Silver Hair

No one really knew exactly what caused it. With such a traumatic series of events pinpointing the moment her body decided to drain itself of all colour was difficult. Was it the argument between her parents that she witnessed from the top of the stairs when the shouting woke her from sleep? Perhaps it was seeing her father smash the TV in anger, and then throw it into the wall, sending their happy-family photographs crashing to the floor. Maybe it was being pulled from her home, barefooted in her pajamas to her mother's car in a bid at escape, shrieking in terror as the car flew through the streets, her father's headlights blindingly close behind. It could have been the moment the car left the tarmac and hurtled head-over-heels down the verge, or the instant her small frame hit the roof as she was thrown about. She wouldn't have seen her mother's death, but the sight of her corpse hanging through the windscreen as she was carried to the ambulance may have done it. Or maybe it was being told by a police officer in the stark white of the hospital room that her father had also been killed as he drove his car into oncoming traffic, and that she was now a ward of the state to be placed with a family of strangers once she could leave the hospital. Maybe it was the humiliation of being given a handful of her belongings, collected without her consult, in a black rubbish sack; all that she had in the world. Whatever caused it, her hair had grown silver-white since then. She wore it short these days, and despite it's origins she had rather come to like it.