Smoke, curling upwards from the space under the door.

How goddamn poetic of me...

I screamed, over and over. If you would have heard me, you wouldn't think I was just a beleagured 14 year old, for the language coming outta my mouth. Banging the door didn't seem to be doing much, but at the time, it was my only hope. I was choking on the smoke, trying to scream. My eyes watered both from the smoke and my almost certain death.

The keyword there was "almost".

As I continued to beat on the door, it's age showed as it started to splinter. Inspired, I backed up and kicked the damn thing as hard as I could. Twice more, and the wood snapped. Another kick and there was a hole wide enough to step through. The fire was still there, of course, and smoke burned my eyes as I looked for an exit.

There!

To my left was a window, small but big enough for me to get through. I ran to it, trying to ignore the hopelessness creeping up on me. I tried to throw the window open, but it just wouldn't budge.

The flames were right there, so I followed the most primal, life-preserving instict I could. With absolutely no regard for what I would meet at the bottom, I jumped my happy ass out of the window (with the glass still in place - not a great descision, but it saved my life).

Somehow when the glass broke, a piece got in my eye and left a trail of blood down my face. Now I was crying tears of blood. Crap. And there weren't any fire trucks I could see; In this city, sqealers are 'iced'. Cops seem to be optional if not left out alltogether.

I stumbled up from my position on the asphalt; looked up. I'd only fallen about ten feet, but it hurt like anything. Turning back, I tried to make it to a payphone across the street. A little girl in a yellow sundress watched me from across the street, and ran into her house. I was about halfway across the street - and after that, I kind of lost conciousness. I don't think I even felt my face hit asphalt.

My eyes opened slowly.

Where the hell am I? Was my only though at that moment. I tried to speak it, but all I did was garble a bunch of nonsense garbling that sounded like a monkey on crack.

My eyes fully opened, I looked around at the bright white - white ceiling, white bed, white tile floor and a beeping machine tell me where I am - a hospital. My memories of these places aren't the best, you know - All of a sudden, all of the bad memories came rushing back. Have you ever had that happen to you? It hurts like hell, I'll tell you for damn sure.

A nurse walks in with a little tray on wheels, with a bunch of little medical tools. She changes and IV bag I didn't even notice was connected to a needle in my right arm; it felt kind of funny and numb. My right eye had a patch over it, too, like a pirate, only the stupid thing was white like the rest of the hospital. I didn't notice before since everything was white. I tried asking for some water, but my voice was raspy so I motioned for a glass and pointed at my throat.

The nurse, whose nametag blatantly declared "IRMA," shook her head. "You shouldn't drink, it might cause your condition to worsen. Silently, I wondered how it could get any worse. The nurse moved some machines and wires around and handed me a button clicker.

"Now you click that if you feel pain, dear," Irma the nurse said. "It's just a little morphine to keep you sedate and it's a terrific painkiller." She gave me a little smile that I didn't return and walked out, her cheap heels clicking on the white tile.

I had a lot of time to consider what I'd done.

I'd killed recklessly with no thought of human life. I'd traded in drugs, kicked in a homosexual's door (while the house was on fire), jumped out of a building, and probably lost vision in my right eye.

Damn I'm stupid sometimes.

With everyone I once knew lost to me, I thought about a new life. Would it really be that hard? Take away all of the stress, start over, stop being so damn stupid and reckless. I'd seen so much harm, and I was strangely calm. Is this how a crazy person feels? To start over would be intellectually satisfying, but I owuld have to much repressed anger and hate to live normally. I guess the word I use now is "determined," not insane. In the space of time before the nurse came back, I'd thought of a life goal; a purpose to my existance on this earth.

I'm sure you can guess what that is.

I was in the hospital until the new year rang in; 2005. My eyepatch had become optional, but I still couldn't see in my right eye. It turned out that a couple of nerves in my right hand had been damaged, so it was hard to do anything, and it tingled occaisonally. My recovery was just short of miraculous, as all the burns on my arm had healed and my lungs had mostly recovered from the smoke inhilation. And, on New Year's day, I saw someone I never expected to see again.

My only sister Catherine, also the only alive person who'd witnessed Aaron's rage, if only briefly.

"Cat!" I nearly jumped out of bed, as I became a little kid again. We hugged, but I saw an emptiness in her eyes that hadn't been there before. I found out years later that she had been working as a prostitute in a city five miles away, and had also been beaten many times as well as sexually abused. I don't know how she found me, or how she got me out of the hospital, but she did.

As we walked out of the hospital, she asked me a question. "Is he dead?"

I wasn't sure if she was talking about Dad, so I answered vaguely. "Dad's gone, Cat, Aaron killed him and ran." My face was steeled for this, but a single tear slid down her cheek. She had loved him, too. I got a good look at her while her face was turned away; she was too thin, and wore very revealing clothes. Once she turned her face back, I noticed how sunken her eyes had become, and how waxen her complexion was.

"I... I didn't know that would happen, Doll, but you need to listen to me. Aaron is pure evil. Don't go anywhere near him, okay?"

Some feeling deep in my gut told me it was wrong to kill him, but I ignored it. "I want to kill him, Cat."

We got to her car, not speaking the rest of the way. Her vehicle was a rusted, multicolored old sports car that didn't want to start and stalled everywhere. As we left the city limits, I wondered where exactly we were going, but I didn't really care. Cat shifted in the seat beside me, and tilted the steering wheel. As the light fell on her face, I could see it twisted in something between grief and fury.

And so I, Dhalia Tael, started out on my journey; away from the city. At this point, I was nothing more than a small, uneducated child, with nothing going for her but a thirst for revenge and a big sister. That was all about to change.