Nothing Gold Can Stay

Chapter One

Rae woke with a start, her breast shuddering. She was still cocooned in the musty sheets which had held her as she sobbed herself to sleep the night before. Choking out a strangled sob, she swiped away a clump of tangled hair which had plastered itself to her forehead using her sweat. Her heart was racing, she realised, as she sucked in small gasps quickly, before releasing a great WHOOSH of air that she hadn't realised she was holding. In her mind's eye, the events from last night replayed.

Merciless flames that cackled mockingly, jeering at the vulnerable young girl who recoiled from them, only to find that her back would be met by the same.

Suddenly, Rae felt as though the mothball laden duvet that had only seconds ago been cradling her, was penning her in against the mattress. The panicking girl tried to escape. She writhed against the eiderdown, trying desperately to free herself. She rolled off and onto carpeted floor with a thud.

'This must be how a punctured balloon feels', she thought, as the oxygen was rudely thrown out of her lungs.

Jolting upright, her captors fell around her ankles. Flinching as quilted cotton met raw flesh, she gingerly picked herself up and away from the bedlinen. Her heels were still sore, and she noticed stubborn pieces of gravel that were still embedded into her soft skin. Each step made her heels feel as though they had erupted into millions of flam-

No.

That was just- inconsiderate, no. Cruel, not quite. Despicable, completely and truly.

With a significantly less amount of care compared to previously, Rae kicked away the floral offenders and stumbled her way across a maze of jumble sale furniture to the other wall. She clenched her jaw each time her tender flesh met splintering wood, and that was most definitely not a whimper that escaped her pursed lips when a particularly sensitive toe was rammed headfirst into one French Oak dresser.

As she looked up and around her, watering blue-grey eyes were met by two doors. The larger of the two was, she assumed, the front door. Hoping that her judgement was correct, Rae pushed open the door to her right timidly, and blundered in. She fumbled around in the darkness, tugging when her shivering fingers grasped a cord. The flickering lighting overhead began to whir into action- clearly, the owners of the motel were determined to save on electricity, and were New World, eco-friendly hippies- or maybe, they were just misers, a less optimistic and more rational part of her brain added. Then again, it wasn't as if the bathroom was one that anyone would- or should- want to see.

All thoughts of dodgy lighting were pushed aside when the room came into view.

It was a good thing that she hadn't been planning on staying for long.

The mould encrusted bath in the corner offended her. Light streamed in through cracks in a grimy narrow window above a toilet that clearly hadn't seen a bottle of Domestos.

Above a cracked porcelain basin, perched a mirror coated with a layer of God-knows-what.

She peered into it.

A freckle dusted face framed by a shock of auburn hair stared back.

Rae had never felt more alone.