Chapter I
Autumn

Home is where one starts from.
T.S. Eliot

            The door crept open, bringing with it a sliver of light, illuminating a portion of the bleak and barren room. She sat, huddled in the corner farthest from the door, clad in a threadbare white cotton dress—the one she had received for her birthday a year ago. Her hair was strewn about, unkempt, a refulgent and fiery red. Burnished with trepidation, the gray-green of her eyes shone through the stray tendrils of hair. Moonlight seeped in by way of the boarded up windows, the soft glow bringing out the stark contrast between her pallid skin and the black and blue contusions that scattered her body. Clutching a tattered teddy bear, her sole source of comfort, she strained to identify any signs of him.

            This little girl, christened with the name Autumn, was but eight years old. Yet somehow she knew a darker world than anyone should ever know. It was the world she lived in, her home—if one had the gull to call it that. The knowledge of how such atrocities could occur does not come easy. When confronted with any wrong, most are able to identify it as such. Most encounter questions, demand answers. Most strive to put up a fight. Not Autumn. It was not that she was weak; no, it was because she knew nothing else. She had no right with which to compare the wrongs that had been done unto her, as the case often tends to be.

            Her father, a man all too fond of his whiskey, had a heavy hand and was quick to use it. The man also had a certain obsession with fire, at which Autumn fell as the crux. He did not loathe his daughter as his daughter loathed him, but instead felt that it was his duty to strike the fear of God, the fear of Hell itself into her soul. The fact that he enjoyed witnessing the pain and suffering of his only child was merely an added bonus in his eyes.

            There was a draft wafting up from the crevasses in the floorboards. Autumn was cold. She averted her eyes for a split second to her bed, where a blanket lay. She heard the faint, familiar sound of screams echoing through the night, muffled by the presence of closed doors. Her eyes fell shut, and she attempted to separate herself from the world, to place another barrier between her and reality. The screams faded after the clock struck ten, the pattern was holding strong. Lord please no, she prayed. Autumn was all too aware of what was going to happen next.

            Her father stumbled into the room carrying a bucket, a bottle of whiskey, and a matchbook.