• My name is Anya Stark. I was supposed to die when I was 12 years old. Not because of some terminal disease, no, but because of some son of a b***h who felt like slaughtering 40 innocent people at a Christmas party. The room was bright. People were chatting and laughing, music was playing softly in the background. I was in the nursery with my younger sister and mother who was hostess. My father and older brother were in the main room. There was a knock on the door. My mother looked at me, “Who else hasn’t arrived?” she asked, confused. Placing my little sister in the arms of a nursery maid, she left the room, me in her shadow. She and my father stood arm-in-arm. They walked to the door. When it opened, 3 men stood, all in black. Hats tilted over their faces. The on in front smiled, then shot. His gun fired 5 bullets into my father, 3 into my mother. Pandemonium sprang out. I remember I was frightened. No, frightened doesn’t give the feeling justice. I was terrified, horrified, frozen in pure, sweaty fear. Screams sounded around me, but I could not move. I didn’t move until someone slammed into the music player, shutting it off. Then there were only the screams. My legs moved again and I rushed to the nursery. I closed the door behind me. The nursery maid was standing in the room, clutching my sister to her breast. “Anya” she told me, “Run, into the basement, they haven’t seen you, you will be safer there.” I didn’t know what else to do. In my eyes lay the images of the blood all over the room I had just come from, the bodies they lay still, their eyes frozen in cold, glassy fear. I ran out of the room, my legs threatening to give out. I franticly opened the door to the basement, and closed it behind me. I wanted to switch on the light, but I knew it would give me away. Instead I felt my way down the stairs. I could imagine the crying of my sister in the nursery, imagine the fear she must feel. Tears pricked my eyes, but whether they were for her or me, I cannot say. I made it to the bottom. The room was pitch black, I couldn’t see a thing. I had to turn on the light. I switched the switch up, and the light turned on. The basement was dusty and crowded with boxes. I found my way over to the back room, ripping my dress and getting cobwebs in my hair. I heard the door above me open. Voices called out. “There could be someone down here. The lights on.” I crouched in the back room. The light here was off. My head in my hands, I could hear three sets of footfalls moving towards my hiding place. Then despair hit me. There was no way I could survive. They would find me, and shoot me. And even if I weren’t to die, I had nothing left. My parents had died, my friends, my siblings. I may as well join them. So, when the men were close, I stood. Still in the darkness they could not see me. My hands were shaking; my legs were unwilling to move. Every sense in my body was screaming at me to turn back, hide. But I wouldn’t do that. The Stark family was a proud family. I would not die hiding in a corner. I felt not like a 12 year old little girl at that moment, but like the soul remaining Stark with a family name to help die proud. I made my legs move. Shaking, trembling uncontrollably I stepped into the light, my hands raised, not to show surrender, but to accept my coming fate. I looked at the men. The men looked at me. My heart was racing, ready to burst. Then, I knew nothing.