My Only Sunshine

Prologue

When I was little, I was caught in a house fire.

I remember that I was alone, sleeping in the basement because I was being punished for not finishing the food on my plate.

I can still feel the cold concreate floors of the basement when I closed my eyes, and the smell of my foster parents' cigarettes that clung to the mattress I laid on.

The flashing lights, red and blue, if not for that I never would've woken from how strong they were coming in from the small window.

Only then did I see what was going on, the smoke from upstairs had started to come under the door and into the basement, I knew it was a fire once I picked up the sound of fire trucks outside.

I could still feel the smoke in my lungs, the fear in every bone as I tried, and tried to get the door open, but it wouldn't move, I was locked in with no way out.

The window was too high, and for my age I was shorter than other girls my age so I couldn't climb through the small window, and there was nothing to step on.

Nobody had come to get me, I was left to die down there, alone, just like how I've always felt, like a ghost going through life that nobody noticed, or cared about.

I was losing consciousness, I couldn't hide from the smoke and there was nowhere to go, I accepted that my life wasn't meant to be happy, and that sometimes people are just born unlucky.

That was until I felt something warm, but it wasn't fire, and I was sure I wasn't dead, it was a voice, a warm and gentle voice telling me to 'hang on' and 'don't leave'.

There was little I remembered about who had saved me, and in the chaos of that night with so much going on, I had only remembered one thing before I lost consciousness in the smoke.

Eyes, shining bright yellow through the grey thick smoke of the fire, they were so bright I had thought I was dead and that an angel had come to take me to someplace better.

It wasn't until I woke up in a hospital bed that I realized that I was still here, I was still alive and that I must've imagined everything about how I was saved.

Time passed and nobody seemed to know who saved me that night, the firemen found me outside in the back yard with nobody with me, all evidence of the man who saved me was non-existent.

The doctors said I was experiencing the normal effects of trauma, and that it was normal for someone so young to think up someone- or something to make the situation less traumatic, a way to cope with what had happened.

Imagination inflation... so they say.

Yet who knows, I knew what I saw but perhaps they were right, and I made it up all to cope with my situation, how I was left there to die and wanted someone to save me from that hellish house.

Whoever saved me, or didn't, saved my life, I was left completely unharmed without a single burn mark, the only thing that was inevitable was the smoke in my lungs, which made it hard to breath.

It's been seven years since then, and I was now officially free as an adult in the eyes of the law, I was eighteen and on my own, no more halfway houses, no more foster parents, I was completely free.

I found a job and a place to stay, sure it wasn't a perfect job or a perfect place to say, but this was my way to be part of this world, and not the one I dreamt of when I closed my eyes.

Shortly after the fire, I had the same dream for years, sometimes I'd not have it for a few months but then it would always come back, the exact same dream.

I would close my eyes and awaken in the arms of someone, I could never see his face, but I could see his eyes, and even though the room was bright from the sun blaring into the room, they were almost black.