The leaves were falling, swirling around the ruined house that stood alone at the end of the path. A single blossom from a cherry tree blew through the open door, across the dark hallway, and settled at the foot of the last door at the end. Chrissy sat on her bedroom floor, the sun reflecting off the faded pink sheets. The coloring book lay open on the small drawing table in front of her, a pencil clutched in her fragile hand. Even though the door was closed, muffled screams still echoed through the room. Once again, she remained lost in her colors as her mother entered and gently closed the door. Tracy was in her early twenties and very beautiful, but the lines etched into her face betrayed the beauty she once had. “Come here, baby.” She called her. “Come sit on my lap” Chrissy got up and joined her mother, in what was becoming a daily ritual. She would sit in her mother's still-cold arms and listen to her silent tears. Her mother didn't dare scream out loud, afraid of the man at the end of the hall. Sammael sat at the table leaning and dead, lost in his fifth bottle of whiskey. Even when he wasn't drunk, there was still a dark presence that ruled the house. Day after day, the pages of the coloring book were turned, driven by an unknown desire to escape the house in which she found herself trapped. When Chrissy was five years old, she dreamed of flying with the leaves flying outside her window. , rising towards the open sky. Even now, as she watched them change from green to gold. His favorite season is fast approaching. As she turned away from the cracked window, a cold draft took hold of her body, but only for a moment. Curled up in her blankets, she closed her eyes and flew out the window, joining her friends in the middle of the paper... an unknown force blew the flowers from the branches. Sending them into a violent fever, which seemed to turn the house or whatever was sleeping inside it upside down. She knew she was coming, she waited for this moment every year, and this time she wouldn't escape. Sammael's face appeared in the dark window, watching and waiting. “Not this time,” Chrissy whispered. Chrissy ran through the yard, passing a tree she never remembered, shaking the branches as she passed. “Mom, I’m home,” she cried happily. Running through the open door that seemed to hang on a single hinge. “Welcome home, sweetheart,” Tracy replied, smiling at her child as if nothing had happened. “Go play in your room until your dad comes home.” She sat down and opened her coloring book. The branches wrapped again around the alcove where once lay the sleeping body of a child, lost forever to the world..