Chapter 1:
"Hey Annie can you get the door?"
Marianne looks around, Seeking the location of the voice, once she spots her mother standing in the far corner of the room she smiles, nods, and walks with increasing speed over to the front door. In the doorway is a tall man with chocolate brown hair and a large smile.
"Brother!" Marianne shrieks, and jumps up into her older siblings arms. "What are you doing here?!"
Replying the man says Simply "What kind of brother would I be if I couldn't show up for my little sisters ninth birthday?"
Marianne looks back her mouth wide with exaggerated shock as she remembers. 'It's my birthday! I totally forgot!" She grins a smile so wide it hurts her cheeks and hopped out of the brunettes hold.
"Mother!" "Its my birthday today!"
"How could you forget deary? It only happens once a year!" Her mother said in playful exasperation.
Marianne shrugs beaming still and runs down the hallway joy filled. She opens a mahogany door to her right and enters the dim room. Her pace slows and before she comes to a stop in front of a blank desk with a single picture in a frame. She sits on the ground facing the picture and frowns slightly. "Father?" "It's my birthday today. I'm turning nine, that means next year my age will be double digits. I wonder how different it will be a year from now... if things will get even more complicated." The girl mused. She then looks at the picture again and thinks 'I wish you were here still so mother wouldn't be so sad...'
" I love you. Even though I don't remember you very well."
"Tell the Angels in heaven or the Demons in hell, hello for me, whichever you are in."
The cake. This was the very last part of the celebration for the end of the day and therefore Marianne's anniversary of birth. It was almost completely done and was about to be pulled out by the loving care-free mother of three live children and five others who had died.
"Mommy? Can we have it chocolate flavored?" An innocent juvenile voice asked as the Marianne looked towards the oven with a hazy desire filled gaze, wishing, that she could just eat it all by herself.
"Honey must I remind you? It IS chocolate. And if it wasn't what would I do? It is already in the oven!" The child's mother teased.
The child said nothing, lost in her own thoughts and wondering why she felt so filled with unease. Something...something was wrong. She looked out the window into the bushes. Yes. Yes it was something out there...
"Mother get down."
"W-what?"
"GET DOWN NOW!" The young child who, mind you, knew much much more than she really should, screeched. Her bell like voice was like a signal to those hiding outside. They pulled their guns out, prepared to kill.
*BANG!
The oven shattered flinging glass and half-cooked cake batter towards the unsuspecting mother, she glanced down and saw the bullet hole was less than an inch from their supposed target. That was all the time she had to do when yet another bullet pierced the outer-laying shell of the head going through soft white tissue and going out through the other end. Blood. Blood covered the kitchen counters, utensils, what remained of the crushed oven, and lastly the poor child of the now deceased woman who had cared for the young brunette since birth. The girl stared. In utter incompetence, millions of emotions crushing her all at the same time.
"Oh." She breathed. The word, that wasn't even a word, a noise of little significance. Pounds of melancholy pressed themselves upon her and she stared her eyes watering yet not providing enough liquid to make the droplets climb out of her eyes... it hurt. There was stinging. On her hand. One of the fingers... was shot off. Her pinky. She looked out the window, the men smiled as if they were some long lost friends who had come to give another gift for her ninth birth-day.