In the dead of night, a dark shadow crept through the empty streets of a small, rural town. It stretched its long, contorted limbs, feeling the outside crevices of each and every house it passed, looking for an entry.

On the corner of a dimly lit intersection, a Georgian-styled building reached into the night sky, like a forgotten king looming over a land full of nothing. A single window on the second floor was cracked slightly ajar inviting in the cool night air, and everything else that came with it.

The shadow sifted through the cracked window into a small bedroom void of anything but a single, twin-sized bed with a young girl resting atop its old, stained sheets. The shadow ascended towards the ceiling, looking down at the being lying beneath its dark billowing form.

Short, blonde hair curled over a bumpy pillow, forming glistening shards of gold in the moonlight. A tattered nightdress clung to her milky skin and petite form as she rested with her lips barely parted. Her chest rose and fell in slowed succession as she slept, knowing nothing of the intrusive presence. If not for her lack of stillness, she would have looked just like a porcelain doll.

The foreign shadow constricted into a smaller wisp, sinking itself between the parted lips of the girl below where it nestled deeply under her warm flesh. It curled itself into a ball beneath her skin, falling into a deep slumber like a parasitic egg entering hibernation until it would one day awaken, straining on the livelihood of its host.

* * * * *

THWACK.

The small, limp frame of a young girl rolled across the floor. After skipping so many meals, she hardly had the strength to raise her bruised body from the cold tile floor on her own.

A bony hand reached out and grabbed the young girl’s golden hair, pulling her back up from the ground. A beaky woman stared down at the beaten girl, glowering at her with dark, beady eyes.

“You stupid little whore,” the woman spat, “We didn’t bring you to the orphanage so that you could stalk my husband.”

The woman’s bony hand rose into the air, then fell flatly across the young girls cheek with a loud smack. The girl’s cheek reddened as she tried to choke back an incoming onslaught of tears. It was not her intent to stalk anyone. She simply wanted to carry on with the other children and mind her own business.

The older woman grabbed a pair of nearby kitchen shears and pulled the young girl closer. The young girl cried in protest as she tried but failed to release herself from the woman’s bony grasp. Sunlight filtered through the nearby kitchen window, causing the kitchen shears to gleam in a malevolent manner. Hot tears fled from the young girl’s blue eyes down the expanse of her once-fleshy cheeks as she waited in fright of the woman’s intentions.

The shears began to snip and snap repeatedly as the young girl squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Golden locks of hair fell to the kitchen tile floor alongside the splattered drops of the young girl’s salty tears. Before long, the young girl’s head felt immensely lighter as she opened her reddened eyes to see the limp mass of golden hair strewn about her dirt-stricken feet.

“There, just try and seduce my husband now that you look like a boy,” the woman squawked in triumph as she grabbed a nearby broom, “Now clean up the mess you’ve made.”

As the woman stormed away, the young girl knelt and gathered the remnants of her golden crown into a rusted dustpan. The girl sniffled and dried her face on her tattered gown. Even though she was now a few inches less than the person she had been before, her spirit still remained intact. In the basement below, her friend Mr. Crackers would be waiting for her, no matter how she looked.

After sweeping away her dismembered locks, the young girl retreated to the basement, carrying a small piece of molding bread that she had tucked away inside of her gown. Away from the piles of dusty storage boxes and looming cobwebs, a nest of dirty rags and towels sat in a far corner of the room.

The young girl placed the bread near a hole burrowed into the nest of cloth and waited for Mr. Crackers to poke his narrow, whiskered face out of its recesses.

Just as expected, a tawny rat poked its flickering whiskers from the cloth-laden hole and nibbled at the bread vigorously. The rat sat in comfort filling its hunger-stricken stomach as the young girl ran her thin index finger through its short hair.

“You’ve been such a loyal friend,” the girl said as she looked at the rat admiringly, “Mrs. Berkowitz has been relentless towards me lately. I suspect her relations with her husband are strained at present.”

The young girl paused in thought, and then ran her fingers through her recently shortened hair. She had no need for the long hair to begin with, but it was Mrs. Berkowitz’s anger and desperation that she was frightened of. There was no telling what lengths the distressed woman would take to steal her husband’s attention.

The young girl accompanied Mr. Crackers a bit longer, staring at him longingly before returning to her humble bedroom to rest.

* * * * *

Children clattered along the halls of the orphanage loudly as they raced to the dinner table. Little feet pattered spastically as they nearly tripped over each other, eager for the coming meal.

The young blonde girl perked up from her bed, well aware that she hadn’t eaten in ages. Her stomach growled in anger as if to protest that she had shared her meager supply of bread with a common house rat.

The girl crawled from her bed, sticking her feet into a pair of hole-ridden slippers and followed the hallway clatter down to the dining room on the first floor.

Mrs. Berkowitz was dressed in one of her finer gowns, serving a depressing gray porridge to the children already seated at the table. Some of them even had the audacity to wrinkle their noses beneath her menacing view. The frenzied woman ladled spoons of gray slush into various ceramic bowls, causing an image akin to plopping mud. The young girl licked her lips with hunger despite the food’s unappetizing presentation and started to sit at the table.

As the girl began to seat herself at the dining table, Mrs. Berkowitz snapped in frustration, “You neglected your chores today, so you’re not sitting with us tonight. There’s a bowl of food for you in the kitchen!”

The woman pointed her porridge-covered ladle towards the kitchen, letting a few drops fall onto the rug below. The children at the table giggled while they reached for spoons and elbowed each other playfully.

The young girl sighed as she retreated to the kitchen. As she flicked on the light, she saw a single can sitting on the kitchen island. Peering into the can, the young girl saw dregs of chicken broth left over from the woman’s cooking charades.

Swallowing her pride in a single gulp, the young girl raised the can to her lips and drank its remnants greedily.

“Now, that simply isn’t enough nutrition for a growing woman of your age,” a man’s voice said from behind the young girl.

Dropping her ill-stocked can of soup, the young girl turned on heel to see Mr. Berkowitz in the kitchen doorway with his eyebrows raised in a disapproving manner.

“Good God Felicity, what happened to your hair?” Mr. Berkowitz asked as his arm outstretched towards the young girl’s face.

Instinctively, Felicity slapped the man’s hand away, nearly regretting that she had done so. Mr. Berkowitz was the man of the house, but he was hardly present enough to see the malcontent behavior that his wife had been inflicting upon young Felicity. It was hardly his fault, or perhaps it was his fault for neglecting his jealous wife.

“I umm…I appreciate your concern Mr. Berkowitz but, my nutrition nor appearance hardly concerns you. You have plenty of work on your plate as it is.”

Mr. Berkowitz smiled meekly behind his thick-framed glasses. He had always been considerate towards the orphans who traveled his once-childless hallways. It was hardly a secret that the Berkowitz couple had never had their own children.

“Some leftovers of mine are in the fridge. Please help yourself to them and go to bed. I’ll help my wife clean whatever dishes remain of dinner.”

Felicity smiled sheepishly and nodded towards Mr. Berkowitz. After grabbing a sizable plate of leftovers from the fridge, the young girl raced up to her bedroom to fill her face. Her mind was so scarce of nutrition, she hardly noticed the marker scrawled on the saran wrap cover of the leftovers that read, “For my dear hubby.”

After eating to her heart’s content, Felicity cracked her bedroom window open, staring out into the cool night and feeling pleasant for the first time in awhile. The soft lull of the wind danced against nearby trees, feathering each and every browning, autumn leaf as Felicity began to lose herself to oncoming sleep.

She flung herself onto her small, twin-sized bed and forgot in an instant that a plate belonging to Mr. Berkowitz sat openly exposed in her bedroom chamber.