witness [ malia tate. ]

prologue

[ EICHEN HOUSE, BEACON HILLS, CALIFORNIA . 2007 ]

   "Miss Sanders, please remove all items of clothing into this bin," A nurse, dressed in sterile blue demanded. The adult and a kid stood in an empty girls shower room.

   The 11-year-old girl looked up through bleary eyes at the towering figure, her innocent piercing blue eyes covered in a sheet of tears. She blinked a couple times, no words being processed through her brain. Sniffling did no help to the uneven, quiet sobs that escaped the girls lips.

   "Miss Sanders!" The nurse yelled. She grabbed the young girls arms, yanking the crying mess forward, "Listen up, child. You get undressed right this second!"

   The girl began crying even harder, gasping for small breaths in between sobs. She wanted to get away. She wanted to escape. This meanmeanmean- mean lady.

   The adult sighed heavily and got up with a grunt, "Your choice, you ignorant child." She began yanking tattered and bloody pieces of clothing off the kid, emitting yelps of pain and surprise from the kid.

   Incomprehensible screams that came from the little girl's mouth soon began to gargle up into a mess as she was then forced under a jet spray of icy cold- coldcoldcold water. It hurt. It hurt so sososososo- so much. The blood wouldn't get off of her! It wouldn't it couldn't. Unbeknownst to her, the first few seconds under drowned away all the sticky blood. But the little girl still felt it. She was drowning in blood. 

   The 11-year-old girl then decided. She hated cold. She hated the color baby blue. She hated blood. She hated the nurses. She hated mean people. She hated everyone in this stupid place. She hated Eichen House. She hated everyone and everything about it. Including herself.

   And she knew she couldn't get out of this stupid place. This stupidstupidstupid place. She had nobody. No one to get her out. Everyone was gone. Including herself.