Bella

                                                                  CHAPTER 1

The street lay quiet but for a family of mice rummaging under the leaves beneath the street lamp. And they weren’t alone.
An old tom was peering out from under a shrub near the corner of the house, with his eyes narrowed. The sky had darkened over the last few minutes, making it hard for the cat to see his prey. And just to make things worse, a cold wind had pushed its way into the dead-end street, causing him to shiver, and demanded more from his already tired body, to try harder, to stay as still, and as quiet as possible. A storm was brewing. And luckily, it was that very wind that pushed the leaves away, and exposed the mice to the elements. The old toms body twitched. He flattened his ears. He flattened his back, and he coiled the  muscles up in his long legs.
    But it was at that moment - the rain started to fall. A sheet of water had blocked out the family of mice. Now with their bodies wet, they scurried off. And this left the old tom, cold, wet, with a dampened spirit, and questioning why he bothered
at all. 
    Above the scene, standing at the window of her small bedroom, watching it all unfold, in the dark, Bella Ryan was humming to herself. It was a sacred tune, one her mother hummed to her when she was a child, when the storms brought with them that horror from the coast.
    She missed her mother; her long hair glowing in the sunshine. Her gentle smile. Her big, soft eyes. And she loved her daughter, didn’t she? If so, why did she leave her? Her father missed her; Bella knew that much. He was sad, since the accident. He spent his time sitting in the arm chair in front of the fire. She stoked it  daily, silent, and unspoken. He never moved far from that chair,
if only to wash, toilet. Of-course, she never doubted how hard it for to lose his wife of twenty years, yes, she knew his pain,
it was hard for all involved, but what about Bella?
    Two long years had passed already. Bella sighed. It was all
she could do to survive this mess. What else was there to do? She had school. She had her friends. But as good as those
two things were; yes, even school, she didn’t need them, not now, in her tormented state. What she needed was her father
to snap out of….  whatever it was he was in.
    The rain was getting heavier by the minute, lashing wildly at the street. A tree branch was banging at the window. Bella stared down on to the lawn, the mice family were no where to be seen, and the old tom had disappeared. At that moment, Bella wished she could disappear. She wanted to find that happy place, that others told her existed.
    If it did exist, why was it so hard to find?
    Bella turned to look at the red glow of the clock beside the bed. 09:08 pm. She grabbed her dressing gown and wrapped
it around her slim frame, hiding from the cold, and sauntered out the door. The fire would need poking. When she was about
to take that first step onto the stairway - she heard it. A spark from the flames? She was glad it was still burning, but she had a terrible feeling, a hurt in her stomach, it was much more than that. She took three steps at a time, thinking the worst. She landed on the polished floor in the small entrance way, and quickly ran into the lounge room.
    From behind the chair, she slowed her steps, nothing was out of place. The fire was crackling happily. The arm chair, with her father. But she couldn’t hear him snoring. She took two steps forward. She stopped. Then it happened; too fast for her to take it in. The gun landed on the floor, her fathers hand flopped from the armrest, dangling, and blood dripped from his fingers.
   
                                 
                              ……………………   

   
    They came into the house, all white, and serious. They took him away, and she started to cry. Bella hated those people. She wanted to die with her him. He'd found the easy way out, but he'd left behind his daughter - lost.
    Arms comforted her. But whose arms were they? They weren’t her father’s. Not her mother’s. Strangers. And the hands of those  strangers pushed her forward, toward her bedroom. They helped her pack her bags, now in her fingers, and they helped her out of the house, taking her away from the scene.
    In the police car, on the backseat, was all she had left. The cold leather. The smell. It made her hate herself more. She had smelled the leather in her mother’s new car; on that dreadful day, driving to the shop. She’d felt its cold touch. And she’d seen her mothers blood smeared across the shiny surface of those new seats.