A/N: Hello lovlies! Welcome to my little somethin'-somethin' that I've put together and hope will last for a while. New account, new story - and The Walking Dead at that! NOT my first fanfiction - I've been writing those for years - but this is the first time I make an attempt at a fanfic in The Walking Dead universe.
REVIEWS ARE EVERYTHING!
Anyway, I rated this M because this story contains mention of abuse (of many kinds), general violence, bad language and sexual situations (har, har). You no like-y, you no read-y, got it?
I'm kind of a sucker for drama and angst, I love symbolism and foreshadowing, and I always try to include a deeper meaning into everything, so keep on the alert. If you pay enough attention, you'll pick up on a few things.
TWD is, of course, not mine. But the OC's are. Hope you enjoy.
PROLOGUE
And Oh, My Soul So Weary
Time moved slowly. If you didn't pay enough attention, you'd think time was frozen. But there was still subtle changes outside as the season changed – now, we were heading towards fall. The huge hedges that surrounded the property were just a bit thinner, just a bit more see-through than they had been a couple of weeks ago; though nothing would be able to affect the height of their looming statues as they cast long afternoon shadows once they swallowed the sun around two 'o'clock. The trees scattered around in the garden, though never big and heavy with leaves, still showed the passing of time; leaves turning reddish and brownish, branches more naked than before, thinner somehow, and some breaking and falling down towards the ground along with their leafy companions. The ground itself turning almost yellow, leaving bare patches of dirt and dust between the dying grass – then there was only mud, a creation that came along with cloudy days of rain and wind.
The rain seldom touched the inhabitants of the huge, white brick building that hid behind the hedges, at the very center of the garden. This because it was rare to see people walking about outside at this time of year. It was simply too depressing, all this death and dullness. Most kept inside, shielded by more walls, their color the same, fading white as the building's exterior. Sometimes you'd catch a lonely soul walking aimlessly among the dying trees late at night, downpour or not, before a couple of more – maybe three – people showed up to drag the wanderer back inside. As if the lost one was doing something wrong – as if wandering about had become a crime.
I'd found that somehow, somewhere, sometime – this had in fact become a crime. They called it curfew and during the fall- and winter months the restrictions that bound us to this place became even tighter. Someone had died a few years back, frozen to death, to be found covered with a blanket of snow along one of the hedges. The consequences came down on us all. I guess a situation like that is how the term "for the greater good" came to be. I didn't mind. Didn't really care. I avoided the outside to the best of my ability. The white walls were my blanket – of comfort, stability and peace. There was no place I'd rather be. Not even the garden.
So of course fate decided I was to travel soon and in the most uncomfortable circumstances as well. My life had always hated me.
Actually, life was the one to land me in this place. See, fate has a rather cruel and twisted humor, and while I'd always acknowledged that all people go trough difficulties at some point in their lives –the people surrounding me day in and day out living proofs of this – I was dealt a rather rare unfortunate card when I came to be. I imagine God, if he even existed, got bored that particular day I was born, and decided to stir things up a little. I had no idea what it was about me that had caught his gaze, but the outcome was most unwelcome.
I guess at first everything had seemed fine. From the information I'd gathered from our family's photos stored in my mother's albums, I'd been born into a suburban-white-picket-fence kind of life. Nothing fancy or anything, but there had been a dog and a station wagon, and even a decent sized kitchen for my mother to cook in. There had been no lack of toys or affection or anything like that. There were no siblings, but a loving mother and a mildly absent but kind enough father. Picture perfect, or so I thought. My problems started the day our family dynamic changed, and said father wasn't so absent any more.
He was a bus driver, but a bit too heavy on the flask during the weekends. I didn't really care, I was too young at that point, and he was always out with his old buddies from high school – which was as far as his education went. But then the weekends weren't enough, and when you're behind the wheel with dozens of people's lives in your hands, reeking of liquor is, of course, frowned upon. Needles to say, he lost his job, and instead of getting a new one, he made drinking his new, fulltime hobby, and the plush, pink sofa in the living room became his new station. My mother, who'd spent her days managing a bakery, had to take upon herself a second job, only to be stuck at the cash register at our small, southern town's supermarket during evening hours. I say I don't remember much, sometimes I remember nothing at all, but one detail always sticks: as the first weeks adjusting to our new situation dragged by, my mother seemed to age ten years. The bakery opened at 6am. The supermarket closed at 11 pm. It didn't take long before fine, grey hairs started sprouting out of my her temples, her skin sagging as stress and sleep deprivation took its toll on her body. She became thinner, more fragile-looking, which of course added to my father's growing guilt and depression. He'd put us in this situation. He had only himself to blame. And who willingly admits to defeat and failure just like that? Not a drunken, good-for-nothing redneck, that's for sure.
So he blamed her. First there were subtle hints, like an undercurrent of frustration stirring in the air whenever he laid his pale, grey eyes on my mother's back as she scurried across the living room, collecting empty beer bottles off the table. Then the remarks began to make themselves known; she stole away his youth, she didn't smile enough, she was banging the cupboards in the kitchen too loudly, and eventually – she was an ugly, goddamned piece of trash and if it took a good ol' beating to get her act together, it was his job as her husband to make sure it was done properly.
And I? I stood there, in that small corner of the living room, wedged between the sofa and one of my mother's antique bookshelves and saw, listened and could do nothing as his fists rained down on my mother's face. I was maybe three years old that very first time. And as I grew older, these beatings went from happening once every second month, to nearly once a week, usually weekends. And though I knew it was bound to happen at some point, I still wasn't prepared for the day those beady, drunken eyes turned to me and I found my eleven year old self nursing a bruise on my lip one Saturday evening. When my bed room door creaked open late one night a few days later, I learned that my father had developed a special way of apologizing for marking my skin, and started bruising something much more valuable and fragile instead: my psyche. My soul.
Sometimes, I slip away. Mentally, that is. The doctors residing in the huge white, brick building always called it my coping mechanism, a habit my fractured mind had conjured up during the beatings and those nightly visits. One time I disappeared inside my head for a whole day, sunrise 'til sundown, and I couldn't remember anything that had transpired during those precious hours. When I came to, I was sitting on a hospital bed, clad in a white, almost see-through gown and my father was dead. I was seventeen, and I'd lost a parent and a day at the same time.
Car accident. Drunk driver. Only in this case, though they called me a victim, I couldn't find it in me to feel like one. Because I was the oncoming car that had severed into the opposite lane, and while my father was the one behind the wheel, he was not alive anymore to share this burden, nor would he have bothered to had he learned of the consequences of his foolishness. No, I was left behind to take on the blame, and feel the sorrow of being the one that had come crashing into the small Volvo occupied by a family of four: a father – a local policeman the doctors told me – his wife, their son of ten years, and their newborn daughter. Newborn, yes, so new that they were headed home from the hospital where the wife had delivered the baby a few days prior. They died on the scene, a whole family. And sometimes, I think maybe I died with them that day.
I never knew their names, never knew their faces, yet I saw them every night after that, in my dreams; a police hat, unmistakably southerner, resting atop a young boys mop of brown hair as he cuddled his baby sister to sleep before everything faded into white. I would wake then, cradling my skinny knees to my chest and I'd sing that song I remembered best from my childhood, the one my mother would sing when sleep wouldn't come. And that's how the nurse would hear me before she saw me as she made her nightly rounds, the fragile words of "The parting glass" skipping through the hospital hallways, tinged with tears and regret.
They gave me all the time they could spare, but the coping mechanism, though necessary and probably life saving at one point, had become a nuisance. I would slip, even when I tried not to, and hours would be gone. And that is how I found myself admitted to a mental institution in my late teens, a place meant to heal those wounds my body and mind wouldn't even allow myself to recall.
I lost track of everything. Time, space, place along with faces, names, events. All gone, until one day, not so very long ago, I walked the hallways of my seemingly permanent home, and couldn't remember how I'd even gotten there. Glimpses of images would swirl inside my head, and clear moments would occur – like the one I'm having right now, remembering all of this, but still… they will disappear again. And I will listen to my mother as she cries by my bed, but I will not be able to actually see her.
Her face is always a blur these days, her name – along with my own – an unsolved puzzle. The white coats will tell me my story, again and again, hoping that one day, it will all stick – stay put, so to speak. So far, it never has. I will slip, time will escape me, and I will come to when my mind has ridden itself of the unpleasantness. And then I will learn it all over again, until I cannot take anymore, and I will disappear once again.
And that is, amazingly enough, how my story begins.