the house.

She fought every instinct within herself to go and make sure that the rest of her family made it out. She ran to her window and did exactly as her father had instructed them to do. She pushed up on the old wooden frame, but it wouldn't budge. Her lungs, now filled with smoke, screamed for oxygen. Against her better judgment she drew in a deep breath of smoke-filled air. Her body quickly rejected the tainted air and forced her into a coughing fit that pushed her to the floor.

She knew that she was running out of time, but she couldn't get the window open. Not remembering that it had been painted shut two years ago after someone had tried to break in.

Her head began to feel heavy and her vision was going dark, but she knew that she had to keep fighting to get out. She pushed her smoke infested body off the floor and pounded on the glass that filled the wooden frame. The window, now covered in soot, shattered against her small fists.

Surprised by the effortless force it took to break the glass, Karen stood frozen for a moment or two. On the other side of the door her father carried the two youngest children towards the living room. He had tried to get to the rest of the rooms, but they were all blocked by the high flames that had sprung to life sometime that night.

The two children buried their small heads into their father's shirt as he pushed his way to the door. Just as he is about to reach for the handle the house moaned as if it was in pain. The man paused and looked up just in time to watch the second floor come crashing down onto his and his children's heads. They did not survive.

Back in the room where Karen stood in front of the now shattered window, she could hear sirens as they rushed towards the burning home. She prayed that they would get there in time to save her family and then she grabbed the window frame and pushed herself out of the house.