The Persistence of Memory

Chapter Three

Cessair POV

"Hello love, are you the child that Ms.Chester called about?" A young woman at the front desk asked rubbing at her eyes, the dark circles underneath her eyes a tell-tale sign of extreme fatigue. Her sickly pale skin contrasted greatly against the chipped paint of the navy blue walls. She wore a short low-cut black dress and an off-white colored apron that appeared to be stained with some kind of murky white looking substance that she didn't seem to really care enough to try and clean. Her dark smudged make-up only accentuated how horribly tired she looked and made her appear to be way older than she probably was. Without it, she could easily be in her late 20's, which was near unheard of as a matron.

"Oh uh. Yeah." I replied after a while of staring.

"Well then, my name is Elizabeth Stone. Welcome home. I'm gonna need you to fill this sheet out since it looks like Ms. Chester already booked it." She handed me a plastic cup that looked like it was filled with beautiful flowers I had never seen before. I was extremely excited how nice of them to give you a housewarming present... Oh, wait these are just pens with fake flowers glued onto them.

Slightly disappointed I sat on the torn up beige couch next to a nice enough looking old man and began to work on the document.

"Excuse me, mister, what does SSN stand for?" I asked the skinny old man.

"That's where your social security number goes." He replied nonchalantly flipping through what appeared to be a pinup magazine.

"What?"

"Your so-cial se-cur-ity," He replied louder this time. "fucking stupid kids these days," he grumbled.

"Ok...? Thank you, sir."

Social Security? What the hell is a social security number is it like 911 for when you're in an awkward situation? Why didn't anyone tell me this existed!?

I excitedly filled out the blank space with 'yes please!'

I had a bit trouble understanding a few other acronyms like DOB but I didn't want to annoy the old guy any further so I just filled those out with the word 'none'. I think I did pretty good.

I returned the clipboard to the tired lady along with the pen decorated to look like a sunflower.

"I'm done Ms..."

"Ms. Stone."

"OH! I'm so sorry please forgive me Ms..."

"Ms. Stone." She tried to hide her laughter. "My name is Ms. Stone"

"Ah.."

"Follow me, sweetie. I'll take you to Mr. Watson, he's the benefactor, " She stood.

Hesitantly I followed her down the lengthy corridor her heels clacked ominously against the marble flooring. She almost looked like a terrifying vampire leading me to my doom. The orphanage was dark and had an underlying stench of mold and rotten eggshells.

'Gross.'

She abruptly stopped in front of a door with brass plating that spelled out 'W A T S O N' in big capital letters. Ms. Stone softly knocked 3 times before opening the creaky door.

A large puff of strange smelling smoke flew out the instant she opened the door.

"M- Mr. Watson!" Ms. Stone coughed out.

"WHAT THE FUCK DID I TELL YOU ABOUT DOING THIS TYPE OF SHIT IN THE ORPHANAGE!!" She screamed as she aired the small room out.

"YOU'RE THE ONE IN CHARGE HERE. COULD YOU FUCKING ACT LIKE IT? JESUS CHRIST AT THIS POINT IM THE ONE RUNNING THIS PLACE!"

"Ahh, calm down Lizzy the kids are sleeping you're going to wake them." Mr. Watson said in a croaky voice, taking another long drag. The smoke had a horrible stench that reminded Cessair vaguely of an animal corpse, skunk spray, and cilantro with an unmistakable underlying stench of pine. I had never known that such a vile smell existed.