A Series of Unfortunate Events and True Love

The Bad Beginning - Part 1 -- Edited

It was early and the warmth had crept into the orphan's small room while she had slept endearingly. She hadn't retired to the structure of rusting metal and moth-bitten cloth that she regretted to call a bed until the sun had disappeared from the sky without a trace. But now the sun had returned to it's position in the bright blue sky, the small girl could not sleep. Her attic bedroom lacked many things. Floorboards, comfort and company (If you weren't counting the rats). However, one of the most important items that were missing were curtains. So the orphan was awoken at the ripe hour of the morning and could not return back to sleep. It didn't matter - if she started her chores now, she would get to bed earlier tonight.

The girl pitifully tried to bathe in her disgrace of a bathroom. The water was not supplied from taps but rather from the hole in the roof above it. In fact, she suspected that the tub had been placed there to stop the leaks from damaging the floorboards any further. The already weakened boards tended to creak whenever she entered and she was in constant fear of falling through and into the dining room, so her bath time was always short. The water was cold and tinted slightly grey from the tub and its journey through the house. However, the girl didn't care about the temperature in the current heat and had long since gotten used to the smell and slight discolouration of the water.

She then dressed herself in one of her three day dresses. She'd had five when she had first entered the house three years ago, but the dirtiest and least admirable dresses had been butchered and added to the others when she continued to grow and had no way to get more dresses. The one she wore today was the current cleanest, having washed it the day before. It had originally been a pale blue but had turned to grey from constant cleaning and dirtying. An old grey dress had been added in the places in which she could no longer fit, and was only a few hues darker than the original. It hadn't of mattered if the extra fabric had been bright pink, for the only people she ever saw was her guardian and an extremely kind and friendly neighbour. The girl brushed her hair and secured it in a bun, knowing most of it would frame her face by the time she retired for bed if this were to be an ordinary day. Luckily for her, that was not to be so.

The orphan started her chores, preparing a grand breakfast for her guardian and some porridge for herself. Then she began to work on the garden. It's grass was grey and dead long before the girl had arrived and had proved itself un-saveable, no matter how many lamentable hours the girl had slaved away to save it. She instead pruned and cared for the few plants and flowers that grew, however weak and small they were and ridded the garden of it's many weeds. You may wonder why the house was in such ill-repair when the young girl slaved away for countless hours to improve it the best she could. This was for many reasons, the first being that this girl was only the age of twelve and could not even imagine attempting many of the jobs that the house required. Secondly, she was the only worker and it took her a week to clean the entire house top-to-bottom and finally was that her guardian and his friends destroyed the entire house in the time it took for her to cook them their dinner.

You may wonder why a man this terrible would be allowed with-in a ten mile radius of a child. That is also due to many reasons, one being the fickle law of the town and another being that his incredibly bad acting skills were so terrible that no one could believe that it was an attempt of acting in the first place! But even though this man's care was so terrible, the girl didn't mind. The work was hard and the conditions were terrible but she would give anything to never see another orphanage again. There she may have been given food, clothes and education but it was not a place for a child. Boy's wandering hands, no rules or rules so strict they were like a corset, suffocating you until you kneel over and die. Of course, the orphan had only been nine when in an orphanage and had never personally experienced any wandering fingers or anything of the sort due to her age, but she had witnessed it. Crying, rape and in one case, a young girl of 15 pregnant and punished for a child she had not wanted to conceive. She may not have been old enough then, but to orphanage boys, she was certainly old enough now, and the thought of even seeing, let alone enduring, those things made the back-breaking work worth it. The work was almost therapeutic in a sense that she could forget her family's passing and time in the orphanage for silent complaints of aching limbs and endless amounts of chores.