Chapter Text
Chapter 1 - A Change of Scenery
I trudged up the elongated driveway, hearing it crunch under the drooping soles of my boots, my heart drooped with it, every. I felt drained, as if a shred of my heart were no longer there, leaving a graze that would never heal.
I looked to my brother and recognised the same wretched distress replicated in his eyes that I felt in my chest. I eventually became victim to my own devastation and my gut ached with the burning loss. I stepped up onto the stone stairs and instantaneously a shiver trickled down my back like a drop of cold water. We were impatiently ushered through an immense door into a grand annette, a chandelier loomed above me and my brother’s heads. I was firmly encouraged up the staircase tripping over every step as I was led to a door, paint peeling and chipping, that was addressed as my brother and I’s dorm.
I walked through a doorway and it was like I entered a different world as I left the plush grand hall and entered a dark dormitory; the corners of the bedside table had worn away and the carpet had stains distributed across it, various holes were pummeled through the wall, presumably by generations of tantruming orphans all of which like me and my brother were brought in oh so kindly off the streets by rich adults who had never witnessed the cruelty that death can bring and the loss of hope that only watching your mother die can cause.
I stepped over the rug stained with desolation and abandonment before regretfully perching on the furthest of the two beds. I lay for hours unmotivated by any prying matrons or pleas of my brother, my thoughts spiralled, my heart pummelled against my chest and every cell in my body stirred with sorrowful distress. After many sleepless hours spent reliving the heartbreaking last hours of my mother, I was brought out of my conscious nightmare to a violent rapping at our door as a timetable slipped beneath.