My name is Ellie
My purpose in this world, well it seems so unreal now
My life before seems almost a millennia ago now, but it was only a year ago since my life, my world was turned back to reality.
You read these books of people whose lives are turned upside down by one event or another; I was one of those – war so inconceivably real and painful that though I try to shut it out the faces of those that I killed still haunt the night, my dark. Those that I loved however seem to have fallen into the shadows of my mind.
And yet here I am after a year of this "living" existence still wondering if that life in Hell was in fact my heaven.
I sound so weary of it all and I am.
Chapter 1
It was hot – the height of summer, I could see the dust outside carving across the road. The phone was ringing – I didn't need to answer for me to know who it was, Homer wanted me round, he wanted to get out.
Not to be cooped up, we all shared that feeling, our instinct told us there was more out there than simply school and the constant pressure to act once again as normal teenagers with normal parents. We had been free of those refines once, we had thought of them as our beacons of hope; they now seemed like barbed wire fences closing in on us.
Homer wanted to go back to Hell, we had ignored it long enough he said – it was time to get back there, see Chris's grave, make peace with the Hermit man. So a camping trip was set, we got "permission" from our parents (It seemed almost ironic to do so) and Lee managed to get his brothers and sisters to be looked after for a night. And we were set – the four of us. Kevin had gone back to New Zealand; his need for freedom was greater than ours.
We packed up an old land rover and set off into the bush jokingly calling back to mum and dad that they better still be there when we got back.