Ch. 1- Where it all began
[Button clicks. Recording starts]
[Recorder fumbled around with and dropped]
Shit, shit! Okay, sorry about that. I thought I saw- Eh, never mind. Anyway, I asked Darren to send this recording out to someone we can trust to publish it. Someone who won't betray, 'cause right now we're kinda on the run. Not that we'll be found since I'm operating under a pen name and other fake crap. I'll explain who Darren is later. I'll explain everything but right now I have to take you back about ten years ago to a small little port down near Cape Sebastian in Oregon. It was March 18, 2002. My father was a commercial fisherman. He was always out fishing, obviously to bring in money since my mom, at the time, had a shit job, but even when he wasn't fishing he was rarely ever home so I never established a father-daughter bond with him. He and Mom were always arguing. Maybe that was why he was never home. Why he took the fishing job in the first place. I think there was even talk of divorce although my eight-year-old self didn't understand the term. So when my dad's ship suddenly disappeared and washed up a week later, I was glad he was gone.
Don't get me wrong, I loved my dad. Still do. But all this fishing and the long hours and the arguing... it was taxing. On me. On mom. And on my baby brother who had just been born a month before my father disappeared. And when I say disappeared I mean it. I doubted he was dead despite what the authorities said. That's why I didn't start bawling my eyes when the police came to us the news. Mom broke down. Even Baby Brother Timmy started crying even though he didn't have a clue as to what the hell was going on. Dad was a tough guy. I knew that if anyone could survive a ship wreck he could. I even stated that but all I got was The Look. The Look... that damned look was what branded me as an outsider, an outcast. When people who heard about my story, about my father and my family, set their eyes upon me they always looked as if they had stepped in something nasty and couldn't scrap it off their shoes. Hell, I didn't care. I was too set in my beliefs to really give a flying fuck as to what everybody else thought of me. I got good grades in school, wasn't the troublemaker A LOT of people made me out to be, and was quiet and kept to myself. I never really had any friends so of course that made me the prime bully target. I know, it all sounds cliche. But isn't that what life? A whole big world full of cliches? Anyway, I'm getting off topic... I got picked on. A lot. The teachers always said, "Amy, leave her alone. Do you want me to call your mother?" Or "Karey, I'm giving you a yellow card now. If you keep this behavior up you'll get the red card and be sent to the principal's office." It was the same damned thing. The teachers didn't give a shit because I was the weird one. I was the instigator. The one who egged these people on to tease. They thought I was an attention whore.
As I got older, it was easier to tune these people out. As long as I ignored them, they'd would eventually tire and leave me alone, seeing that they couldn't a rise out of me. It almost worked. That was until they started teasing my brother. Timmy was small for his age, still is even though he's ten-almost-eleven. His grade school was right across the street from my junior high so whenever I heard that he was being bullied, I literally jumped over the fence, ran across the street, hopped over the elementary school's fence and threaten the bullies who tried to hurt my brother. Of course he'd brush me off and say he was handling it but thirteen-year-old me didn't buy it. He was six and small and being bullied and the teachers weren't fast enough to catch the bullies in the act. I'd get Saturday school for leaving the junior high campus without permission but I got a big reputation for being the sister who jumped fences to protect her baby brother. That was very tempting ammunition to tease him with but it was instantly discouraged when I jumped the fence again and punched the big seven year old in the head who had tried. I only knew about these instances whenever my brother was playing outside during recess; I have very good hearing. I didn't know if he was being bullied during class. It distracted me a lot until my middle school teachers reassured me, with proof, that my brother wasn't being bothered. The teachers from his school had come to mine to tell me that they were doing everything they could to make sure my brother, and a few others, weren't being bullied. Of course, my brother thought this was greatest thing in the world. All he had to do was look a former bully in the eye and he would tremble at Timmy's feet. Timmy thought himself a little king. Obviously the other kids were a bit fed up with Timmy's tyrannical reign and were grateful when Timmy left the grade school and transferred to another school outside our district.
Everything calmed down after that. People ignored me as I moved on into high school. Sure I got The Look every once in a while but I was fine with it. I was happy with my classes, I was doing well in my sport (I'm a runner, not a swimmer as a lot of you may have thought, what with the title and all). Back to my main point: I was glad Dad was gone. The tension left the house, Mom got her shit together and found a good job as a manager at some grocery store. Plus, not getting a divorce saved my parents money and time. No lawyers. No attending court. Nothing. So, you had to imagine how surprised I was when I saw my dad on the beach one early winter morning. This is where my life was turned upside down again. This is where it all began...

I was running down near the bluffs of Moolack Beach. I was still in high school, in my last year. Cross country had just ended and we were given a three week break before the new semester started. I was doing a short jog, about six miles, when about four miles I stepped off the trail and made my way down to the rocks. It got a bit tricky hear and I had to carefully make a path around a few rocks lest I risk twisting an ankle. I stepped over a small pile of loose rocks and when I set the one leg I lifted into the air down, my leg was yanked out from under me and I tumbled over the bluff. I hadn't realized how close I was to the edge as I tumbled down. Thankfully it was a short ride and when I got up and brushed the sand off me I spotted a big sharp boulder that would have done me some damage had I moved a foot to the right. I took a look around and spotted a couple sitting on the rocks. The man looked pretty ripped and the woman looked long and elegant. The man had dark brown almost black hair and the woman's long blonde locks floated in the cool breeze. I figured they were pretty insane to be out here dressed for summer in the winter; I was still cold even with a sweatshirt on and having ran four miles already, even though I was wearing shorts.
I was surprised the couple hadn't heard my spill over the rocks although it was pretty hard to hear anything with the surf in your ears. I figured I stumbled on some private conversation and was looking around for a way out when the woman turned around. She was hauntingly beautiful but what caught my eye was one of her ears. The hair had blow around it to reveal what looked like a willowy fin. She has a fin for an ear, I thought stupidly. There were slashes on her neck which I thought were scars when her beautiful face contorted into one of anger. Pure anger and hatred. Her eyes turned black and stormy and she bared her teeth at me the way an animal would if it felt threatened. I backed up slowly with my hands clearly visible thinking somehow she would be able to pounce on me from fifty feet away. The man then turned around to see what was disturbing his partner when he saw me. Our gazes locked. It suddenly felt as if ice water ran in my veins because my dad was staring right at me. My dad who had been thought dead for practically ten years was sitting on the beach with some young assed, pissed off brod. Anger quickly replaced the shock in me. He turned to the woman and whispered something. She did not take her eyes off me as she responded. Then she whipped around and dove into the water. I could've sworn I saw a glimpse of a fin. My eyes turned toward the man. He gave me a small, sad smile before following the woman into the water. I stood there dumbly for a few seconds before racing to the rock.
"Come back here, you son of a bitch! You cock sucking bastard! Whore face!" I screamed into the sea. I laid out a long list of profanities that would have made a sailor faint. A few early rising passerby blanched at my language when they passed me by on the beach. I gave up, huffing in frustration. I jogged over to the stairs that led up to the parking lot and ran the last half mile to my house in a near sprint. You could say I was pretty mad.