Chapter 1 -
Aurora was standing behind the bar, in the local Starbucks, in her hometown Cokeworth. Dressed in her appropriate Starbucks uniform, a black short-sleeved, button-up t-shirt, black tights and a black fold skirt with black socks and black five centimeter heels.
She tucked away a strand of her dirty blonde hair, that had disentangled itself from the sloppy bun on her head due to all the walking around with orders and dodging customers, and ticked in the order of an obese man wearing a black suit, which was probably a size or two to small, so that the white shirt he was wearing and which was tucked in his pants was visible, making it even more visible that the man was obese.
The man paid with a crumpled five pound note, and shuffled over to the other end of the bar with his receipt and waited for Aurora's co-worker Irissa to prepare his order. The thought of the man's identity crossed Aurora's mind for a few seconds, I mean there weren't often people here whose identity Aurora didn't know. After all, Aurora knew all of the locals if not by name at least by face.
There wasn't much time to ponder this thought though because the next in line was quick to snap at Aurora for not directly asking what she wanted to order, and Aurora had to fight the urge to sigh out loud. Today was not her lucky day, her mind had wandered of off work a few times, and she'd been caught doing so by her boss several times, this was not fortunate because she really needed this job.
Her adoptive parents were nice and kind, and they paid for her school, gave her food and had given her a room. They did however not see that she needed clothes that actually fit her. They bought the clothes two sizes too big, so that if they didn't fit her, which they never did, they could give them to their real daughter. Therefore Aurora had to work for money if she wanted clothes.
As Aurora wrote down the customer's order, and called up the total sum. Her eyes wandered to the Starbucks clock hanging on the dark green walls of the café, five twenty-nine p.m. Aurora almost jumped of glee as she realized her shift was over in one minute.
As she took the money from the customer on the opposite side of the bar, and handed the customer his receipt, the money made a jingly sound as she put it into the cash register, the smell of sweaty hands wafted out of the cash register, giving Aurora that nauseating feeling, which someone got just before they puked. Her eyes went back up to look at the next customer only to see, that the queue was in existent.
She heard the honk of a horn from outside the café and saw a grey Volkswagen parked on one of the parking spots just in front of the small shop. The car window rolled down to reveal a really blonde girl, with her lips painted dark sexy red with a lipstick, her lashes coated thick in both lengthening and volume giving mascara and her eyes lined black with eyeliner. Her skin was porcelain white, probably due to the amount of layers of powder and foundation covering her face.
The living porcelain doll, was the 19 year-old, miss Popularity at the local school with the name of Cokeworth High, at which she was in her Senior Year, with the name of Pamela Frederickson.
Pamela Frederickson was the daughter of Mrs. Johanna Frederickson and Mr. Peter Frederickson, the kind and wealthy family that had adopted 15 year-old Aurora Willms into their family. A normal 15 year-old orphan would have been put in a foster family, but Aurora was a special incident, she remembered nothing of the time before her 14th birthday, no memory of anything that happened before July 24th 1974.
Pamela had had an extremely heated up decision about taking Aurora in, because as you may or may not know, Pamela was an only child, a very spoiled only child, whom had everything she wanted to have and more. Then Aurora had been taken in and Pamela had had to give one of her rooms two Aurora, the smallest one mind you. So instead of pouting Pamela had decided to make Aurora's life as difficult as possible by making the whole student body of Cokeworth High to see Aurora as an freak, not that that was a hard task. Aurora got into trouble for quite many things, always doing inexplicable things.
The horn of the Volkswagen honked again and Aurora around for Hayley, one of her other co-workers and classmates, and as Hayley nodded, Aurora bent down to grab her rucksack with her stuff, before walking hastily towards the end of the bar, and past it. She went between the tables in the small café and out through the door, into the chilly air of an early summer day in Britain.
Her black heels, clicked on the pavement as she hurriedly made her way towards the car. She walked out on the road and to the passenger seat of the grey car, and pulled the door open, got in quickly and set the rucksack on her lap.
"Be sure to tell my mother how kind I was to drive you home today." Pamela said with a sour tone in her voice, a tone which displayed how much she disliked Aurora.
Aurora's mind was processing the words Pamela had spoken and why she had spoken them. She was searching for any sign of the sarcasm which Pamela had used towards her the whole school year, not that she'd used sarcasm often, Pamela hadn't uttered a word towards the not popular Freshman except when totally necessary.
Then the meaning of the sentence clicked for Aurora. Pamela had begged her parents to go to a party on the Sunday next week, but her parents had been giving her quite a lot of arguments against, especially the one, that they'd probably be bullying someone if they got to drunk, so to make this argument invalid Pamela was being extra nice to everyone.
She'd even taken the trash out daily for the past week, something that had surprised both Johanna and Peter, since Aurora was usually the one who did most of the chores at home, only because it felt like she was paying for the house and the food because of doing so.
Aurora didn't know anything about her parents except that their surname was Willms, and that they were dead. Aurora didn't feel the need to learn who her parents were; it wasn't like she could see them again. There was only one thing she had that had any relation to her parents, it was a necklace, with a key, her name Aurora Grace Willms and an oval shaped piece of metal with the phrase Vault 3094 griffed in it. Aurora didn't know what it was.
Aurora almost smacked herself into the car window due to Pamela turning sharply and crossing onto the pavement outside their house, and into the right side of the two car garage that belonged to the house. The car then came to a stop, just long enough for Aurora to get out of the car, before Pamela drove back out onto the street and raced off, probably to her friend's house for a session of girl talk and gossip, followed by a move with popcorn and soda.
The garage was full of stuff that was no longer in use, there was a large red sofa in the corner, on which Aurora sometimes came to lounge and read books from school, as far away as possible from Pamela, Johanna and Peter. They might be kind people, but they always treated her with loads of pity for having lost her parents.
The door connecting the garage and the kitchen was locked. Aurora's delicate hand slipped into the side pocket of her back, and came back out holding a key chain with a tiny little teddy bear, and attached to said key chain wear three keys. All the same size and looked extremely similar. Aurora tried the key furthest to the left first; it went into the lock but Aurora failed to be able to turn it. She pulled it back out with an annoyed sigh, before taking the next key, the middle one, and sticking it in the lock. It went in fully, and turned with ease. Aurora, using her other hand, turned the doorknob and swung the door open.
Aurora walked into the spotless kitchen and closed the door behind her. As she walked through the kitchen, her black heels made a clicking sound, whenever they were put down on the black and white kitchen tiles, which in Aurora's opinion did not match the blue kitchen cabinets, or the dark mahogany brown table, with its red satin chairs. To be honest, Aurora wanted to throw up whenever someone mentioned how much style the Fredricksons had, because they actually had none, well at least the grown-ups had none. Pamela, was really good at following the trends from London, lately she was only wearing miniskirts and high stockings, together with almost see through blouses.
Those blouses were as a matter of fact really uncomfortable, and Aurora preferred loose clothes. She was one of the only people on school whom actually liked the school uniform they were obliged to wear. Those navy blue skirts, white blouses, and ties the same color as the skirts, white socks and black heels. Aurora had many times tried to talk to the headmistress that it would be better if the skirts were black, and people could pick their own ties because, to be fair, the navy blue color did not fit many of the people personality. The blue would fit smart people and nerds the most, whilst a yellow color would fit most of the rest, a magenta or deep red would be for the extra-ordinary courageous, and a green would be extremely fit for the 'evil' population of Cokeworth.
As Aurora walked out of the kitchen, she took of her black heels, and picked them up, since she personally thought that walking up stairs with heels on was a death wish. On the way up, she passed all the pictures of the Fredericksons, pictures of their perfect happy little family. Most of the pictures were of Pamela, and her parents, some were of Pamela and her friends, or places they'd gone too. Aurora was only seen on one picture, as a strand of hair that flew in front of the camera just when the picture was taking.
She managed to climb the whole staircase without any incident, and appeared on the second floor of the house, the bedroom floor, as she's nicknamed it when she was much younger. She slowly crept past the bedroom belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Frederickson, from which a loud snoring was heard, most probably belonging to Mr. Frederickson, who was supposedly to be sick from work and in the hospital.
The last door on the second floor hallway was simple, and had the words "Aurora Grace Willms" written on it in elegant blue letters, with glitter on them. The door was opened a tiny bit, showing the bedroom. Aurora walked into the room and looked around.
The walls, with its differently sized and colored stripes, in all the colors of the rainbow, the linoleum floor, with the light brown wood print, with the huge fluffy neon pink carpet stretching over half of the room, covering the space in front of the small bed, with its dark red covers, and neon orange pillow. Aurora put her bag down underneath the white study desk in the corner, which was strewn with notes and books from school. Even some of her literature books that she'd forgotten to put back on the book shelves above her bed.
Aurora inhaled the air in her bedroom, and smiled at the familiar smell of vanilla and roses. The vanilla coming from the aforementioned smelling perfume or air refreshener that Mrs. Frederickson always sprayed in this room, and the roses due to the fact that there were a few of them in a vase by the window, they're red color standing out in front of the white curtains, with heart in a soft baby pink.
Since the clothes she wore for her shift at Starbucks were terribly dirty, stained with coffee, cappuccino and all other beverages you might get at Starbucks, taking a shower in the bathroom down the hall and changing clothes appealed to be a good choice. She put down the shoes on the bottom of the wardrobe which stood beside the window, and took out a pair of fluffy pink hand me down slippers, that she'd gotten in her last load of clothes from Pamela, with the message that they'd been 'so last month'.
She grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a black singlet plus a white cut of t-shirt without shoulder and a pocket on her left breast. With these clothes draped on her arm, she silently walked back down the hallway to the bathroom.
/-.-\/-.-\/-.-\
The hot water had scalded Aurora's skin, leaving it looking red and sunburnt. Aurora winced several times as the tank top rubbed slightly against her skin, as she moved down the stairs and into the neat and tidy living room. Her arms were goose-bumped due to the fact that the temperature of the air was much lower than the temperature of the water she had showered with.
Her feet were tucked warmly in the pink slippers, and her legs were covered by the warm sweatpants. She had grabbed her own copy of the Picture of Dorian Gray, a book written by Oscar Wilde which she had to read for the English lesson in three days, and if that wasn't bad enough she had to present a book report in the Monday assembly the same day. So Aurora would probably have to sit curled up on the sofa in the garage all weekend, reading a book written in ancient English.
But for now she would enjoy the fact Mr. Frederickson was sleeping, Pamela was at her friend's house and Mrs. Frederickson was probably doing some grocery shopping. In other words the house was nice and silent for once.
She sighed and almost threw herself down on the comfortable red couch. The couch was facing a burning hearth, and Aurora decided she could read later, and put the book beside her on the couch, and her eyes stared of into the flames.
Somehow the flames reminded her of something, they brought to life a glowing memory in the back of her head. The glowing memory of that day her parents died, she tried pushing the thought forwards into her mind, trying to see the memory clearly to relive it.
Aurora remembered herself, a five foot three tall girl, with eyes in a color green with a few hints of blue, her dirty blonde hair up in a ponytail, wearing those same military print pants that had gotten ruined by a tear a few months ago, and a green tank top, clearly showing her small but well defined curves. She remembered standing in a huge room that looked suspiciously like a great dancing hall, like the ones they had in palaces.
Aurora heard the screams she had heard that night. Two screams, most probably her parents getting killed.
This was as much as she usually remembered, however instead of turning black like it usually did, the memory went on, two people, shadows or creatures in long flowing black robes with masks shaped as skulls, were cornering her in the corner of the huge ball room.
Aurora almost jumped three feet in the air as she heard a car door slam shut outside. She was both relieved and disappointed at the noise, relieved because now she wouldn't have to remember what happened that night, and disappointed because she wasn't much closer to finding out what happened that night.
(Author's Note: Alright, what do you think of this?
This was an introduction type chapter, to give you some background information. It will really start in the next chapter. I also think that the next chapter probably will NOT be this long.)
THIS STORY IS NOT BETA'D. So if you want to beta this story I would appreciate that very much, please PM me.