Chapter 2: The House of Secrets
Lightning had once been a small girl named Claire, and she had had a family once. Parents. A baby sister. A home. She remembered the house, vaguely. It was white, or grey. Of her sister, she just remembered an adorable bundled topped with the same pink hair that she had always had, which in turn was the same hair their mother had. Her father had been tall, with dark brown hair and a goatee. That was all that she could remember of her life before she had been taken.
At the age of six she had been snatched, and her world was gone. She never knew if her parents looked for her, if she appeared on the news or on milk cartons⦠All she knew was that after she was taken, she lived in a locked cage in a locked room full of locked cages. Suddenly, Claire had been thrust into a nightmarish realm of shouting, crying, beatings⦠And secrets.
At first, all she did was cry, and then as they fed and watered her every day she began to plead. For months she heard no human voices, and suddenly one day they dragged a tanned, vicious girl in and left her in the cage next to Claire's. The girl shouted herself hoarse, calling her capturers the foulest of names, "motherfuckers" and "rat bastards." Then, she had fallen silent for three whole days.
Claire watched the girl with the fiery temperament, and finally she decided to ask her what her name was.
"Fang. And one of these days I'll go back home and bring the hunters, and we'll burn this fuckin' place down, and kill the kidnapping bastards." Claire liked her instantly.
Whenever the men would bring the food, Fang would rave at them, making fierce threats and trying to bite their hands. At first, anyway. The third time she did this they had brought a club and she spent the rest of the day in unconscious silence. Claire thought she was dead, until she awoke in the middle of the night to Fang's sobs.
"Fang?" Claire asked, her voice a tiny thing in the darkness.
"What, Claire?" Fang asked between sobs.
"It'll get better." Claire would regret these words for the rest of her life, because the only thing worse than a lie was a false hope, and she had offered her only friend both.
