Strange things were happening in Cardiff.
The mid-April weather had reached a new all-time high, surpassing any temperature that had been recorded in the summer months of the past 50 years. Even though it was well past mid-day, the scorching hot sun beat down on the pavement relentlessly as a girl donning a generic school uniform hurried down the street. Shoes in hand, the girl's bare feet padded against the warm ground with each bounding leap she took.
"Ugh! This bloody heat!" the girl groaned, pulling her mop of golden blonde hair off her neck.
The messy bun it now resided in bounced as she turned the last corner, her destination now in sight: Saint Mildred's Home for Orphaned Girls. Not much was known about the orphanage, other than that it was large, old, and had once been a warehouse used for storing machinery during the war. The outside nearly looked the same as it did back then aside from the vibrant green vines now swirling up the faded brick exterior, giving the building a mystical look that stuck out amongst the more modernized businesses of Cardiff. The owner, Madame Sofie, had tried to liven the historic building up with a flower bed, but even the homely yellow of tulips and familiar rose petal fragrance couldn't rid the impending doom the girl felt as she creaked open the mahogany door of her prison.
"Miss Aurora!"
The shrill voice of Madame Sofie pierced through the girl's eardrums nearly the second she stepped over the threshold. Madame Sofie was a middle-aged woman, about 47, who had recently taken over the orphanage and had since made it her personal goal to make Aurora's life as miserable as possible. As if being abandoned by her mother and growing up never knowing her father wasn't enough, Aurora was now pestered with a strict daily schedule that required almost all of her time outside of school to be spent cooped up in the stuffy warehouse under the scornful eye of her caretaker.
"Mind telling me where you have been?" Madame Sofie asked, the pointed toe of her heels tapping against the hardwood flooring. The sound echoed back from the old warehouse walls, making Madame Sofie seem even more intimidating.
Aurora dug her heels into the welcoming mat and held herself against Madam Sofie's glower. The blonde teen was sure that beneath the unusually tinted sunglasses adorning Madame Sofie's face were two beady, black eyes ablaze with fury; but there was no way Aurora was going to let the old hag beat her down again.
"I was at the library," the teen spat. "I needed to stay out of this hell hole for a while longer."
Madame Sofie's hands flew to her pointy little hips.
"We do not use that sort of language, young lady." She growled. "But I'll be kind enough to let you off with a warning this time. You've already missed supper, so you can go on to bed feeling hungry."
Aurora knew she'd gotten off easy this time; usually her caretaker would have punished her with a few good lashings on the bottom, and Aurora certainly wasn't going to stick around long enough for the atrocious woman to change her mind. She bounded up the staircase, taking two steps at a time to ensure that she got away from Madame Sofie as quickly as possible.
Aurora's bare feet padded against worn carpeting as she trudged down the upstairs corridor that lead towards her room. Suddenly, she was stopped dead in her tracks by a strange and low metallic humming. The humming grew closer and closer, louder and louder until finally it disappeared without a trace of explanation, leaving Aurora standing dumbfounded between the two walls of faded floral wallpaper. Though Aurora knew the sound was unlike anything she had ever heard before, yet a sense of familiarity tugged at the back of her mind. She stood rooted to the floor, mulling over any possible explanation for the bizarre noise's origin. Maybe it had come from the furnace downstairs, she pondered? No, the humming had seemed to zoom right over her head, and the furnace was located below her. Plus, the ripple she'd heard had sounded so supernatural…alien like, even. Aurora's mind buzzed with a frenzy of queries, each coming up short until finally giving up. Whatever the sound was, it was gone now, leaving the corridor in a spookily dead silence.
"Rory? Y'all right?"
The silence was shattered by a tiny, childlike voice that startled Aurora so much she jumped, nearly knocking over one of the many antique crystal vases that lined the hallway (another one of Madame Sofie's failed attempts at modernizing the tasteless little orphanage).
"Relax, it's just me." the voice sighed, and Aurora turned around to see that it belonged to a girl around her own age, with a firey red mane of hair and a name that escaped Aurora's already spinning mind.
"I'm alright." Aurora responded, mustering up a nearly-convincing smile.
The girl, Rosalind she recalled, gave Aurora a reassuring beam and set off skipping down the corridor. How anyone could remain so chipper in a place like Saint Mildred's was beyond Aurora's comprehension.
Trying to keep her mind from returning back to the bizarre noise, Aurora's mind wandered in an attempt to entertain itself. She imagined walking down the corridor backwards, hopping on one leg, even blindfolded. It wasn't like Aurora was dependent on sight to find her way; she knew the course to that very last room on the left by heart. After all, she'd only spent all 15 years of her life confined to it. A grimace spread to Aurora's lips as she reached out for the tarnished doorknob.
As soon as the door creaked open, Aurora sensed something was off-kilter. The room was so small that it was nearly impossible to keep tidy but her room had never been in the chaotic disarray it was now.
Clobber was tossed all across the room haphazardly, covering every inch of the pale yellow carpeting. The chipping white desk that sat in the corner had been ripped of its drawers, their contents scattered across the bed that lay beside it. The film advertisements, paintings, and band posters Aurora had spent so many hours tacking up had been stripped down, exposing the faded and tearing purple wall paper beneath.
"What the…?" Aurora gasped, stepping into the war zone that had once been her bedroom.
As Aurora further inspected the chaos, she noticed that her one and only window had been left wide open, something she never did. It was then that she knew it was an outside job. Someone had obviously trashed the place, but the thing puzzling her was who? And more importantly, why? What did she have that someone so desperately needed that they would climb through a second story window for?
Thankfully nothing seemed to be missing, but that hardly offered comfort to the shaken teen. With a sigh Aurora knelt beside a pile of scattered papers and began to stack them back into order, still puzzled.
With her mind swirling around possible answers, Aurora lost track of time and worked well past the sunset. The faint luminescence of moonlight seeping through her window and impending threat of curfew checks was the only thing to cease her cleaning frenzy. Aurora tossed the last dirty shirt into her hamper and climbed into bed, her brain thankful for a rest.
She'd spent most of the past few hours of cleaning still agonizing over who could have done this and why, but no real explanation had presented itself. Aurora had, however, decided against reporting the incident to Madame Sofie. The closest thing to an answer she'd acquired was that it was all a poorly executed prank pulled on her by the other girls in the orphanage, and Aurora nearly chuckled as she envisioned Madame Sofie's expression if Aurora were to share her theory with the stern caretaker.
"Your untidiness is hardly justification for blaming these perfectly innocent girls, Miss Aurora. No supper for a week!" Aurora mocked in Madame Sofie's shrill shriek.
The theory made sense; Aurora preferred to keep her nose buried in a sketchpad rather than discuss the newest celebrity gossip or where one could purchase a pair of Louboutin shoes for half-price, which had caused her to never quite form a bond with any of the orphanage's other prisoners. She was often the butt of their disapproving gossip and whispers and Aurora was sure they would it just hilarious to destroy the "freak's bedroom.
Deciding it would do her no good to ponder on such depressing matters, Aurora flicked off her lamp and lay back beneath the sheets. Almost the moment her head made contact with the pillow, Aurora's eyes fluttered shut and she was whisked away into unconsciousness.