Chemical Poison . Howard Stark

Chapter 19

Darkness was sinking; night's incarnation.

Anneliese hated the scratchy material of the dress her mother made her wear. From the white collar to the woollen cardigans, Anneliese hated the texture on her skin. It made her look youthful, innocent and unplagued with the horrors committed during twilight.

Her father always braided her hair into a tight bun, pulling her hair too harshly and causing low cries to whimper out from her mouth. If she had to choose to either wear the clothes her mother chose or for her father to do her hair, Anneliese would choose neither. She hated it all.

"Stop moving", her father said lowly, "The pins are going in regardless. We can't have any hair falling out."

Trying her best to not move - impossible as each pin stabbed the back of her ear. She concentrated on her mother in the mirror, applying a small amount of makeup to her cheeks as she fixed her own hair. Anneliese hated seeing her mother like this as it only ever meant one thing. Reality returned as her father roughly pined in another pin, causing Anneliese to bolt out of his lap, tears threatening to fall from her waterline.

The face her father made could only be described as displeased, almost grim. "It didn't hurt that much, come here schatzi." Anneliese cautiously walked back to the seat in front of her father, shivering as her father wiped away the tears starting to roll down her cheeks. "Those tears won't do," his voice becoming softer.

"Is she ready?", her mother asked, not even glancing at either one of them as she brushes down her own dress - a similar style to Anneliese's.

"Yes."

"Let's go."

Anneliese wasn't completely unaware of the poverty within Germany, she knew many struggled to buy bread to eat and other's were given no choice but to use brutality to ensure a stable income to feed themselves. And yet, Anneliese was unaware of what this felt like, to go without dinner and to lose all faith in a higher being, a god perhaps, as death loomed as a close friend.

Everyday, Anneliese would pray that better days would come - believing that someone, anyone, would hear her pleads. Her parents thought it was foolish to believe in anything at all, that putting faith in the unknown will only get you killed. And yet, Anneliese prayed that the begging eyes she would see within her carriage would finally live happier, better. A naive and juvenile thought.

Her religious beginnings were not important in the scheme of things; it was the falling of hope, the tragedy of faith and the death to all things good. It wasn't so much that Anneliese was religious, but it was the ignorance in her words. To believe better days were to come, was to believe that war wasn't to ensue. And if anyone knew better that war would soon arrive, it was the Lorenz's.

Upon entry to her Uncle's estate, Anneliese gripped her mother's hand tightly, scared that if she was to let go, she would be lost forever. The large wooden doors terrified her, creaking as one of her other uncles opened the door for them. He greeted her mother with an air kiss to the cheek, a handshake with her father and a terrifying toothy smile to Anneliese.

Her parents never needed to inform Anneliese that there was something enormously messed up with her mother's side. She already knew.

The clank-clank-clank of her mother's heels echoed across the floor, Anneliese's eyes daring to gaze at all the overtly expensive paintings and statues collected over the years. Yet, there was something off about the estate, something dangerous.

It was night's incarnation; darkness was sinking.

Holding even tighter to her mother's hand, Anneliese lowered her eyes to the ground as she heard numerous noises: clink-clank-click, clatter-clatter-clatter, clack-clack-clack. She knew where she was, and she knew exactly what room her parents had stopped walking in.