Tick tock goes the clock. One minute passes. Time means nothing. Tick tock. It just brings hope. Hope that you will lose. Hope that will break you. Tick tock. Life's never fair. A spark that burns so bright will never last. She should have known. Tick tock. Hope is useless. Fate is cruel. She used to believe in it. She's paid the price. Now she trusts no one, not even herself. No one would have imagined. Only she knew the truth. And with the truth comes a deal. She lost everything. But she now knew the truth. The world that she had always thought was not true. It was completely false. She shouldn't have done anything. She shouldn't have let curiosity take over her completely. Self-control. Tick tock goes the clock. And so goes your life. When the light faded, the world was consumed in darkness. A spark that could have turned into a raging wall of anger or she could just walk away, leave everything she used to know. And she did just that. She left. Alone.
13 April 2002. The sun shone down on the house and filtered through the windows of the baby pink bedroom. A young girl jumped out of bed excitedly and dashed out of her bedroom as quickly as her little legs could carry her. She halted to a stop in front of an oak door and anxiously knocked on the wood, standing on her toes to reach for the doorknob which she obviously could not reach. Her soft dark curls bounced off her shoulders as she leaped back in enthusiasm as a beautiful lady with warm chocolate brown hair and chestnut eyes unlocked the door and picked the little girl up. A man with the same dark hair and sea green eyes smiled at the women and wrapped an arm around her. The girl has always been the joy of their life, the pride of their world. She was their sunshine through rainy days. An innocent smile from her would brighten up their day. They would never imagine this was the day her life would change forever.
" Sandra, come on. Let's get breakfast." The women laughed as she carried the young girl down the stairs. The girl pouted and squirmed in her mother's arm. At the bottom of the stairs, she broke free of her mother's grasp and ran towards the chimney and looked under it. The couple laughed as the girl came out with a sad look on her face.
" Santa didn't leave me anything." She whispered. The women laughed, a sound that was music to the ears , and scooped her up.
"Santa only comes on Christmas, Sandra. He can't come cause it is too hot in summer for him to. His reindeers will fall in through our roof and on top of you!" She said while tickling the girl. She giggled.
" Come on," She gestures at Sandra." Time for cake!"
The girl celebrated her birthday on that day with her parents. Also the last day she would spend them. As the day came to a close, her mother started to prepare dinner while her father went to the bedroom to do some work. She was left alone in the living room playing with the dolls she got for her birthday. As she had a tea party with them, a shiny object in the backyard caught her eye through the transparent sliding glass. Her green eyes shone with a glint of mischief against the moonlight. Without asking for permission, she slowly advanced towards the object. She realized it was a wrapper for a firework rocket. Beside it was a box containing crayon-like sticks with red tips. Were they to color with? She thought as she took one and ran it across the surface of the box to see if her prediction is correct. To her horror, a flame appeared on the red tip. She immediately let go of the match stick. On top of the box with the other matchsticks inside. Flames shot up and flickered menacingly at Sandra, who was choking back tears. Just then, the tip of the towering wall of flame lingered around the curtains flying with the wind. The tongues of angry red spread as fast as wildfire, which it is. She let out a strangled cry, which drew the notice of her mother. At the sight of the rapidly spreading fire and her daughter in life-threatening danger, she couldn't bare to leave her yet she couldn't reach her.
" RYAN!" She shouted-whispered as she stood rooted to the spot. As the girl's father walked down the stairs, his eyes widened and he rushed over to his wife in the kitchen and saw the horrific scene of his own daughter getting engulfed in flames. He flew into action, grabbing a damp cloth and trying to put out the fire. But it was way too huge. They were late. Time. Useless. If he had one more minute…
He hugged his wife and smiled at her." Don't worry," He held back tears." We'll be fine."
"I don't care if I'm okay or not. But look at our daughter. She's so young. She has a bright future ahead of her. If she just dies now…" She couldn't bring herself to continue.
" She'll be fine. She's the strongest girl I've ever seen" He nodded." She will survive."
Sandra was not sure she would survive. She was 6. She was trapped. So she did the last thing she could do. She curled up into a ball on the dried grass and felt the intense heat prickling on her skin. Her lungs hurt so bad from all the smoke she was breathing in. She was tearing so badly and soot was smudged on her pale and tiny face. Suddenly, she saw the light at the end of the tunnel. She was there. The last thing she felt before she was swept into oblivion was two strong arms wrap around her…
"MOM!" She woke up with her mother's name in her mouth. She was in a white room with the scent of medicine lingering in her nose. Heaven? She thought as she got out of bed to find needles and electrode dangling from her arms and legs. More like hospital. Her parents! She thought suddenly and started screaming her heads off for someone to let her go. Nurses and doctors rushed in to calm her down and do checks on her but she struggled against their grasp. Finally, the nurses grabbed her arm and sedated her with a jab that stings real bad.
The next time she woke up, she was in a common hospital room where other patients were living in. She looked away and tried to recall.
" Sandra?" A voice asked cautiously. She opened my eyes to see a nurse with black hair and piercing black eyes." My name is Ann. I am your nurse. I'll need to check on you today, are you alright with that?" With a muddled mind and a tired body, she simply agreed and let her take over. She did a couple simple exercises and started scribbling furiously on her clipboard. When she was done, Sandra fell back into the bed and went back through a couple days through her mind.
" How long have I been out?"
" Not too long. About 3 weeks though."
" What?!" She was sort of astonished at her reply. Why wasn't her parents here anyway? Then it hit her. No, no ,no, no. This was so not happening to her. OMG. No.
"My parents?"
"What?"
" My parents! Where are they? Where are my parents!" Sandra shouted at her. She just looked stunned and looked away whilst clearing her throat.
" Your parents…They didn't make it. I'm sorry, Sandra. We will be sending you to an orphanage after you are discharged. I'm sure you'll love-"She didn't hear her finishing. She just slammed her head back on the metal railing by her white bad and knocked herself out.
Finally, on the 4th week of the incident, Sandra woke with a splitting headache and a bad feeling in her gut. Ann strode in and she plucked out the clipboard from the foot of Sandra's bed and wrote something on it before replacing it and glancing at Sandra.
"We will be discharging you in a week's time to the orphanage. And whenever you are ready, you may come back to collect your parents' body and plan their funeral…" She felt a tear slid down my cheeks and onto my palm. She couldn't afford to cry. But she did. Cried till she felt numb. And then she stopped crying as she promised she would. She did all the checks she was told to do and ate all she had to. But she had lost her will to live. No matter how much food they force fed her, she wouldn't be able to continue living. She wasn't strong, like her parents thought. She had let them down. When the hospital discharged her from the ward, she was not ready to leave yet. She was not ready to meet her new home or her new 'parents'. But she was forced to. For 8 years she lived in fear and loneliness everyday, not looking forward to life. She made friends, but they all left her for new parents and she was yet alone again, lying in a dark corner feeling numb and emotionless. It was as if she was already a corpse. It hurt to see this once cheerful and young girl look so dead and limp. Sandra was rejected too many times in live. After 6 orphanages and14 foster homes, she saw they end. The worst came. She actually wished she was never alive. She wanted to DIE. That was the worst part of it all. She was like the living dead every single day, eat school eat again sleep. She was already dead inside. The light had extinguished. Till 14, she was called to the court to testify if one of her relatives were found. It was her uncle. She moved in to stay with him in his tiny shack at the edge of the city of Vegas. When she got used to living with him, she actually had a goal in her life. She gained a new will to live because of him. Her uncle, Jack, was a criminal who was constantly chased by police. Her life was unrest. For Sandra's sake, who was 16, he stopped performing crimes and dumped his partners in crime to take up a taxi driver job. She was in college by 17 when Jack had enough money to send her and buy a new house that was big enough to house both of them.
Maybe she was wrong. Life wasn't wrong. Time was not useless. Hope was not cruel. Life was not able to rewind but it could continue. Time made a difference in the way she was living right now. Hope gave her a new chance to live again like before. And then a day came when Sandra's life would change once again during one of Jack's normal shifts…
Hey guys, thanks for your reviews on my other story, Burnt, and I will also be updating on that ASAP. I won't be able to update that often cause this my last year in primary school and I need to study real hard for it. I know this is a really crappy chapter but I'll try to do better next chapter. It will be when Jack and Sandra meet Seth and Sara and it will be a lot nicer, I promise. I will try to update at least one chapter per 2 weeks if I can. Do look out for my other account shared with my best friends who is mysteriouswriter_ami and 2 others who do not have an account. It will be a PJO/Hunger Games fanfiction so if you like those type of fanfictions, watch out for it! I'll be giving you it's name after we've posted it. We'll each be writing a Character's POV. I'm Willow and Ryder, new characters and demigods.