This winter was a cold and unforgiving one, with frost almost making the grass go moist and crisp. Two black trainers crunched on the cold lifeless ground. A girl, with a cigarette in her mouth, clutched her coat tightly to keep the life from completely escaping from her chest. She had dark blue watery eyes and chestnut matted hair from the years of hardship and being on the run from her totalitarian country. She wore stonewashed grey Annette’s which stuck to her like a third layer of skin because of the dampness that invaded her like a foreign enemy. Her face was determined yet caring at the same time with an element of compassion and freedom in her eyes. She struggled through the blizzard holding her beanie tightly. She puffed the cigarette one last time before she dropped it with its ashes in the snow.
Annette watched the cigarette fall into the snow, she often thought she was like a cigarette, loved one moment, readily enjoyed, until one moment the doctor says you can’t have them anymore. She always thought this comforted her, having something in common with something that was going to kill you. Annette wiped the snow off her brows, she wasn’t meant to be here, she was an outsider, well THEY said she was an outsider, she still considered herself part of this place.
The snow let off, the blizzard calmed; she could see where she was going now, a cottage, lying in front of her. Dilapidated from the front, it looked like it could have had better years. Annette looked around; snow covering everything in sight, one little light came from the window, a strong yellow flame in a cold lifeless land. Annette walked up the path, carefully, quietly, the person inside mustn’t know she was here; otherwise she would be in trouble. “It wasn’t always like this,” She thought.
The cottage, years ago in the summer, was always surrounded by hills and rolling green fields with cows grazing in them. Annette would always roam these fields of green and bask in the warmth of the weak amber coloured sunlight, always chewing on a stem of grass she picked from ancient stone wall a few metres from where her house was. Annette always remembered the crunch of the grass as it gave way to her running figure as she made an unending mark in the vast sea of green. She remembered the grass stains on her dress that following morning in which her aunt would scorn her for because of the endless lying in the sun. The memories filled Annette’s mind like a warm fire to a cold musty room, she was
quick to banish these painful memories to her subconscious, never to surface again. Annette looked around the dead, cold and lifeless land, and told herself, like the land, the memories had died as well.
Annette crept past the front of the cottage, avoiding the window not to alert the occupants inside. She walked past the side gate and climbed over the fence. The back garden was just as dank and dead as the front, with practically everything in a sea of snow. Annette pressed her back against the wall, it was cold as ice. She felt the warmth of her body get sucked onto the cold lifeless surface as her back braced itself for the impending temperature change, her nerves tingled on the back of her winter coat. “Shit”, she muttered, shocked over the cold. She fumbled in her pockets for a lighter and pulled out a cigarette with her other shaking hand; she lit the small glowing stick, smoke rising into the blizzard, she brought the cigarette to her mouth and took one large heave, the warm musty sensation in her throat was relieving.
Annette slowly walked up to the door, heart racing, she had been away from this country for a long time, and she travelled a long way to. She felt so alienated when she crossed the border, bundled into the back of the boot hearing the muffles of the armed security. The stench of alcohol and cigarettes invading her nostrils, even when she was walking around the local towns asking for lifts she always felt the eyes of the locals burning into the back of her head grimly, feeling decades of anger and pain from being ruled under totalitarian government in their eyes. Even when Annette walked on the soil, her soil, she felt a pang of alienation and detachment fill her, something had changed, like as if the life from everywhere had gone and replaced by a grim bleak shade of everything else.
Annette picked the lock on the cottage door, inside was a shattered soul of a woman. The woman was middle aged with the effects of decades of suffering evidenced on her face, giving a certain fatigue about her. Her dark watery blue eyes where an irritated pink, she was crying. Annette looked at her, peering through the gap in the door. Her mother was crying and the tears flooded the table just like the invading suppressed memories in Annette’s head.
Three years earlier
Annette held herself tightly, slowly eating the cereal in her old family home. Annette glanced at the old roman clock; it was 9am- school would start soon. Everything was peaceful, with the only noise being the steady muffled tap of the clock or the gentle drip of the tap from the kitchen sink, she embraced this silence, closing her
eyes and holding on to the everlasting peace. Suddenly, this peace was interrupted when the ground below her feet began to shudder violently; the water in her cup began to vibrate with its tiny ripples emanating from the centre. Annette opened her eyes abruptly, she looked through the window, silhouettes of men and large tanks charged past, leaving a once carefully groomed neighbourhood into a mess of bullet riddled doors and crater filled roads. Annette immediately crouched down onto the carpet, feeling the ancient roughness against her feet. She could hear the occasional sound of gunfire, and the groans of a fallen soldier, the concerned shouting a sergeant yells to his men, the pulling of the pin of a grenade. The sounds kept ringing in her ears, the sounds of a bloody revolution.
Annette sat there, against the wall, hands clasped to her ears. Tears were streaming down her face; she kept choking on sorrow deep inside her. She was so confused, what was going on? Was it a war, a revolution? All she wanted was the satisfying peace and safety she experienced just half an hour before. Then Annette’s turmoil was brought to abrupt stop. The bullet riddled front door burst open, from it came her mother. Blood was pouring from the nose with black rubble smeared across her cheeks and her once styled brown hair was now matted and tied in knots pointing in different directions.
“Annette! thank god you’re ok!” She exclaimed with a hint of concern. She crouched down and embraced Annette tightly, immediately letting go to allow Annette to talk. “Mother…what’s happening-I don’t understand” Annette choked, trying to regain her composure from the tears. Her mother was quick to answer, “It’s a revolution, a change, a bad change, a change you don’t belong in”. “But I don’t want change, I just want the peace” Annette protested. “We all want peace dear, but sometimes change is imminent”. At that moment her mother broke down “you have to go now, it’s not safe here” She sobbed. Tears started streaming down her face, eventually being absorbed into the ancient brown carpet she crouched on. Annette couldn’t remember much from that point except for holding her mother’s hand tightly, running from the soldiers while narrowly missing bullets, her bloodstained dress dragging against the cratered tarmac, thrown into the back of the car, crying over the unfortunate news of her captured father. Her mind suddenly raced to the scene of her mother and herself at the airport, her mother holding her tightly. She always remembered the echoing words her mother said to her just before leaving for the plane “no matter where you are, don’t forget who you are, always stay true to yourself” and with that She broke down crying on the floor.
Annette had little time to react as she was ushered away to her plane.
Annette’s eyes started to water, she knew she couldn’t go back, live here, not now anyway. Her mum was still sitting at the kitchen table crying, clutching a photo of her young and only daughter. It was of them holding hands together outside the townhouse, taken only days before the revolution. Annette looked out at the sad scene; the kitchen was dirty and dank with pots and pans crammed in the sink from the previous meal. Annette sat there, contemplating whether to approach her mother or stay put, two sides of her mind warring over each other just like the war that ruined her life all those years before. At that moment Annette plucked enough courage to approach her mother in this small, ruined, insignificant cottage. Her mother stood up and wiped her tears away, Annette heard footsteps, and she contemplated on running but stayed put.
A teenager walked into the room, only a few years younger than Annette, he shared the same dark watery blue eyes just like her mother, just like her. Another man walked into the kitchen just after the boy, an older yet strong man, he heavily resembled the boy. Her mother walked up to the man and embraced him passionately, with the boy following suit. Annette’s eyes opened, her mouth wide open, the cigarette fell from her lips and then onto the cold wooden floor. The cigarettes small cinders glowed like a small fire. A deep sadness yet strange optimism stifled inside Annette, she realised at that moment that like a cigarette someone had just given her up. Annette sadly chuckled at the irony.