2. Anna Lindel

Anna Lindel
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Samjays
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Those Three

Anna Lindel is the sort of woman you wouldn’t like to meet on a dark night. She isn’t a serial killer or anything of that sort, but if you are under the age of 18 and in her care, you can be sure you would be in big trouble for being outside out of hours. And if you are in trouble with Anna Lindel, meeting a serial killer on a dark night almost seems like a better option.

Anna Lindel is in her mid thirties. Seven years ago, she was a ruthless entrepreneur who ruled her enterprise with an iron fist. If she wanted something done, it was done. No questions asked. She had been on the brink of negotiating a deal for expansion into China, when the incident happened. Well, it wasn’t so much an incident per se, rather the chain of causation leading from this one incident. Either way, the economy in the city had collapsed. No. Collapsed wasn’t quite the word. The economy had been demolished. Steamrollered. Better. Either way, it wasn’t a passive series of events. Someone caused it all; someone planned it in meticulous detail.

And whoever that someone is will be the first person on her recruitment list when she goes back into business.

For now, Anna Lindel is the head of Samjays house. Samjays house is an orphanage. Well, technically it is and it isn’t. It is more a home for abandoned children. There are so many orphans out there, but most of them have gone to live with other relatives. That is normal nowadays. Samjay’s is for children with no relatives, or with relatives who never want to see them again, but of course officially that is never the case. After the incident (or series of incidents) occurred, there were far more orphans in the city that can be contained by all the orphanages put together. Those who were already there were lucky. The rest weren’t so.

Years ago they were overloaded with applications, children being dumped on the doorstep in groups of three or four. The orphanages tried to resolve the problem by taking them all in. It didn’t work. The system became financially unviable, not helped by the recently steamrollered economy. The orphanages took in the children which seemed most able to cope with reintegrating into society, who would benefit most from what they had to offer and would be able to put the city back on its feet again. The others had to be sent away. Of course there were other places for them to go, grants provided by the government for families to take in children, and the problem slowly died down, at least in their town.

Out in the city, there are always rumours of what happened to the children who just stayed on the streets. The community blames it on the orphanages of course. Blames them for not taking the children in before they became a menace, blames the children in the orphanage because they had the potential to become a menace. Blames everybody but themselves of course. Either way, the community and the orphanages have never been on very good terms.

As a result, leaving the orphanage grounds is forbidden, regardless of the circumstance. Anna already knows that if the orphanage gets involved with what goes on in the city outside the gates, that will be it. The so-called Samjays children, who are supposed to be amongst the ones to help the city reinvigorate itself, will be proven to be no different to the children in the city on their own. And then the government will have every reason to cut off their funding.

Which is why meeting a serial killer on a dark night is a better option for you, and all others concerned.

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There are around fifty children at Samjays, up to the age of 16. The age groups are pretty evenly spaced. Younger children are more likely to get adopted, but then children are rarely abandoned above the age of 5. Because the children aren’t allowed out of the campus, the orphanage keeps them occupied with activities whilst there are no lessons going on during the summer. Of course this costs money, so Anna learnt to be very economical in order to make government grants last. Even she was impressed with some of the schemes she came up with. Having the children do arts and crafts, and then having them sell the finished product in return for other things to occupy themselves with, as well as a gardening club to grow food for meals, were some of her better ideas.

Most of the children enjoy this structured life of activities and lessons. Learning something that will be helpful to them later on in life is always a bonus, but left to their own devices and they would be bored out of their minds. Generally trying to get them to pass the time just left to their own imaginations is a disaster waiting to happen. There are of course a few who don’t fit in with the well oiled machine. There is nothing wrong with that, they will come round eventually. They always do. It is just a question of wh-

At that moment in time, Anna Lindel realises her interior monologue has run for far too long given that she isn’t even a major character.

Anna Lindel stops. There is something on the roof, something that looks suspiciously like…
Yes…
It is one of them.

*

There are three major problem children in Samjay’s, all aged 14. Unfortunately for Lindel, they are united in the common cause of usurping her authority and generally causing trouble. One of them is responsible for the majority of the incidents that happen, and that is Zack.

Zack is one of those children who came to the orphanage with no name, no history, nothing. In these kind of situations, the children usually become withdrawn and insecure, not sure who they are. With Zack, it seems to have the opposite effect. With nothing holding him back, Zack does whatever he pleases, whenever he pleases, which quite often does not please Lindel in the slightest. Since he doesn’t have a history of his own, he is intent on making one. In Lindel’s opinion, he’s more intent in making a name for himself as a master trouble maker. One can barely walk around the house without seeing a mark he’s left. When he was 11 he intercepted an order for a curtain rail and changed it, his excuse was that the house had to offset the dreary period features with some futuristic touches, or else prospective parents would think that the children adopted here would find integrating into modern society challenging. As a result, the kitchen curtain is now hung on a neon curtain pole, and Whenever Lindel walks past it, the motion sensor causes it to start playing twinkle twinkle little star. On the bright side, at least now she has a deterrent for those who try and raid the fridge at night anonymously.

From what she can see, whoever is on the roof at the moment has painted a nice line of tiles bright blue, and is moving onto the next row, paintbrush in hand.

It probably isn’t Elliot come to think of it. Elliot’s artwork isn’t quite into that phase yet. Elliot is an odd child. He is one of those children who always has a smile on their face – Always. It’s unnerving. He has a heart of gold, but he’s really a bit out of touch with the world. He takes long walks, then “forgets” the time, and reappears two days later. No-one knows where he goes. He doesn’t think it’s that big a deal, so he doesn’t worry about it too much. He’s forever coming up with crazy ideas. The other day he suggested they get solar panels with a battery for the roof. It seemed a reasonable idea to begin with, there have been a lot of TV bulletins about global warming recently, and they probably inspired him. Yes, it seemed like a good idea, until he said it was so that if aliens ever landed here, they would be able to charge up the lamps in their ship, and wouldn’t have to rely on utilising their biochemical energy instead. He was deadly serious.

Anna starts to climb the stairs up to the roof. Of course it could always be Sylvia. Sylvia apparently has a problem with authority. She is one of the few children who was abandoned with a name, but no history, and in Anna’s opinion, it has gone to her head. There are a lot of things which go to Sylvia’s head, she has possibly the most overactive imagination in the history of overactive imaginations.

Anna reaches the top of the stairs and opens the door to the roof. She walks along the terrace and over to the newly painted tiles. The paint can is still sitting there; the painter is no-where to be seen. Anna surveys the roof, and then looks downwards, just in case. Gone. Anna turns round to go back to the door, and slips on the wet painted tile. She catches the rail, but the paint tin is already tipping. Anna watches is lose its balance and begin to topple, as if in slow motion. She reaches out, but it’s too late. There is now a blue streak diagonally across the roof to add to the neatly painted row of tiles.