My sore eyes search for the door, like looking for a certain twig of hay in a haystack, the wooden barriers seem much alike.

I step away from the priest who prays while the families of the victims morn and weep.
To join in with their sorrows is not my business nor my duty.

The stars crack in the sky almost as if it were too painful to shine. I wince as my ankle turns and I stumble blindly forward.

An errand boy curses me as I fall and knock into him.
He is no older than me, but he has shoes and a jacket, a boy with a family of sorts.

Apologising and righting myself I continue on my path, I'm near to the allyway's end now. Just a little further and I'll be there.

It was midnight when I found the door, the one I was looking for. I had been told my Uncle lived here and that he would take me in this Sunday.

I did not want to be alone, not after the black death took my family.
So I ran, and kept on running till I found his house.

Only to find that the man who opend the door was not my Uncle, but a psychopath who wanted to kill me for the pleasure.

He wanted my mother as his own wife, so he took out his anger, first on my father, and now on me.

I gave a cry as he grabbed my arm and twisted it in an unnatural direction.

I screamed as I heard rather than felt a dull crack as my arm snapped, my bones grating inside the flesh.

He dragged me across the stone floor of the bakery. This was not his home, but he did not care.

I smelt the thick air of smoke and felt heat on my now useless arm. The fire was still burning, it was hot and too close.

I screamed again as the man threw me into the fire and pinned me down. I kicked out in fear and anger, my thin and bruised legs now burning.

My hair had singed, my dirty clothes had fed the fire and now I was in flames. The man kept me still but as I lashed at him I sent embers flying out of the hearth.

The man left me alone, and escaped. I watched the fire around me grow, the pain and heat now intolerable.

As the hot embers I had spread set the wooden house alight, all I could see was flames.

I heard shouting and panic from the family who lived here as they tried to escape the fire consuming the house.

They didn't notice me.