Tori woke to the stench of strong coffee and cigarettes.
Stretching her arms languidly above her head, she opened her eyes and saw the peeling striped wallpaper of the room her brother and her shared. She'd fallen asleep! She shot up and quickly glanced at Tylar's bed only to see him dozing peacefully. Standing, she smoothed the wavy black hair off his forehead and leaned over to kiss it softly, careful not to wake him.
Tori reluctantly shuffled out of their room, into the hallway and then the bathroom, grungy orange carpet soft between her toes. She could hear her father stumbling around the kitchen for a clean coffee cup. He must be too hung over to even process his usual rantings about this annual date yet.
Today was her brother's birthday and the anniversary of her mother's death. Her father hadn't been the same since she'd died. Not nearly.
Looking in the bathroom mirror she took in her sleep deprived form. Coppery red hair was limp and tangled around her pale face. Her green eyes stood out hollowly inside purple sockets from delicate features.
Dad said she didn't look at all like her sunny haired mother anymore and she couldn't help but agree. Though the fading bruise he'd given her on her cheek probably didn't help. Maybe a shower would.
The shower water burned the stiff muscles of her shoulders pleasurably. At least there wasn't any school today, she couldn't chance leaving Tylar with their father. Not even for the hour between when high school and elementary began.
With a regretful sigh Tori turned off the water and stepped onto the tiled floor. Patting herself dry and wrapping the towel around herself, Tori made her way back to their room. She searched the drawers of her battered dresser and threw on a pair of her trusty torn jeans, a black tee with a ineligible log on it, her favorite dark blue hoody and her well worn Tasmanian devil slippers. She headed to the kitchen resigned to the fact that she had to help her father before he put another hole in the poor cupboards.
She choked a little on the cigarette smoke wafting out of the kitchen. Around the corner she saw her father, Gary Manly, crouched down and blearily searching inside their broken oven for a coffee cup.
"Where the hell do you keep putting all the damned cups?!" he demanded gruffly, his grey eyes blood shot.
She opened the cupboard above the coffee maker and silently pulled out his chipped old Seattle coffee cup. Her mother had bought it for him in the coffee shop where they first met sixteen years ago. Gary was originally from Nebraska and had been traveling around the country trying to find himself. She'd offered it, and a smile, to him as a token from the state of Washington. He'd fallen in love.
It seemed like everything in this house had some sort of story that reminded her father of his maddening sadness, but still he refused to move. She'd heard some story like the one of this little white cup at least weekly since her mother's funeral.
"Ya know yer mother gave that cup to me?" he said with rare tenderness, his body with her but what was left of his mind in that coffee shop. "She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever met, yer mother, and she married me, of all people." And then he was back entirely in the kitchen, "...then that little bastard took her from me! Where'd you stash him this year? Don't think you can keep him from his birthday present, girl..."
There was madness in his eyes.
She let the cup tumble from her fingers to the unforgiving floor and gazed into his outraged, unforgiving face.
"STUPID GIRL!" his fist landed on her lip, splitting it and knocking her to the ground with the remnants of his beloved cup. His foot dug into her ribs, "Useless SHIT!"
Tori curled up, protecting herself best she could. Her fathers foot connected with her head, stunning her. He struck her again and again in the ribs, knocking her into the hallway head first. Struggling to her feet, Tori rushed to escape into the nearest room. He struck her one last time, exploding pain on her left cheek before she forced the door closed.
Collapsing against the door, Tori realized she was sobbing. her keening cries making her ribs contract and tearing a shriek from her. Half managing to silence her pained whimpers, she listened.
Crashes came from the kitchen as the contents of the cupboards shattered on the ground. Now he wouldn't have any cup for his precious coffee tomorrow. She drew strange a strange strength from her father's impending inconvenience.
Carefully, Tori assessed her wounds, starting with her face. She ran her trembling fingers along her face, bruise upon bruise, she felt the swelling on her left cheek already starting and the wetness of blood from her lip running down her chin.
Her eye brow ring was still intact at least, she mused. That was one indulgence she certainly regretted, she did not want her eyebrow ripped off any time soon.
She glided her fingers tenderly over her ribs. Ow. Well, on the bright side none seemed to be broken. Inhaling sharply, Tori sat up, her ribs aching and head pounding, and suddenly realized she was in her parents room.
The front door slammed as her father stormed out at last, probably off to the liquor store to buy something to numb his frayed nerves.
The furniture in the forget-me-not blue room was covered in eleven years worth of dust, the laced curtains her mother had so lovingly hung yellowed with age. Painstakingly slow, Tori crawled over and leaned against the musty bed. She reverently picked up the picture frame from the night stand.
Wiping dust from it carefully, happy grey eyes stared back at her, his right hand grasping 5 year old Tori's hand gently. Red gold curls blown wild in the wind matched her mothers longer mane, her smaller hand clutching her's.
They'd been happy once, she remembered wistfully, holding her sleeve to her bleeding lip. But without his wife Gary had fallen almost completely apart, barely sustained by his terrifying hatred.
Tori couldn't find it in herself to despise Tylar like her father did, not in the least. Instead she weathered their loss by dedicating herself to protecting her baby brother from their father's grief fueled violence.
But she did hate her father, that she knew for certain. She couldn't even recall memories of her mother without thinking about what he'd become. Tori'd almost forgotten what she had looked like until she'd seen this picture.
With a wail muffled by her tightly closed lips, Tori stood up and limped to the closet. She remembered that her mother kept some photo albums in her special wooden box, which she usually stored there.
She considered fetching Tylar as she scrounged around in the dark closet. On one hand he would love to see some of these pictures of her mother. On the other seeing any pictures of her pregnant with him would remind him of his "part" in her death.
No, she decided. He didn't need any more guilt and he definitely shouldn't see her like this – he seemed to have managed to sleep through it all, which was exactly why she'd picked a fight while he was still asleep, else wise he would've gotten hurt in some misguided attempt to protect her. Plus, it also felt a bit private, like it was one part of her that was entirely hers. Ah! There it was, in the very back. Her fingers brushed it, then something cold and wet.
What could that be? Mold? It felt more like... like snow! Suddenly she felt herself wrenched forward into a freezing bank of wetness. Gasping from the shocking cold, Tori scrambled to her feet, her ribs protesting sharply.
What the – She was in a fucking forest! There were pine trees blocking every pathway but one, which looked practically like a road it was so groomed. Panicking, Tori spun around to get back to the traitorous closet and found nothing behind her but more trees and the framed picture of her mother on the snowy forest floor.
She must have been hit harder than she'd thought. She needed to snap out of it, to get back to Tylar. Tylar! He was alone, he'd be alone when her father came home from the store!
Her breaths came in short gasps, her hysteria overpowering her in her injured state. Then, over her gasps, she heard a whisper caress her, "Walk daughter of Eve, follow the path Alan has laid out before you..."
She whipped her head in the direction it seemed the sound had come from, "Who are you? Where'd you go?!" She pleaded, sounding entirely unlike her usual self.
"What path? Who's Aslan? Answer me!" She demanded, that was a bit better. No one answered her but a freakishly powerful gust of wind blasted her forward impatiently. "Damn it! FINE!" Tori grumbled, then best down to pick up her picture and began trudging along the path.
What she would find, she had no clue. But Tori knew that she would destroy anything and anyone who attempted to interfere with her getting home to the only real family she had left.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: So in my story Peter is 17, Susan is 16, Edmund is 14, Lucy and James are 12, and Tori is 15. Yeah. :)