Dimensions

Chapter two

The day is dull and I stand fully in black holding my younger brother. He's only two and I'm only five but I somehow manage to keep him up. The rain drips down my face and mixes carelessly with my tears as I stand in a graveyard. Who died? 

"Leah, it's time to go home." I turn to see the red face of my father, coated with a dangerous sort of anger I know all too well I should avoid. My arms don't get the time to lift my brother up to my father, he just snatches the boy from my arms.

A small hand runs under my eyes and I know it belongs to myself. I feel the need to clasp onto something, anything which might prevent me from falling apart. But I won't be able to. Because whoever it is I've just lost, they meant an awful lot in my life. 

Flora Atteberry. I know that's what the gravestone in front of me says without even reading it. A beautiful name for the most beautiful woman I knew. My mother. She's gone and she's never coming back. And now my father is pulling away the person who means the most to me, my little brother. I can't seem to remember his name, only that I would die for him in an instant.

"Leah, you foolish girl," my father leans down and grabs my wrist, pulling me hard in the direction of our car, "it's time to go." A strangled sob escapes my mouth as my father yanks me away from my mother's grave. 

"But I'm not done," I protest, "I need to say goodbye to mummy." I tug on my father's hold but he's too strong.

"Your mummy is dead," my father replies brutally, "you can't say goodbye, she won't hear you." I sob louder and struggle harder against my father's pull but all I get is a sharp pain shooting up my tiny arm. 

"Daddy," I cry, "let me go." He doesn't. So, I decide that if he wants to drag me around he can have all of me to drag. I go deadweight, flopping to the ground and my father snarls at me.

"Get to your feet." He shields my brother from me as though I'm some kind of threat to him and pulls me up by my wrist. I hear it groan under the pressure as my father draws me close to him. His face is only inches from mine.

-----

I jolt awake, conscious of someone close to me. Although, I think the better word to have chosen would have been 'someones'. Slowly, carefully, I blink at them as they watch me in some kind of fascination. Four different faces all stare at me like I'm an animal locked in a cage on display. One of the faces have glasses and I'm drawn to it out of curiosity. The owner seems to have trouble keeping his eyes focused on me and instead they flick anxiously around the room. His fingers dance in knots by his side. 

"Please," I say in a croaky voice, "don't hurt me."

"We should have left her," says a face, very dark in colour and framed with no hair at all, "I told you we should have left her."

"We didn't know," replies another face, this one dotted with light freckles and surrounded by a flop of unruly red hair which covers the right side of his face, "she had her hood up, she could have been anyone." I frown at the curious boys as the third face in the semicircle around me starts to speak.

"I don't know why we have your stupid rule," The feature that sticks out most on this boy is his fluffy attempt at a moustache, clearly the first he's ever let grow out, "it's not like any of us have some kind of issue with girls." 

"What?" I ask after a few more seconds of them all blankly staring at me, except the boy at the end who can't seem to focus.

"Mister 'I know best' here," the boy with the moustache points to his red-haired friend, "says only to snatch useful boys for our pack."