Entangled Strings Of Fate

CHAPTER 1: Where's Everyone

The sun had risen, and the beautiful blue sky was dotted with shades of red, yellow, and orange down the horizon. The wind was blowing in gusts, caressing the sea waves before sharing the scent of seawater with the coast. That's how it passed before touching a wooden wind chime, creating a sweaty, gentle chime.

Claire toggles her side while sleeping after hearing it. Her long brown hair covered her face as she shifted her side. She glides her hand over her face to shift her hair back.

But, because her bed was quite close to the window, she becomes annoyed when the sun shines directly in her face through it; she frowns, opens one eye slightly, and grumbles, "No, why is it already morning? I don't want to get up now."

She starts wondering, why her room was designed this way, and why it gets so bright in her room at such an early hour and thinks to call Granny, to cover the windows with drapes, so she can continue sleeping.

And she calls her, in her enticing voice, "Granny...Granny."

Granny, who is in her late middle age, but still a lovely woman, she's the butler of the house. Granny, whose real name is Mrs. Sandra Smith, who's a widow, actually she is the granny of Jane, Claire's best friend, she's two years older than her and lives in the mansion with her mom Sofie, who takes care of the kitchen stuff.

Granny takes care of Claire and her family, like her own. She has been here since Claire's mother was pregnant with Eric, Claire's elder brother. When Claire was growing up, she saw Jane and Eric calling her Granny, following them, Claire began affectionately calling Mrs. Smith 'Granny.'

To her surprise, Granny didn't even reply let alone come into her room. If it had been any other day, she'll come barging in and yell at her for not sleeping early and then call her to close the window.

It has become their daily routine since Claire's summer vacation started. Every night, she intended to close the windows, but she kept forgetting.

Claire waited for a few more minutes for her to come but she didn't.

She calls for her one more time, "Granny."

"Granny... can you please come over here," she phrases it nicely.

"Why is she not responding", she thought, which made her open her eyes. She reaches out her hand to grab the clock from the table to check the time. "It's not even 7 right now. I don't want to get up now."

The mere thought of it annoyed her, but she clearly can't sleep calmly because of the sunrays.

She removes the pillow from her head suddenly but sunrays coming from the window make her blind for a moment, turning her head slightly and closing her eyes again, she gets up from her bed while yawning.

Her feet touched the soft peach colored carpet as she stood up and started walking like a zombie with her eyes closed but she couldn't walk far as she fell with a thud sound on the vinyl floor, which made all her sleepiness go away and made her eyes wide open.

"Aww...my head, what kind of morning is it?" She utters slowly with a troubled face.

As she tried to get up, she felt a tug on her leg. She looked around to figure out what was holding her back.

It didn't take long for her to realize that she had gotten herself tangled up in some colorful yarn. She couldn't help but laugh at herself, thinking, "Thank goodness no one walked in the room, else I'd be getting an earful."

The yarn was strewn all over around her cream velvet platform bed, which had a curved headboard and footboard. It reminded her that last night she had been working on a project for her summer vacation, and because she wanted to complete it fast, she worked until late and ended up falling asleep without cleaning up the mess.

"I need to clean this, but first I have to free myself," She pulls herself up and sits down. She attempts to free herself from the yarn by pulling it, but she fails to do it because of its tenacity.

In the end, she looks for the scissors, which she left somewhere on the floor last night.

"Where did it go?" She thinks for a moment and then remembers leaving it around her bed.

She leaned over to look for them beneath the bed and voila! she finds it exactly in the middle of the Bed. Extending her hand, she grasped the scissor, and at last, she released herself by cutting it all from her feet.

But the process of herself getting out of the yarn made her carpet look messy with cut out yarn pieces. For a moment she thought to let it be and move out, but then she remembered the earful she had just received two days ago about cleanness in her room.

'Cleaning,' With that in mind, she stood up and within a few minutes she made rough rounds of the rest of the strewn yarn and threw away small cut out pieces of the yarn in the trash which she hand-picked and kept the rounded yarns in one corner inside the jute basket and checked around one more time in case there was any left out piece, but there wasn't, so she chuckled with satisfaction as she solved this problem.

She rubbed her eyes to remove boogers from them. While rubbing her eyes her sight falls on the poster which a friend of hers had gifted her before the summer vacation. It was a poster calendar which she personalized for Claire, she hung it on the opposite side of the bed over a cabinet. A date was encircled with green paint on it with pictures of Claire.

A smile formed on Claire's face looking at that, but soon it faded away.

"It's my birthday, I turned 13 today, I am in my teens now," she felt delighted at first but thinking that no one came to wish her made her feel disappointed, "That's not fair," She breathed out flaring her nostrils and went back to sit on her bed tilting her head down, she crosses her hand one over another, and thinks, "Did everyone forget my birthday? how can they do this?"

She keeps on sitting like that for a while, and notices that it is awfully silent outside.

She looks at the clock, on the nightstand it's already past eight. Why can't she hear anyone talking outside? As folks there will be chit-chatting and giggling around doing their work, after contemplation she decided that she should go out and see what's going on as she felt that something is seriously wrong today.

Coming out of her room, she starts to call out for her mom and dad and people in the mansion but not a single person replied to her calling, so she went towards west wing of the mansion to her brothers room, she knocked once and opened the door but he wasn't there but it wasn't a shocker for her, being a teenager he's always out wandering.

She went ahead and turned right to look for her parents in their room, which was at the end of the west wing of the first floor, but they weren't in their room as well.

If it would have been some other day than her father "William" would be getting ready and talking with "Zoey" her mother, where most of the time Zoey tells him to take care of himself and not to get too indulged in his work.

At which he used to nod his head and would reply with a simple, "Okay."

Even though he seems like a workaholic, always busy with deadlines and tasks, his family always comes first for him.

For him, work is all about the mind—the smart, logical part of his life—while his family is where he finds warmth and love that fuels him. Balancing these two crucial elements, he navigates his responsibilities with a deep commitment to both his career and the cherished moments spent with loved ones.

"Mom dad, where are you guys?" She called them out again and still couldn't hear their voices.

She goes down and turns left to look for them in the living room, dining area and then in the kitchen. Neither of those places she finds them so she went out in the lawn and then towards the pool side, even there she couldn't find them.

Her parents, her brother Eric, Sofia, Mike, Thomas and Sandra, everyone was gone, not even her best Friend Jane was there.

Getting anxious by this she yelled, "Where the hell have you all gone?"