Photograph

AN: I was asked to write a story by one of my friends. She gave me some rules to follow. They are as follows:

1. Write a descriptive piece from your characters point of view.
2. No dialogue.
3. You must use the words - Blue, Crease, Lament, Safe.
4. You may use any derivative of the word (ie. lamented, lamenting, laments) as long as the world holds it's original meaning... so increase would not be allowed.
5. You can make this story as long or as short as you like and it can be set anywhere, and in any time period.

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It has been a long time since I held this picture in my hand. I must have been a child, just about to start school for the first time when my mother showed me the picture. Back then it was new and glossy and perfect, unlike now. There is a small tear on the bottom right and a large crease that spreads across every face. In certain light the crease takes on an evil persona, almost angrily twisting and writhing it's way across the faded faces.

This picture was the last thing my mother ever gave me. She kissed my forehead as we got to the gates of my school and then she was gone. Just like that. Of course, at the time I didn't know she wouldn't be home later, I didn't know that the police would come to my school and collect me like some discarded rubbish.

The last memory I have of my mother was the sweet smell of her perfume and the blue blouse she was wearing. It was my favourite one, I would sit in her lap and cuddle her, resting my cheek against the soft silk of that pale blue blouse and listen to her gentle breathing. She would run her delicate hand through my long hair and sing the celtic songs of her childhood. Those memories are all I have left of my mother and I lament her being taken so forcibly from my young life.

The next few months were a blur for me. A shift of colour to dull black, grey and white. Even now, all these years later, I wake up from terrible nightmares of my time at the home.

After my mother was gone, the police took me to St Anne's Orphanage. However no one called it St Anne's. No, not even the Head Mistress. St Anne's Orphanage was simply known to all as the Home.
There was a short broken path leading from the rusty front gate to the barely hinged front door. I can still feel the policeman's vice-like grip on my wrist as I desperately tried to run away from the sight of the evil looking house. It had huge gaping eyes, glinting evilly in the midday sun. The barren front yard was nothing but dirt. Not even weeds grew in that dirt yard.
There wasn't even chirping or twittering sounds of birds. At school I would always hear the birds chirping, the crickets humming and I would watch the ants as they marched two by two. The Home had none of these things. It was... dead.

The policeman's partner, the one that wasn't holding my wrist in his tight grip, rang the bell by the huge front door. The hinges were so rusted on that massive door I remember wondering if the door would even open. Secretly I hoped it wouldn't so that I would be safe from having to live there.
Less than half a minute later my worst nightmare began. The door opened slowly almost as if the person on the other side didn't have the strength to pull it open. Finally, it swung the last few creaking feet and there stood a solid, mean looking lady. I had trouble believing she couldn't open the door, so I looked from her to the door a few times until I understood just how thick that door was. No one would escape the Home. The solid lady looked down at me with the nastiest scowl I had ever seen. I felt her contempt flow over me like waves crashing again rocks. My breath left my little body while my knees turned to rubber. The last thing I saw before the world went dark was the evil woman's face continuing to scowl at me.

I look down at the picture in my shaking hands feeling a lone tear steal its way down cheek. The Home proved to be a torturous place for young children. Or maybe just for me?
The contempt ridden lady would become known to me as the Head Mistress. She ran the Home and expected every child to do exactly as she said, all the time. The Home was perpetually quiet, no laughter rang through the main hall, no giggling in the bedrooms nor any sounds of children playing with balls or even toys.  The only sounds were the creaks and whines of the old wood beneath our little stockinged feet as was walked in pairs to and from the dining hall.

I spent 12 years in that cold and unloving house before I was old enough to leave. No one ever adopted the children that went to the Home. It was common knowledge in the town that we were all unruly, undisciplined and unscrupulous children and that we were undoubtedly the spawn of Satan. Head Mistress started those rumours herself during a drunken diatribe at the local tavern and continued preaching about how awful we were until the day she drank herself to death.
The people my mother and I knew before she left developed some kind of amnesia as they did not know, or couldn't remember, who I was. My whole identity had be ripped away from me. I was only a child and they took my innocence away. I spent many nights crying over lost friends, lost family and other childhood dreams that I suddenly realised would no longer apply to me. So it was that my childhood ended when I was 6 years old.

Head Mistress would not let any of us keep any of our  possessions, instead she insisted we store them in boxes up in the attic. Each child had their own box, she even let us decorate our boxes with shiny pieces of paper, lace and old bits of chocolate wrappers. I spent every moment I was allowed to decorating that box. Head Mistress once said that if I worked that hard on a box I should work that hard on my arithmetic. I always answered her with a smile and a nod, hoping she would never notice me enough to send me to the special room.

I turn the photo over and notice small spidery writing on the back. That's strange, I've never noticed it before. I thought I had looked at every inch of this photo. Surely I could not have missed something as important as this?
I search around my cramped apartment searching for my magnifying glass. I was using it yesterday so where on Earth could it have gone to? Didn't I put it down on the coffee table? No, I must have put it by my bedside table. I run into my bedroom, tripping over the silly carpet that I am yet to fix, some day soon. I spy my magnifying glass lying on my bedside table and hurriedly pick it up as I flop onto my bed bringing the photo and magnifying glass up close to my eye. What does it say? I still can't decipher this writing.

I turn the photo around and around, looking at it from every angle, trying to make sense of the writing. Finally, I turn it once more and the meaning jumps out at me. I smile before fits of laughter take control of me and cause my body to convulse with the force of the laughter. I should have known!