I don't know if I'll ever recover from the shock. I don't know if my dreams will ever come true. The only thing I do know is that life changes drastically when something happens to you. Something that can change you to the extent that you will never be the same….
I was afraid.
I lay in bed, my body completely motionless. All around me there were shadows. These shadows confused me, and I feared them. The whispered horrible things to me, told me things I didn't want to hear. They made me listen, they tortured me. I saw horrid things. Bodies ripped open, their guts spilling onto the ground at my feet, men, women, and children chopped up and set in a pile to burn. The stench of rotting flesh filling my nose. Dogs eating the bodies of men shot to death or wounded on the battle field.
That was the first worst night of my life. I was two years old at the time. I was never the same after that. But it served to make the second night even more terrible than it truly was.
Adults don't seem to understand why children are afraid of the shadows…
I was walking home from school. I was eight years old. By this time, I was known as the class freak. I was shy and didn't trust any person. I had no friends, only family. The school treated poorly based upon my history. You see, the shadows never left me alone. Not even during the day. I would suddenly cry or scream in the middle of class because of the horrific images they showed me. It was my torture.
But the absolute worst night of my life, the second worst night of my life, happened that very day I was walking home from school. I had stayed behind to help clean up. The teacher had offered to walk me home. I had accepted, for I feared the shadows would attack me.
It was a terrible mistake, to ask for the teacher's help. The teacher, you see, he had ideas of his own… That night I cried the hardest. But somehow… somehow I began to love the shadows that day.
My teacher was silent as I walked along beside him. He looked down curiously at me. I smiled up at him. It was my fake smile, I only smiled for my family… my real smile. He grinned back, and stared straight ahead. We passed by an abandoned garage like storage room. He suddenly grabbed me, holding my arm behind my back. My books spilled all over the ground. My teacher was smirking. I could remember the look in his eyes. Terrible, terrible eyes.
He shoved me through a door. I cried out, screamed. But he only said "No one can hear you. This room is sound proof." His fingers traced my body. I shivered and cried out again. He slapped me, hard. I fell to the floor. He left me for a moment. I ran to the door, to find I couldn't open it. I screamed and pounded against it. My thoughts repeated in my head 'Why me? Why me?' After a time I gave up. I sank to the ground. It was now that I looked about me.
I found the abandoned garage like complex was not so abandoned. Inside of the terrible looking building was a sweet, beautiful inside. The walls were painted a light peach. The huge bed was spread to match the walls. The room looked as if a woman had decorated it. Paintings and flowers adorned pieces of furniture and the walls. A few lights were scattered about the room.
It was a pretty room. The only thing that seemed out of place was a swing like object that looked as if it were made to tie up a person. I studied it from my spot on the floor. I was tired and wary. He came in about then. He was wearing nothing. Nothing at all. I gasped, trying to hide my face. But he came and took my hands away. He began to coo softly to me, rocking me softly. It was as if he were trying to make this all okay. But, it wasn't. Nothing would be okay.
I cried out again. He picked me up and set me on the bed, stopping my mouth, kissing me harshly. My still developing breasts were captive in his hands. My memory then fades. But I know… I know what he did to me. I watched. Somehow, I was outside of my body. I was with the shadows. The shadows brought me out of my body, to that I would not have to endure such treatment. Inside of me, was one of them. That shadow stayed quite and did what it was told.
I don't remember how long I was trapped inside that garage. But every time he began to touch me the shadows would take me away, to a safe place. One day, one rainy day, my sister rescued me. She burst through the door, her eyes ablaze. "You bastard!" She screamed out, and I was taken away again, to watch as my sister murdered the man. She did terrible things to him. She began by cutting off his… his… I remember his scream. My body lay on the floor life-less.
After all the torture, my sister went to my body and shook me gently. That is how I woke up, my memory blurry. The shadows… I came to love the shadows that day.