Chapter One

Death rejected me. Not once, not twice.

But what was an abomination like me expecting when I have a witch for a grandmother? I've tried my best to move on, but it's all becoming too much.

BOOM!

An exasperated sigh escaped my lips as I squinted my eyes open, feeling very disgruntled at this bleak weather that scrubbed all chances of me falling asleep again.

Feeling sluggish, I got up from the bed, rubbed the sleep from my eyes to get a better look at where my legs were leading me.

My fingers unknowingly brushed over the claw marks stretched on the corridor wall. It was like a ritual I had adopted when I turn thirteen.

It was not like I wanted to do it, it just happened and broken flashbacks from the past invaded my mind. Memories I thought had long left me would come skiing pass, flickering weird images that made no sense before vanishing like I didn't detect anything at all...

"Mom, you're up early." I yawned when I entred the kitchen. A whiff of my own bad breath stung my noise which got me scowling with disappointment.

"Yes, Hermione dear. You know I wouldn't wanna miss this wonderful weather." My mother smiled warmly, but just a brief glimpse at her would let me know that the smile did not reach her eyes.

I reached for a plate on one of the top shelves after my sleepy eyes fell on the calendar next to me. A few more strikes to the midterm exams then all hell breaks loose.

That should be fun. I scoffed at myself

"What about you?" My mother asked, her voice was a pitch higher.

"Couldn't sleep. Thunder." I murmured the word as if it was the cause of all my early morning headaches.

Personally, I don't like this weather. It takes out the pleasure of going outside and taking a nice morning stroll. Not that I leave the house very often in my spare time since I'm forever glued to the couch studying for my exams. But I guess today will be quite different because I can't study with all that thunder rehearsing for a horror film.

I opened the bread bin and almost immediately a slight ting zapped the indented space in my heart. The last time I ate bread was yesterday afternoon and I could swear there were some leftovers, more than enough to hold on to before the end of tomorrow.

I did not want to notify my mother that we ran out of bread since she has no penny left and she is in kind of a good mood for a change.

Ever since her weird late-night calls that started very recently, she has not been herself. She looked very agitated, anticipating something unwelcoming. I have asked her a couple of times if she was okay but she would give me the same reply plus her signature smile which gets me all the time.

Hermione dear, mommy is just a little upset that's all. She would say and like the nincompoop that I was, I would believe her until she cried herself to sleep.

This has been going on for almost two months now and so has the money spending. Mom would arrive home after buying groceries and say the money has been used up, forgetting that I know how much she earns from the footwear business and how much the groceries must have come up to.

I can wait two more days before she gets her monthly salary. It is no biggie.

"Hermione? Did you hear what I said..." My mother inquired, turning to face me for the first time since I entered the kitchen.

Her eyes zeroed in on the vacant bread bin. Too late, she smiled. That warm motherly smile does wonders to her beauty. She always has a way of changing my mood with that smile, and I'm sure she is using that to her advantage. "Don't worry, I will just–"

"Mom no." I hastily let out to try and change her mind. "I lost my appetite. You don't have to."

"I don't want you starving or getting sick, Hermione." She insisted, scooting to her bedroom.

"Mom." My voice was a powerless whisper. "It is dangerous out there, you will get sick. Please."

She popped out of her room, fiddling with the buttons of her raincoat with her purse stuck under her arm. She locked her bedroom door like she always did whenever she left the house then turned to me.

"Take care of the house, Honey." She smiled at me, her left hand placed on my right temple. She smelt of jasmine, I loved that smell.

"Mom." I tried again when the thunder cracked the silence between us, but it was no use, she will go to any extent just to make sure I'm satisfied.... But this is a step too big, especially under this kind of weather.

She opened the front door and stepped out. Almost instantly when she moved out into the rain, a gush of icy cold, wet air bit on my skin and pushed me further into the house, causing me to stagger a little. The thunder rumbled above us and raindrops hit the ground hoping to shatter the concrete.

Just looking at the weather made me think of the poor stray dogs and cats that had nowhere to hide.

I whimpered when my mother walked away, she gave me one final look before heading to the direction of a nearby shop.

Her cold grey eyes gave me reasons to question where she was heading. She was not herself. Something was bothering her, and it seemed to control her. Stress had sucked out all her weight in the past few weeks.

As her child, I have no clue of what to do to cheer her up because I've tried everything, but nothing seemed to work. I wanted to call my mother's younger sister or cousins but I did not have their contacts so I was stuck.

The air around me was warm again right after I closed the door. A part of me told me I made the biggest mistake of my life... But the other part says everything will be alright.

Will it be?

Slowly, I walked to the living room and made myself comfortable on the worn-out couch, subconsciously brushing the back of my hand gently against the torn armrest. It soothed my aching heart and brought in a bit of calm at least.

Being an Gilbert hasn't been so easy for mom and I. It seemed like we had to always try extra hard for people to accept us here in a small town on the east side of South America.

Almost everyone knows my grandmother which is not a good thing considering she has built a bad reputation for herself which, unfortunately, the hatred manifested for her spread down to the new generation.

Everywhere I go people would look at me very weirdly as if my body was emitting curses or something. Mom had to change my school several times in the past 3 years because of the number of bullying incidents I've been subjected to. If it wasn't about my grandmother and the horrible things she had done to the people, then it was about how I am so "abnormally attractive".

The girls in every school I've been to complained about how my pin-straight, silky, ginger hair was too perfect, or how my milky skin was way too smooth and flawless to be real. At times I just thought they were looking for silly excuses to push me around and call me names like "witch" or other colourful ones.

I lost count of the number of times my mom and I had to shift to a new location when our neighbours would gang up on us all in the name of "your grandmother is a witch".

I learnt to ignore them all. I'm in my final year in high school so baring it all will be worth it in the end.

9:30 am and I'm starting to worry. It has been three hours since my mother left and this is the first time she has stayed out for this long to go to the shop.

I jumped out of the couch and dumped the biology textbook, I was reading, on the coffee table.

I marched to the front door and stared at it expecting her to turn the knob, but after gawking for ten minutes I gave up and grabbed my raincoat and boots from my bedroom.

Slipping into the waterproof coat, I opened the door and just like before, the chilly air caused tingles on my exposed skin. The wild wind teased my ginger hair as I took a careful step into the rain. Fat droplets sunk to the roots of my hair giving me chicken skin down my spine. I exhaled, ignored the feeling and locked the door before walking down the street.

I couldn't see much through the mist that skillfully dyed the street gray, but I could hear faint noises and sirens from the direction I was heading so I walked further hoping to find my mother there somewhere.

As I got closer, the sirens ringed in my ears adding to this morning's headache that stubbornly refused to subside. I could see vehicles pooled around Matty's Butchery. Bright lights flashed through the thick mist giving me a direction to run to.

When I was close enough, I could see paramedics and police scattered all over what looked like a crime scene. Many of the neighbours had already stood around to entertain themselves while the sirens screamed in my ears. I pushed my way to the centre, dodging the few police officers that were warding the crowd away then studied the whole scene properly.

Mother must be somewhere around here. I told myself. Maybe that is why it took her so long to come back home. My eyes scanned my surroundings and landed on a body bag...

Dead body...

Just the thought of someone's heart stopping makes me nauseous. I quickly turned away, continuing my search for Mrs Gilbert. Who knows where she could have went to? Maybe she took a taxi to some unknown location. Anything is possible with my mom.

"I knew her to be a very shy, calm lady who hated getting involved in disputes. Although she was mocked and harassed, she never let anyone's words get to her." Anne, mother's colleague in the footwear business, told an officer about the victim who happen to be a lady...

My legs froze on the spot, a horrifying thought hit me and I had to do breathe-ins to stop myself from hyperventilating. When I had the courage to move one foot forward, I slowly walked back to the corpse on the ground. I knelt before it and prayed what was flooding in my mind was false.

A police officer saw me and yelled something, but my loudly beating heart overshadowed all the noise around me. My shaky hands slowly uncovered the corpse and the first thing I noticed was the rich, silky ginger hair and I cringed. Tears of fear were already making patterns on my cheeks as I uncovered more.

My trembling lips let out an ear-piercing scream when I eventually saw who it was.

I felt my insides dissipate and the hollow space in my chest widen. I was empty and ruined. My life useless and my heart broken.

Why my mother!?

"Mother," I yelled for the third time as I stared down at her pale face and dry, blue lips. "You can't leave me!"

A pair of hands tried to calm me, but I shoved them off, refusing to believe my mother was dead. I continued to shake her hoping she would perform some near-death-experience miracle and wake up.

The thunder swore at me for letting this happen and that made me cry even more. My face was filled with tears, mucus and rain, but I did not care about how pathetic I looked, I did not care about anything anymore because 'my everything' had been taken away from me and there was nothing I could do.

"MOMMY!" I whimpered.