Ehehehe... This is what happens when you know you don't really have any ideas and really want to write something else...

Friday, May 10th, 2002

My name is Eleanor Lilith Braden. I was born to Lilith Miranda Braden on March 22nd, 1980. I have no idea who my father is. He was around when I was extremely little, I know that much. I have vague memories of a man who used to sing to me, and I suppose that's him. My sister never got to know him. All I can remember is that one day he was just gone from our lives. I don't know if he died or what, all I know is he was gone.

After my sister was born, my mom didn't have anyone who could look after the two of us. She was a single mother working as a nurse which required some crazy hours. In the end, she had little choice but to lock us in the house every night when she left for work. I wasn't allowed to open the door and my only responsibilities were to feed my sister bottles of pre-made formula and change her if needed. Not hard for a four-year-old. When my mom first started leaving us alone, I used to hide in her closet with the baby until she got back. I would turn off all the lights in the house and sit on the floor, softly humming to my sister. I thought that if it looked like no one was home, no monsters or evil witches would try to break into the house. After all, why break into a house if there is no one there to eat?

As I got older I got more and more accustomed to having to take care of my sister by myself. I wasn't afraid of the dark, or thunderstorms. I knew why I shouldn't open the door for strangers, so quickly my fears of monsters and witches were replaced by fears of men in white vans promising candy. I could sit in the house with the lights on and even watch TV shows and movies. Granted, I saw a lot of things I probably shouldn't have (The Godfather, anyone?) but I was still able to enjoy my night without worry. My sister never had any such fears. To her, this was normal. Mom had to work late at night, so we got to play games and watch movies all by ourselves, if we managed to get ourselves into bed at a reasonable time (a.k.a. before Mom showed up.)

That changed the morning of January 29th, 1990. It was the morning after the Super Bowl and my mom had worked a double shift. By the end of it, it was early morning and time for my sister and I to go to school. She got us there without a problem and we gleefully skipped off from the car, ready to start our day. Our mom continued home, probably looking forward to having a few hours of peaceful rest until she had to pick us up as three. This is where things stopped being normal.

The police weren't exactly sure what happened. They theorized that it had to do with a combination of the streetlight not functioning properly and my mother being overtired from working all night. Regardless, it still happened. My mother went straight through the light, thinking it was green when it was flashing both red and green and ended up getting T-boned by a truck, which had the green. 911 had already been called about the light, so it didn't take long for emergency responders to show up there. However, even with the quick response time my mother couldn't be saved. She died upon impact. What from, I don't know. I didn't even get to go to her funeral. I don't think she even had one.

Because my mother was a single parent with no living relatives, no friends, and no will, my sister and I were put into the custody of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. At that point, we were separated. My sister was sent to live with a foster family in Newton, Massachusetts, and I was sent to a different one in Lawrence. From what I understand, my sister's foster family was rather nice, and she remained friends with the family after she got adopted by Lori and Charley. They even came to her graduation party and I got to chat with them a bit. Nice people. I really wish I had been as lucky as her.

The family I was sent to live with weren't exactly the most stellar of caretakers. I'm 90% certain that they were Scientologists or members of an insane cult of that type. They had at least a dozen other children living there and we all had to keep the house in tip-top shape. Seriously, we had to do everything from scrubbing the floors by hand to dusting every nook and cranny in that place. I think they thought if the house was spotless, DHS wouldn't question anything. When we weren't cleaning or doing homework, the parents used to make us all gather around the TV and watch these obscure religious movies, most of which had the message of "if you don't pray a certain way, you'll burn in hell." The ones that stick out the most in my mind are the Burning Hell, If Footmen Tire You Out, What Will Horses Do?, and Miss Velma's Christmas in America. The first two were terrifying and the last one was just bizarre, if memory serves. I believe my experience with these people is what caused me to flip back and forth between theism and atheism for most of my teenage years before settling on agnosticism more recently.

Besides the influence my experience living with these people had on my religious beliefs, it also probably scarred me horribly both physically and mentally. One day, about a year after my mother died, I was walking home from school by myself. No one ever walked with me, not even my foster brothers and sisters, which was fine. I liked being alone. If I was alone, no one could see me cry. However, the fact that I was alone that day almost got me killed. You see, the neighbors about a block down from us had a rottweiler who didn't like people so much, especially children. That day, the dog had gotten loose and attacked me. I had the foresight to roll on my side and cover my face as best I could, so only my left side really took the brunt of it. I have scars up by left arm, left side, and left leg from where the dog bit me. I eventually managed to kick the dog off me and ran as fast as I could back to the house. No one offered to help me clean up my wounds or suggested taking me to the hospital. I'm still somewhat afraid of dogs to this day.

The next day, a teacher saw my wounds and immediately had me rushed to the hospital and DHS got involved. They ruled that my untreated wounds were proof of child neglect and had me and the other children removed from the home. Around the same time, Lorraine and Charles Maynard had already adopted my sister and, upon hearing that she had an older sister who was in the system as well, began to seek me out to reunite us. They adopted me a few months later and I became a part of their family.

I had my first drink when I was eleven. I don't even know why I did it. Just to see if I could get away with it? Charley stored his beer in a refrigerator in the basement, thinking that if it was out of sight us kids wouldn't be tempted to try and steal any of it. It worked with the other four kids, but not with me. One night, I snuck downstairs while everyone was watching a movie and drank an entire beer in one go. I'm not going to lie, it was exhilarating, doing something I wasn't supposed to. At the time I swore to myself that would be the only time I did it. I wouldn't steal another beer from the fridge again. Until I stole a second one, and a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, and so on.

As I got older, my drinking got worse. It went from occasionally stealing a beer from the fridge in middle school to getting completely wasted at all-out ragers every weekend by my senior year of high school. I don't know what motivated my drinking, really. I'd say it was several factors, specifically my Irish heritage, struggling to cope with my mom's death, the fact that I was in an abusive relationship with this one guy for most of my teenage years… Yeah, several factors were involved and as the years went by it just got worse and worse.

On my 20th birthday, my boyfriend, Anthony Costello took me out for dinner at a rather expensive restaurant. I tried to have a good time, but he was overbearing, as usual. After dinner, he took my back to his family's home, claiming to have a surprise for me. When he opened the door, the first thing I saw was his brother lying dead in the foyer. He handcuffed me to him and showed off the bodies of his adoptive brother, mother, and father lying strewn throughout the house. I don't know what the breaking point was for him. I know he had issues with his family and he had trouble controlling his emotions and often resorted to physical violence, but I never thought he'd be capable as something like that. For the next day he held me hostage until I finally managed to get the upper hand on him and shot him in self-defense. I did the best I could to keep him from dying. I don't know why. It was just an instinct, I guess. Looking back, I wouldn't have wanted him to die. I'd want him to face justice, rot in the Hoag for the fest of his life. However, that never came to pass. He died of blood loss at some point during the night. I sat there paralyzed next to him for hours until someone came across us and called authorities. If you don't believe me on this, look it up online. I know the Globe had an article about it.

In the months following the incident, my alcohol consumption hit an all-time high. All I wanted to do was not think about it and alcohol helped with that. I know my family noticed a change in me, but I tried to pretend like nothing was wrong and plastered a fake smile on my face. Better to be fake and happy than real and miserable, right? There was a culmination point, but I don't think I could discuss that without telling you about one more thing that changed my life forever.

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, 2001 I met Murphy MacManus. He came to my aid after I got drunk and passed out at a bar in South Boston. I don't know why or how, but we just clicked. I liked talking to him. I felt strangely at ease when I was around him. I told him my secrets and he told me one of his that currently, I regret not taking seriously. Our relationship didn't go farther than a few fleeting kisses, though, and the reason for that being I hit rock bottom.

On Thanksgiving, I made a stupid mistake. I got drunk and drove. As a result, I was grounded by my foster mother for the entirety of Christmas break. Yes, I know I was twenty-one, not a teenager, but the thing was even if I didn't want to put up with having no TV, computers, books, or unsupervised access to the outside world, I had no place else I could go. I mean, yeah, I was kind of pseudo-dating Murphy, but I still didn't know him or his brother that well. I had never even been to their home. I had no other friends outside my foster family. Anthony made sure to drive them all away. So, my only option was to plaster on my fake smile again and wait for my adoptive sister to drive me back to college.

During this time, I went through a bit of withdrawal. Lori and Charley removed all the alcohol from the house and the one time I tried to sneak out just to get a few shots to tide me over, it was like hell had reigned down from above. Don't get me wrong, they never hurt me. In fact, they probably only did this because they care about me, but in the moment, I didn't see it that way. I just knew that I was in pain and alcohol would numb the pain. That's all I cared about.

This drew my biological sister to a breaking point. She snapped at me, calling me selfish, narcissistic, and accusing me of not giving a damn about her. All of which, I guess were true. She also pointed out that I had every opportunity to get away from Anthony long before the night of the incident, and that I stayed in the relationship just to draw more attention to myself. She mentioned how I was trashed at her graduation party, all the times she had to help me sneak back into the house after a night of drinking, and how I continually embarrassed her in front of friends and relatives by being drunk all the time. All of which is true. I am not going to deny that. By that point, I had reached my breaking point and stormed out of the house, not even knowing or caring about what I was doing or where I was going. I just knew that I needed a beer.

Somehow, I ended up finding Murphy again. I don't know how as by that point I had drank so much vodka and beer that not even Eminem would dare me to drive, but I did and let's just say that the thing that I didn't take seriously ended up being very serious. Deadly serious you could say. At that point, we got into an argument. I couldn't reconcile that this was who Murphy was and I just lost it. I begged him to stop doing what he was doing, but in the end I knew that it was a losing battle. His faith ran too deep. He was on some sort of "divine mission" and I couldn't change his mind, no matter what. I know I walked away from that incredibly angry and telling myself I never wanted to see him again. The next thing I can remember is waking up on a Greyhound bus headed for God-knows-where.

I ended up bouncing all over the place. First Tulsa, then Vegas, then Los Angeles… Wherever the party went, the free booze went and wherever the free booze went, I went. I only have vague memories of these places. Any time someone handed me a beer, I drank it. Anytime someone offered me a pill, I took it, no questions asked. As far as I was concerned, the world had ended. Everything ceased to be when I was drunk, high. It was just me and the eternal blackout I had submerged myself in.

That leads me to the morning of April 28th, 2002. I don't know what had happened, who I was with, or where I was. I just knew I was lying on the ground outside and everything hurt. I didn't keep a cell phone or credit cards on me, as I knew my family would try and track me through that eventually, but I did have a purse. I had nothing of value in it, just birth control pills, emergency tampons, things like that. Just a few feet from me, I could clearly hear two men talking to each other. It sounded like they were looking for something, but I didn't know what or where until I heard a small plastic case slam on the ground causing several pills to fly all over the place, a few even pelting me in the face. The idiots were rifling through my purse. I tried to get up and stop them, but I couldn't. I couldn't even open my eyes or cry out. I was completely paralyzed; helpless and unable to do anything to defend myself.

Eventually, the two goons ended up not finding what they were looking for and wandered off. I was still there, lying on the ground motionless. I couldn't believe what had just happened. I had gotten myself so trashed that I couldn't even move, much less defend myself. How could I have let this happen? I was in a blackout state most of the time, so I had no idea if this had happened before or if anything worse had ever happened to me. Had I been robbed before? Raped? I had no clue. I just knew right then and there that I needed to stop with all of this. No more drinking. No more being helpless. No more creating a victim of myself. No more.

As soon as I was able to regain control of my body, I got up and walked to the nearest gas station and learned I was just outside of Augusta, Georgia. I didn't buy anything. I just went right up to the payphone, flipped through the yellow pages until I came to a list of rehab and mental health facilities and spent the whole day walking around town, looking for a place that would take a girl with no money and a possibly canceled insurance policy. I didn't stop until someone accepted me. I was going to get better and this was the first step in doing so.

Despite that, I have no idea what I want out of my recovery. Do I want to see my family again? Yes, but I doubt they'll take me back. I'm not the prodigal son. I burned my bridges well and good with everyone I ever cared about. I don't think I can earn back their trust, confidence, or love. I don't even think I deserve that. Do I want to go back to school and try to be a productive member of society? Yes, but I have no idea how I could even go about accomplishing that. I already wasted four years' tuition in a field I hate. I don't even think I could manage to get a college degree with how bad I screwed myself over by dropping out of Eastern Nazarene. In the end, I think I'm mostly just doing this for myself. I never want to be in a situation like I was that night again. I want to be a better person. Someone I can be proud of, not ashamed. I want to be a good person, and if that means holding myself responsible for once in my life, so be it. I don't expect this to be easy at all, but I'm willing to fight, and that's all that really counts, right?

I'm sorry I went over two pages. I had a lot to say. – E.B.

Alright, reading it back, it's not as bad as I thought it was, I just wish I had enough inspiration to carry me through another full-length story with this series, but alas, the MCU has a stranglehold on my inspiration right now. I'll come back to this eventually, I hope, but in the meantime enjoy this one-shot, and happy All Saints Day.

This one-shot was originally uploaded to FFN on 11/1/18.