“ANNA! Get your butt out from under those covers and into this kitchen this instant!” A voice called from somewhere far away.

“Ughhhmmmm,” groaned the mass buried under the covers. There was some movement underneath the itchy fleece blanket, followed by stillness.

“Young lady, unless you want lashings immediately, you will attend to me when I call for you!” The shrill voice rang out again, sounding somewhat like nails on a chalkboard.

Or Ms. Whitney anytime she opened her mouth.

“I’m coming, geez, give me a second,” Anna yelled back.

There was some more stirring, followed by the uncomfortable blanket being tossed aside in a heap on the ground. She sat up but immediately regretted it. Upon rising, her head felt like it was going to split open and spots appeared before her eyes. I feel like crap, she thought to herself. Suddenly, the previous night's events came rushing back to her and her head began to hurt even more.

“It was all a dream, it had to be,” Anna muttered to herself.

There was no other explanation for the things she remembered seeing the night before. People shooting lights out of sticks? What else could it have been but a dream? But then, how did she get back to the orphanage?

Before she could give the events any more consideration, however, the bird downstairs squawked again, “I’m getting the lashing stick!”

“God, I’m coming, let me put some clothes on!” She called back in frustration.

Ignoring the throbbing in her head that was threatening to make her vomit, Anna swung her legs over the side of the bed. She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands hoping to make the spots of light go away but she was having no luck. Maybe she was having a stroke; perhaps that would explain the hallucinations she had experienced the night before. She looked down at herself and to make the whole thing weirder, she had somehow gotten into a pajama shirt which she definitely did not remember doing the night before. She stood up and made her way over to a heap of clothes on the floor near where she had tossed the blanket. Though she had washed them nearly a week ago, she hadn’t found the motivation to fold them or put them away yet. She briefly wondered about her leg, which no longer seemed to hurt. But of course it wouldn’t; it had all been a dream after all.

She grabbed a white button up shirt from the pile, along with the blue vest that all the kids at the orphanage were required to wear during the day. She changed into them but did not bother to change her pants. They may have been full of holes, but her other pairs weren’t in much better shape and she may not get the privilege of washing any of them again for at least a few weeks. Ms. Whitney didn’t like when they wasted water on such frivolous things as clean laundry. She looked around for her cargo jacket but noticed it was nowhere to be seen. Anna thought this was odd, but then remembered that she didn’t even recall coming home last night which was definitely a bigger mystery than where she would have taken her coat off once she got there. With a terrified start, she placed her hand to her chest, but immediately felt relief. The pendant that she always wore was still slung around her neck and though the metal was freezing against her skin, she was glad to know that she hadn’t misplaced that as well.

Anna took a quick glance at herself in the hanging mirror, attempting to brush her wily brown hair as best she could with her fingers. There was nothing for it; she had managed to tame the worst of it but without a brush there wasn’t much hope. The girls at the orphanage weren’t provided hair conditioner during shower time either which just made it all the more tangled and disheveled. She knew she would get reprimanded by Ms. Whitney for her clothes not being ironed and wrinkle-free. The Ladies of the orphanage were sticklers when it came to the dress code. The irony of the kids’ lack of actual dress pants was lost on the Ladies apparently. Anyways, they should have figured out by now that Anna wasn’t too bothered by being reprimanded with words. The lashes that accompanied the verbal reprimands weren’t exactly fun, however.

She gave herself one last look-over in the mirror, and though not even remotely satisfied with her appearance, she knew it would have to do. Well, I guess I should go see what the old bird wants, thought Anna. She opened the door and light from the hallway suddenly flooded the dim room. Just as she left, she made small notice that the other girls that shared the room with her were awake and gone already. Anna wasn’t too surprised by this however as it was pretty much a daily occurence. She made her way down the hallway, feeling the cold November chill that permeated the walls biting against her skin. She really wished she knew where she had left her jacket. The Ladies refused to turn the furnace on for anything warmer than a comfortable thirty two degrees outside, not counting Ms. Whitney’s office or the Ladies’ lounge area of course. The blank grey walls didn’t help to make the orphanage feel any warmer either. Even the light bulbs seemed to cast a dull, gray light from their glass shells, as if the warmth of their light was being sucked away just like her own. They did do a great job of highlighting the peeling paint on the walls and the lovely cobweb decor that littered the ceiling though. Anna rubbed her arms in an attempt to warm herself and hobbled warily towards the kitchen, descending the stairs down to the second, then the first floor of the orphanage. Upon entering the kitchen, she came face to face with Ms. Whitney in all her morning avian glory.

Anna didn’t refer to her as an old bird strictly out of love and affection for the orphanage matron. The woman truly did resemble a giant, withering, old grey bird. Her nose seemed too large to fit on her face, skinny but far longer and protruding than a person’s nose had any business being. Anna was honestly surprised she was able to hold her head up so high but had a theory that the thick grey bun that she always wore her hair in acted as a bit of a counterweight. Her lips were perpetually pierced tight together, as if she had just taken a bite of a particularly sour lemon. She was taller than most men and her beady, sunken eyes were seemingly all dark with no real trace of an iris in sight. As she usually did when she was preparing to yell at one of the kids, her hands were placed on her hips and her beak was stuck up slightly in the air.

“Well?” Said Ms. Whitney in a shrill voice, eyeing Anna up and down and tapping her foot impatiently, “explain yourself.”

“I’m not sure what you mean Ms. Whitney,” Anna said, attempting to sound as innocent as possible. While it was somewhat true that she wasn’t sure what Ms. Whitney was so angry about, that was simply because she had done a lot to possibly anger the Bird since the last time she had been scolded.

“Don’t feign ignorance with me you stupid child,” spat the matron, “You were in such a hurry to hide in your room after breaking curfew last night, that you decided to leave your jacket in the middle of the kitchen floor. And look what I just happened to find in your pocket when I went to pick it up this morning.”

She reached behind her and grabbed a cellophane wrapped snack cake that Anna now noticed was laying next to her jacket on the kitchen table. The cellophane had ruptured and the cake looked slightly squished, as if it had been sat on. Anna wanted to feel relief that the only jacket she owned had been located, but all she could feel was dread welling up in the pit of her stomach.

“Now I know you didn’t get this from the orphanage seeing as how we don’t keep this kind of junk on the premises and you damned sure don’t have the money to have bought it. That leads me to one conclusion: you stole it, didn’t you?”

She had posed it as a question but Anna knew better. Even if she had been innocent, Ms. Whitney had already decided it was stolen and her mind wasn’t being changed.

“Um, I found it,” Anna said, trying to sound as convincing as possible, “yeah, see, I took the trash out late last night, I had forgotten to do it earlier and I found it on the sidewalk near the dumpster. I figured someone must have dropped it on their way home from the store and they weren’t around for me to return it to, so I picked it up and must have forgotten it in my pocket. I was just so tired when I came in last night, you know, from taking the trash out, that I must have dropped my jacket on the floor. But I swear Ms. Whitney, I didn’t steal it. I would never do something so dishonest.”

She realized at this point that she was beginning to ramble and with each word the skeptical look on the Bird’s face was growing more and more unbelieving, so she shut up.

“Oh, really?” questioned Ms. Whitney pacing back and forth. She lifted Anna's jacket up to reveal several more snack cakes.

“You filthy liar of a child. I suppose you found a whole box did you?" She asked but before Anna could respond, she continued, "I don't believe a word of it. Quite frankly, I don't believe fifty percent of what you say and another fifty percent of what comes from your devious little mouth. You are a foul girl, a blight on this orphanage and on me. I'm sure you have stolen these, you selfish brat. I bet you wanted a sweet little treat all to yourself, thought you deserved it did you? You deserve lashings, whippings, yes that's what a troublemaker like you needs.” She stopped pacing and glared directly at Anna, who released the breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

This whole time, Anna had not so much as fidgeted nor blinked.

“Lucky for you, I have no proof, but I daresay your time of reckoning is fast approaching. Dress violations may not be enough to remove you from our care, but one way or another I will have you out of this institution and on the streets! Oh ho ho, there is proof that you are doing something felonious, you miscreant, and Ole Miss Whitney will be the one to find it and have you removed! The next time I see you, that shirt better be ironed or you’ll be cleaning the bathrooms with a toothbrush. Your toothbrush to be precise.” she said, sneering.

“But you did break curfew and for that you deserve some sort of punishment,” she said with a sick grin on her face.

She reached her hand towards Anna, who was expecting her to grab her shirt and drag her to where the Ladies kept the whipping sticks. Instead, her long, bony fingers closed around the chain wrapped around Anna’s neck and pulled. Anna felt the clasp break free from her skin.

“No!” Anna yelled, trying to grab the necklace, but Ms. Whitney held her hand out flatly to stop her.

“You live under my roof and so long as you continue to disobey me, you will continue to be punished. Seeing as how lashings don’t seem to get through to you, perhaps losing your only worldly possession might do the trick,” and with that, she turned and walked through the kitchen, down the hall, and into her office.

She slammed the door so hard behind her, the silverware on the table rattled.

Anna felt like her blood was boiling. For a moment, she considered marching into the Bird’s office and demanding she give her necklace back. She also considered breaking something; perhaps the dishes, or possibly one of the rickety wooden chairs that sat in the kitchen. But what good would that do? Then she would have lost her necklace and she would be getting lashings. She needed some fresh air, maybe that would calm her down some. She grabbed one of the ill-gotten cakes from the pile and made her way to the door in the main hall. She made sure to shut it behind her with quite as much force as Ms. Whitney had slammed her own door.

Anna stood on the porch for a moment, staring at the warped wood and derelict support beams. One corner of the porch's roof was sagging from old age. After a minute or two, Anna decided to walk to town. There wasn’t really much she could do there but the walk would do wonders for clearing her head and calming her down. It doesn’t even matter, she thought to herself. For a brief second, she played with the idea of just waiting until night time and sneaking into Ms. Whitney’s office to steal the necklace back once The Bird was asleep. But she quickly gave up on that plan; it would just make things worse once the matron noticed she had it back. Anna would just have to try and behave herself for a while. Hopefully Ms. Whitney would decide to give it back in exchange for Anna doing extra chores or something. It wasn’t likely, but at this point she didn’t have any better options.

She stomped down the front porch steps, hearing them creak and groan with every step. Like everything else in the orphanage, the porch was old and rickety and while it may have once been a bastion of beauty and craftsmanship, years of neglect had allowed it to fall into disrepair. The only time any kind of maintenance crew visited the orphanage was whenever something necessary broke, such as the time when the main sewer line had frozen and busted. Other than those few and far between emergency fixes, the Ladies seemed completely content to allow the building to die a slow and unremarkable death. The dirt driveway that led up to the orphanage connected to a gravel covered road that led straight into the town a few miles away. As Anna’s feet met the dirt, she let out a yell and kicked up a cloud of dust in frustration. It served no purpose, but it did make her feel a bit better.

She made her way down the driveway and onto the gravel road, muttering obscenities and vague threats about Ms. Whitney the whole way. What little sun that was attempting to shine through the overcast sky was quickly blocked by the tree canopy that spread out above the road. There was a good amount of forest that surrounded the land that the orphanage was built on, with very few breaks in the trees along the journey to town. The wind began to pick up, howling through the trees as it travelled. Anna quickly found herself wishing that she had had the forethought to grab her jacket from where Ms. Whitney had thrown it down before she stormed out, but she wasn’t going back for it now. The November air might be uncomfortable, but the thought of being face to face with the Bird again was absolutely unbearable. Anna began to walk a bit more briskly in an attempt to warm herself up some.

For a while, she was carried along by the fuel that was her hatred of Ms. Whitney. Her dislike for the woman burned inside of her and thoughts of revenge played inside her head. She considered adding powdered bleach to the Bird’s laundry detergent to ruin her clothing. She played with the idea of adding sugar to the gas tank of the old station wagon that Ms. Whitney drove around in like it was a Bentley. She even considered removing the shower head in the Ladies shower room and putting hard candy in there so that when Ms. Whitney took a shower, all of her clothes would stick to her in a hilariously uncomfortable way. She would never do any of these things of course. Ms. Whitney would know who had done it regardless of whether or not she had any proof. Everything bad that ever happened at the orphanage was somehow Anna’s fault, even when it wasn’t. But the thoughts of Ms. Whitney getting her comeuppance helped to ease Anna’s anger and frustration, and it was fun to think about getting her revenge even if she never actually would.

After a good mile of walking, Anna’s thoughts began to drift away from revenge and towards the events of the previous night. It was all a dream, Anna thought again. But was it really? If it had been a dream, it had certainly been a realistic one. As a matter of fact, she still seemed to have some dirt on her palms, as if she had actually picked up a dirty board to smack someone with. But still, it couldn’t have been real. People couldn’t do the things those two had been doing in that alleyway, it just wasn’t physically possible. And the woman had known Anna’s name but Anna was absolutely positive that she had never met that woman before in her life. She was pretty sure she would remember someone name Gwendolyn who could summon a swarm of bats with a stick. And she had definitely stolen the cakes... But before Anna could think on the subject any longer, her thoughts were interrupted by a voice coming from the trees somewhere near her.

“Oh, she’s pretty, but she needs a bath.”

The voice was high pitched, and seemed to have a sort of sing-song quality to it, and while it sounded more curious than threatening, Anna was immediately unnerved by it. Her head began to swivel back and forth, looking for the person to whom the voice belonged. She was the only person on the road in either direction as far as she could see, and it would have been impossible for anyone to sneak up on her through the woods without making some sort of noise on the fallen autumn leaves that littered the ground. From the trees above her came a sound somewhere between a bullfrog croaking and a pig snorting. Anna looked up, her head swiveling back and forth, for the source of the foreign sound. What she saw immediately removed any thoughts of the phantom voice from her head. Perched in the trees about ten feet from the road was the strangest looking bird Anna had ever seen in her life.

The bird was quite a bit larger than any Anna had seen in the area before. It’s upper body was covered in shining white feathers that almost seemed to glow against the brown backdrop of dead leaves and wood behind it. A plume of black feathers protruded from the back of the birds head and a ring of red feathers encircled it’s coal black eyes. The eyes themselves were adorned with the longest eyelashes Anna had ever seen on a bird, or even a person for that matter. The bird stood on two long legs that were covered in pitch black feathers that clashed brilliantly against it’s white upper body. Something about the bird seemed oddly formal to Anna and for a moment, she imagined the bird cartoonishly filing paperwork in some sort of office.

The bird cocked its head in a look of curiosity at Anna for just a moment before abruptly taking off in a graceful flight, shaking a few dead leaves from the branch it had sat upon. Though the area above the bird was a maze of tree branches, it navigated them flawlessly before disappearing out of sight. Anna heard it’s call again as it took to the air and couldn’t help but think that for such a pretty looking bird, it sure did have a goofy sounding call. It was definitely strange though; Anna had lived in this area her entire life, but she had never seen any sort of bird that even slightly resembled the creature she had just encountered. As she continued her walk towards town, Anna couldn’t help but think that she had been having a very strange day. Between the crazy dream or memory or whatever from the previous night, to waking up in her bed with no memory of how she’d gotten home, to hearing a disembodied voice from the trees followed by a strange bird spying on her, Anna briefly began to wonder if she was going crazy. Insanity would certainly explain the last twenty four hours, but Anna had a nagging feeling that her mental health wasn’t the cause of the strangeness.

She continued her walk, lost in her thoughts, for another half hour before finally, she could see the break in the trees that told her she had made it to town. If she had known what awaited her ahead, she would have turned around right then and went back to hang out with Ms. Whitney. As it was, Anna was neither a psychic nor was she particularly great at staying out of trouble, so she continued on her way.