(NOTE: The title is the name of the Shelter described in the story. The story is divided into 3 parts to avoid eye sore that would have been caused by unnecessarily long page. To understand the purpose of the insertion of different paragraphs, please read the whole 3 parts. The last part gives a clearer point for it...)

All the ten children in the isolated room called Cherubim were quiet and slack most of the time that morning, and all the three hours that afternoon. So far. Days like this were rare but relieving, and every time they came, they came falling softly like rainshower, their water poured into her such blissful, momentary ecstasy. She dreamed of days like this, but she knew they seldom fall.

She looked at her wristwatch. 3:06 P.M., it said. She darted her eyes from the shiny silver frame of her Timex to the other social worker at the other end of the rectangular room, sitting at the edge of Theresa's bed, the troubled, mentally and physically imperfect 17 year-old girl with extreme history of physical abuse from her biological parents. Ricarda, her only partner in the quarter, was gently brushing Theresa's hair. She was softly talking to Theresa, and the girl giggled from time to time, her voice sounded stifled but her laughter was pure and contagious.

The stream of light from the sun outside flowed through the big, grilled window into Theresa's feet, spotlighting their happy swinging in the space below her bed. When Theresa's eyes met hers, the girl gave a grin from where her delight radiated into the room, calming the curtain of dusts that streamed along the rays of the sun.

She held the girl's gaze for some time, and then looked around once more. After making sure everybody's behaving good, she spoke to Ricarda. "I'm starving. I need to go to the kitchen. Be back in ten."

Her partner nodded, not wanting to spoil the girl's frolicking in her own shangri-la. The rubber hairbrush slipped from the girl's darting hands, and she wailed. Ricarda hurriedly stooped to pick it and gave it back to her.

She stood there by the doorway, feeling the possible influx of emotional torrent. When she felt certain none would come, she turned around and headed for the kitchen.

Jemma closed her umbrella, which she used to shield herself from the scorching, inconsiderate sun. She removed her fake Gucci sunglasses and put it inside her shoulder bag, and then rapped at the door. About two meters directly above her, a huge sign painted in white hang monotonously, its bored frame hunger for attention. On it were fading letters in blue that declared boldly the name of the Shelter. With the sun glaring high above, she dared not look up to read the words painted across the tin sheet.

The house had no upper floors, but it was cascading sideways to both sides. The beige paint on the wall was peeling off, and all the windows were barred with window grills. The window panes made of flat, white shells which appeared like frozen prisoners awaiting deliverance. Weeds grew high near the perimeter fence, and dried leaves cluttered across the front lawn, some of them crushed below her weight, their light crushing sound screamed of anguish. There were no stairs that led to the main door, and she suspected there would be none in the entire building. The alley that led to the main street were badly cemented, and there were not much public transport passing by outside. She had the feeling it would be like this all the time.

The neighborhood was still. She could hear no voices from the vicinity and from the inside of the building before her. The Shelter stood amid a badly manicured vast lawn, among residences that were ignoring its presence.

The door opened. A slender, expressionless woman in her mid-thirties emerged.

She sat by the table, on a chair closest to the kitchen door. The still air in the kitchen carried nostalgic quietude, which was briefly disturbed by the faint ceramic clicking of the stainless steel spoon against the inner wall of the cup. Andrea, another social worker and one of the six women that took care of the thirty-three children in the Seraphim Room, was preparing herself a coffee.

"Looks like unusually quiet today, huh," Andrea broke the silence.

She straightened up and grabbed her cup of hot tea. "Yeah. I noticed, too," she remarked, and took a sip.

Andrea, a 38 year-old single woman from the nearby town, walked toward the table, grabbed a chair next to hers, and sat.

"But it's kinda not the type of day we need," Andrea continued as she placed the cup on the table. Without looking at her, Andrea spoke in a voice full of broken drama, "Feel your fear when calm days come, for in their quietude their eyes glare and snarl a sinister foreboding."

The quip on her forehead announced her confusion. "Meaning?"

Andrea took a bite from her sandwich, and then glanced at her with raised eyebrows.

Reading her colleague's expression, she opted herself to interject. "I'm not good at interpretations."

"You haven't heard?"

The steam rose like gods from the teacup and delivered into her nostril the aroma of relaxing jasmine. The quip in her forehead wrinkled. "Heard what?"

Andrea's eyes narrowed as she expressed knowingly, "Oh, I can see how you've become involved with these children. You've gone way far from the first day you came here. This place is already flowing in your veins, yes, that you lost contact to people around you."

Andrea was two years ahead of her in the Shelter. She could still clearly remember how Andrea would laugh at her adjustments and frown at her mistakes. But things gradually changed, or she had gradually become used to it.

"You still aren't telling me."

Andrea was ignoring her; instead, she went on, "But then again, we all are. It's just a matter of time before it slowly dry into flakes and fall off our hair."

"I'm not keeping any promises. That can happen anytime, if I want to. If I have to."

Andrea watched her eat the Skyflakes cracker. After a while, Andrea said, "Estella is resigning."

The weight of such word caused the sinking of the news overtly thudding.

She went silent, and pondered. After a while, she remarked, "She's breaking it. She can't take hold of everything anymore, but I can't blame her. The pressure is too heavy for her, you know, the lurking annulment."

"I feel sorry for her. We know how much she loves it here."

"But she choose to save her marriage, and her family. There's nothing greater than that."

"God bless her."

"Hi," she flashed a smile as she extended her right hand to the woman who opened the door. "I'm Jemma Bermoy. I'm here for the ten o'clock interview."

The woman scanned her from feet to head, and then nonchalantly introduced herself as Criselda Aratan. She gestured her to come in.

As Criselda led her to the president's office, she asked her a question she was not prepared to answer.

"You're here for the experience alone, aren't you?"

Cautious, she hesitated. "No."

She noticed that what seemed to be the lobby was enclosed in concrete walling with doors at each of the four sides. They walked passed the sofas at the center of the floor into a door a few meters ahead of them. She noticed that it was very quiet in this part of the building. She saw no other personnel, and she saw no children. She then presumed that the two doors she saw a few meters away from both her sides would either or both lead into the children's rooms. Behind her was the door leading back outside.

What she noticed, too, was that the walling was bare, and the entire space was lacking in upholstery and any other decorations. Ornamental plants in pots occupied each corner of the lobby.

"You wanted to work abroad but got no experience," Criselda continued as though she did not hear her.

She turned her head back to Criselda. "No, that's not true."

Criselda turned around to face her. "Then why here?"

She found it ridiculous to keep answering her. She wanted to feel irritated, but she managed not to. Instead, with a composed voice, she said, "I think I'll reserve my answer to that for the president."

Apparently insulted, Criselda turned around, knocked at the door of the president's office, and said to her, "You're gonna end up like the rest of them. That's for sure."

A woman's voice spoke from behind the door. Criselda opened it and gestured her to go in.

After they finished bathing the ten children and dressing them, she noticed that Ricarda was unusually quiet as she slumped on the chair by the empty desk near the room's only door. When she was done dressing up Trisha, the 14 year-old girl with Down Syndrome, she went to join Ricarda.

"Something bothering you?" she asked.

The dreariness that she saw in Ricarda's eyes was not the same that she had seen in the past months and years. It was something more, something deeper.

Ricarda looked at her, and her eyes were that of a cat left out in the rain and waiting for the kitchen door to open. Ricarda thought for a moment, and then weakly spoke, "My son called last night. My husband had another episode yesterday."

Concerned, she sat beside her friend to console her. They were a portrait of two wounded women at that moment, one torn apart by space and time, striving from the constant call to be with her husband and son, the other faced day after day the hurtful convictions of her children to her choosing this kind of job.

"I'm sorry," she softly uttered, her head leaning against her friend's. Their eyes closed, hers were condoling, Ricarda's were lamenting.

She learned about her colleague's sad life story. She then knew how rough life was for Ricarda, she then knew how pain had measured her bravery and determination, and she then also knew how Ricarda's ordeal tempted her to question her existence and purpose. But she was proud of her friend, for in the midst of all those storms she remained anchored.

"How is he?"

Ricarda wiped her tears with the back of her hand. "He's in total paralysis. And it's irreversible."

She gasped. Silence.

"You need to go there."

Ricarda shook her head. "You know I can't. He forbids me. He still hates me."

She cupped her friend's face and made her looked into her eyes closely. "A heart full of love is powerful than a raging fire. Don't wait for anything worse to happen. Things are already worse, Ricarda."

Ricarda went silent. Inside her, emotions were screaming and spreading outward like wildfire. She waited for them to subside, for it was only by then when she could listen to them. After a long while, she softly said, "I'll think about it."

She went to hug her colleague, her friend. And they stayed like that for a while. Her eyes were staring at the other end, on the white, lifeless wall.

Across the floor, she noticed something that warned of flawed, intense emotional eruption.

Marielle, one of the ten violent special children in the Cherubim Room, was amusingly playing with a stuffed doll when another girl, Chelsea, dashed to grab the doll from her strong hands. They were pulling and pushing each other when she came to control them, and gibberish shouting and screaming stirred the room. The other children's playing turned into ecstatic wailing and, before she could ever meddle, Chelsea knocked the other girl, Minerva, sitting on the floor nearby, whose anger soared as quickly as she was disturbed. Minerva grabbed the girl's hair and, with so much intensity, slammed the girl's head into the floor like a basketball.

She and Ricarda did not see it coming; it happened so suddenly. Their hearts pounded and sounded like a stampede of frightened horses as they dashed toward the three fighting girls. The room was now in pandemonium. The other uninvolved children found what they'd seen inviting, and many of them, too, jumped into the brawl and frolicked so madly.

She went to restrain Minerva, who was wildly kicking and scratching her fingernails in the air, like a captured tiger battling for its vague survival; her power was overwhelming and unbelievable. Ricarda went to control Marielle , who was kicking at everything on the floor; toys of all sorts, crisscrossing the tiled floor, her hands hoisting wildly in the air, trying to grab Ricarda's face and hair. Near their feet was Chelsea lying on the floor, groaning in pain.

"Jemma, call Justin in! HURRY!" Ricarda screamed at her.

She was the one closest to the door, and she screamed at the top of her voice for help.

Photograph by Ana June. Please CLICK HERE to visit the owner's Flickr page. Thanks!