Disclaimer: I own nothing but these words in this order.

Rated M for language and mature themes.

xx

Slowly, my eyes adjust, but it takes me a while to process what they actually see. The light is strange in here; it warps the room creating an almost fisheye-like effect. All I can see is black and white, though the walls are a perfect grey. I try to imagine what their real colour is, but for some reason I can't quite place it. Perhaps it isn't an illusion; perhaps this is their real colour – this lonely shade of grey. It's oddly fitting.

My eyes are drawn to a black chest of drawers that rests carefully against the grey. As I look closer the light tricks my eyes, making odd, mangled shapes appear on the top of the chest. I blink. It's not a trick.

My hand twitches in anticipation as my arm slowly rises of its own accord. I reach out to the first one, my eyes adjusting yet again, and I see that its outline is no longer strange but a familiar rectangular shape.

The skin of my fingers makes first contact with the object. They glide easily along its smooth surface, revelling in the bizarre warmth it radiates. I reach the end of the side and tiny spindly shapes drift from the object, dancing in the light. I raise my finger to my eyes to take a closer look. Dust. At least an inch of the stuff covers all of its surfaces.

Carefully I lift it off the chest, and wipe a cautious thumb over the front of the glass. It takes a while but eventually a little colour can be seen through the thick covering. Before I get a chance to wipe the remaining dust away, a soft glitter catches my eye. I let my fingers drift down to the source, aching to feel the soft smooth surface of the wooden frame again.

But it's cold. What my skin encounters is not smooth or soft or warm. No. It's cold. It's hard. It chills me to the bone. One sweep across this surface reveals it- a shiny new silver plaque.

Chillin' Charlie 1994

My fingers begin to shake as they retrace their steps, moving back to the glass cover, itching to remove the dust and reveal what lies under it. They remove the remaining dust in one clean stroke, leaving me with a picture, no longer hidden by years of neglect.

I squint against the new colour: the rich yellow of the sun, the deep blue sky, the fresh green grass – they all but blind me. It's the car that stands out; a safe grey, a familiar sight. Leaning against it is a man from the past, the man in my memory, the man whose name was imprinted below – Chillin' Charlie Swan.

It's from a time I don't remember, couldn't possibly remember. It's a picture from just before I was born. This isn't my Charlie – his smile too bright, his eyes too joyful – no, nothing here is recognizable.

I frown gently at the picture. Why is it here? Of all the people my father has been, why did I find this one? Something on his chest shimmers in the sun. I squint a little; I see the familiar Forks Police Department badge. This picture had certainly gone far into the past, right back to Charlie's first day on the force.

I had lost count of how many times he'd come home late, smelling like cheap coffee, still shuffling through copies of case files and the odd report he'd had to bring home. Charlie had been the best police chief around; there wasn't a lead that wasn't followed, a criminal that wasn't caught, a case that wasn't closed – and even that had its consequences. He loved justice, but God was it rough sometimes. It took just that one case to break him.

I run my fingers over the soft wood of the frame again, trying to imagine the feel of his coat hidden in the grain, the lingering smell of the office in the dust. But there is nothing. This Charlie has been dead for a long time.

I lower his frame back to the chest, another one catching my eye instead. My fingers caress the edge of the next one, longing for the same sense of security the previous one had offered me.

It gives me the opposite. Invisible splinters pierce my skin, dotting my fingers with dark black blood. I drop the frame back onto the chest; the sound of cracking glass fills the air as I wipe the blood on my trousers. I inspect it from afar, afraid to touch it again.

The dust on this frame is considerably less than the first; in fact barely any coats it at all. I peer through the cracked glass, a sizable break in the middle of the picture makes it hard to see, but I know this one all too well.

The glass gives a distorted image of the picture below, but compared to how it used to look, it's almost normal. A woman's face is all that features in it: her eyes huge and penetrating, her smile dangerous and Grinch-like.

As expected the plaque beneath this one is new as well, a polished gold slab stands out against the dry white wood.

Renée Higgenbotham 1994

I sneer at the picture, the vile woman taunting me with unspoken words. Everything about her is wrong, she is wrong. She is nothing to me. She should've been better. She should've made me better.

She should have wanted me to be better.

She used to be a quiet girl, one that would never question anything. Of course she was exactly his type; the one girl that could fade into the background could never fade from his mind. I nearly laugh. How ironic.

A white veil flutters gently behind her head in the breeze. The side of someone's face is caught next to hers, but half is folded away. However quiet she'd seemed she had always liked to be the centre of attention, and who would dare take that away from her on this day? The answer was no one. No one would deny her on her wedding day.

I feel sick looking at her smile; someone like her doesn't deserve to be happy, not when you know you're about to ruin so many lives. Breathing heavily I hurl the frame off the chest, sending it beyond my distorted vision, never to be seen again.

I turn back wearily to the chest; something different waits for me. A small white box sits patiently on the chest, waiting for me to open it. Suddenly everything changes.

The light that had been present just a second ago fades and the overwhelming shadows that used to cloud just the corners of my vision now engulf me, leaving only a shaft of light falling on me and the chest. The box is placed purposely in the middle of the stream, a soft shadow surrounding the base.

I don't want to open it – that I know for sure. My hands move towards it regardless, refusing to listen to me. I plead with them, but I don't know why. What is it about this box that makes me feel like this? Why does it make me want to run and hide?

My fingers easily knock the fragile lid from the box. Whatever is in there hasn't been protected very well. Shaking hands reach it – a weird, disfigured looking thing. Wood sticks out at awkward angles and its uneven sides create an oddly shaped polygon – it looks like a child's first woodwork.

Something in it moves. I gasp in shock. There is no glass on this frame, nothing to protect me from the image that tortures me now. It's unlike the others. This picture is like a movie. It drags along reluctantly, like a scene replayed over and over in slow motion. A silent black and white film.

I watch in horror as the memory flashes before my eyes, clawing at them, burning them. This one is fresh; it's like a gaping wound. I understand the need for a box now. I try to look away but my eyes are transfixed on it. I barely have time to look over their faces, try to understand them, before the bright light explodes in my face once again.

This time the whole room lights up and I finally see where I am. My old room. In my old house. A time from my old life, in Forks. And then the light recedes, my vision almost black, with only a pinpoint of light focused on the bronze plate.

Isabella Marie Swan 2010

And then the shadows finally overpower the light, and everything sinks into darkness.