Preface

It was Friday, in the Small town called Faywood, you could walk from one end of the town to the other in no more than half an hour at a leisurely pace. The expansion of the town had started a little over 6 months ago and it seemed there was no intention, as of yet, to stop cutting down the large amounts of sheltering forest in exchange for housing estates and apartments. The new roads in the town center were a dark grey, almost black and viscous looking though it had been two months now since they'd set.  The town center was not large and made up of only a few close small shops, a few newer than others, there was a small school clothing shop, a gift shop and a hair dresser squashed closely together with apartment buildings stuck on top. Across the road was a Florist shop which had only opened last year. That too had a large apartment stacked on top which had come in handy for Wendy Small and her daughter after the unfortunate death of her Husband, James, in a car accident in London during the viciously icy December.
The shop was not big, like the others in the town, it was small and fairly square with little storage space, and a faked marble counter on the back right wall. There were leaves and water splattered on shops dirty wooden floor, a used dripping mop leaning against the right wall between the counter and a stack of shelving, evidence of a poor attempt to clear up the puddles. There were also generic paintings of different flowers hanging off all the walls, some of the smaller paintings had price tags dangling off their bottom right corners. A gust of wind twisted and fluttered the petals of the flowers in grey metal buckets that shimmered dimly from the thin layer of water that clung to the cold outsides of each bucket like sweat. The buckets seated on a make shift stand of upside down wooden crates at different heights. The left overs of the week organized into a careful rainbow across the left side of the square room.
Slumped against the counter,arms outstretched and fingers dangling over the opposite side of the speckled brown plastic top, frozen air rushing through the door impatiently stirred her dark ebony hair and biting at the exposed skin of her hands and face.  Her long thin fingers twitched and goose bumps flooded up her deathly pale arms and across the back of her slender neck. She was wearing her favorite stretchy grey shirt with black jeans and a light cream coloured body warmer that shielded her from most of the icy winds. Victoria Small hopped over the lumpy top of the counter, took four wide strides to the door and slammed it closed with such force that the glass and door frame where shaking dangerously. While she whirled, snapping the 'open' sign's fragile cord from the hook at the top of the door, slinging it across the room with an enraged grunt and watching it land in a sink full of water with quite Slosh. Victoria, or Vicky as most people had called her, had been in a foul mood since 7:15 this morning when her mother had woken her to inform her she would be spending the day in London and needed Vicky to look after the flower shop and would not be returning until very late that night.
Being stuck, trapped, inside away from her very few friends was not something that put her in a good mood but it did mean that she would have some money for the week. Vicky slumped stiffly into the thin red leather chair behind the counter after turning the lights out and stared out at the flurrying snow that the savage winter outside was splattering against the windows. Day-dreaming sullenly about the boring town in which she lived, dog laying over her feet, Vicky mumbled to herself  "stupid Mother, trapping me here without warning, always telling me what to do........ wish she'd get eaten by something" she sighed deeply and nudged the sleeping ball of fluff from her feet and wrenched the back door of the shop open and closed it with and barely audible click behind her.