Fallen (Fallen 1)

Prologue

The dark room surrounded me. Water dripped nearby. I began to shake. It was so cold and I was so terribly scared. How much more could I go through?

How much I wished I knew where I was. Some sign of life. A car horn. A voice. Anything would be better than this silence and her voice, her laugh.

The smells were awful. The smell of blood, of lost life. Of mold and rotten wood.

Bugs scuttled by me. Wherever I was it was an old building. Maybe a house? A shed?

I replayed the last months in my head. Every touch, every kiss, so treasured now. How I wished to see his face one last time before she killed me. But I can’t escape her.

I wished so much now that we hadn’t fought. That my once knight in shining armor would come save me. But he wasn’t and I was going to die here. Never seeing him again. I held onto to those precious memories. They’d keep me strong if nothing else did.

I could hear her coming.

This is the end, I thought.

Chapter One: Moving

I find it funny how forever doesn’t really mean forever.

When you’re young your parents always tell you that they’re going to be together forever. But somehow they always seem to leave out the part about how forever doesn’t last. I thought my parent’s marriage was perfect. Well, maybe not perfect. But good.

Apparently, I was wrong. Very, wrong.

My whole life has been torn apart simply because my dad met someone else. How is that fair?

My mom and I are moving to Rome. My mom’s part Italian although she’s never been there. She calls it a new start.

I call it crap.

She just wants to be away from my dad. I do too but a whole new country seems a bit drastic to me. But I have to admit Rome does seem to have some kind of pull over me.

A shudder runs through my body but I refuse to shed a tear. I will not let my dad make me cry. He’s not worth it.

I sat down on my floor and started packing the final box of my stuff. My childhood room is completely bare and it scares me. We’ve lived in this house since I was born. I grew up here and thought I would never have to leave. Never have to leave this house and never have to leave California. But I was wrong. Just like I was wrong about so many other things.

I felt like I was no longer in control of my own destiny and that scared me more than anything.

I folded the flaps over the box and stuck the tape on.

“Goodbye life,” I sighed to myself.

I picked up the box and carried it downstairs and put it with the many other boxes that held the precious moments of my ruined life.

I looked around trying desperately to memorize everything about my childhood home before I had to leave. The old worn wood floors, the crack in the ceiling, the lines marking mine and my brothers’ growth over the years, the couch I threw up on when I was eight. Every part of this house holds a memory. Some good. Some bad. But now that my parents are getting a divorce every memory is tinged with blackness.

“Kylie, what are you looking at?” asked my mom sitting down a box and blowing her bangs out of her face.

“Nothing,” I said averting my eyes away from the nail polish stain on the coffee table.

“I have a couple more boxes to pack so while I’m doing that can you put these in the car?”

“Yeah, I can do that,” I said picking up one of the boxes.

“Thanks,” she said turning around and going upstairs. I saw her tuck some stray pieces of her dark brown bob behind her ear. She used to have long hair but with the divorce came a whole new hairstyle and look. She was different and honestly I was too. Different could be good or it could be bad. I guess we would just have to wait to find out which it would be.

I stacked two boxes on top of each other and carried them out to the car. The trunk of my mom’s Range Rover was already open and I squeezed the boxes into the only empty space I could find.

I was starting to break out in a sweat with all this heavy lifting. I headed back inside and found three more boxes added to the ever increasing pile. I sighed and picked up a couple more.

“Mom!” I yelled up the steps.

“Yeah?” she asked appearing at the top of the steps, her normally happy smile gone, replaced by a grim line.

“Are you sure that this is all going to fit in the car?”

“I certainly hope so,” she said heading back to the master bedroom. Oh, well.

I pushed the door open with my arm to go back outside just as the bottom on the box I was holding collapsed.

“Shit,” I said looking down at the broken glass. “Oh, shit,” I added seeing what had been broken.

My mom and dad’s wedding china. She was going to kill me.

Right on queue she came down the steps.