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CHAPTER 1: THE STORM

There are times where you can look back at a moment in your life and can go, ‘This was the moment everything changed for the worse’. Sometimes even further along in time, you may look back fondly at this moment and how the changes that started here changed your life for the better, that the pain was worth it. For me this moment was a monday. The twenty-eighth of November 2018, the night of the first Emergence and the day my life came crumbling down.

I had been walking aimlessly for what felt like hours and I still didn't know where I should or even could go. Cars zipped by as I made my way through endless suburbia on foot; a lone young adult like myself raised little concern. 

You know those little suburban streets filled with neat rows of houses on their own plots of land with their private gardens, driveways with parked cars and lush trees lining the road, their branches interlocking and casting shade over the road? Yeah it wasn’t that sort of suburbia, think aging houses in need of a coat of paint, ignored overgrown or parched dying gardens, beat up cars on the street and screaming coming from the houses. Oh and not a comfortable shadow worth its shade in sight.

Out here without shade and away from the cold winds of the lake, you wouldn’t have thought it was just shy of winter. 

My throat was parched, my feet were sore and I was starting to get hungry. All I had were the clothes on my back, ten precious dollars burning a hole in my pocket and an increasing number of blisters. 

My misfortune had started earlier today when I had used my free period to head home from school early. Well… Ok I might have to go back earlier than that and explain for this all to make sense. I guess it all started years ago when I was found wrapped in swaddling in a cardboard dvd player box, round the rear of a hospital.

The state handled it like they always do, with minimal effort. I was an unnamed John Doe and after a lazy attempt was made to try and identify the parents, I was given the name John D Smith, without even a drop of effort or imagination and placed into the system. I then drifted through the system for the next seven years. Stays in orphanages and temporary foster parents, never staying in one place for more than a year. 

The experience of being a foster kid is often more like parcela parcel that has been bounced for so long between zip codes that has long since lost sight of its destination, than the childhoods of other children. You’re a number in a system, a box to be ticked, a quota that has to be filled or an item that has to be budgeted. 

Yes it sucked not having parents, I mean I don’t entirely know what I was missing, but I had seen enough happy kids with parents on tv, in movies, on the streets and at the school. I won’t lie and say I didn’t feel a pang in my heart everytime I saw that, but it did dull over time. Eventually after a few rounds of being returned by foster parents, you closed off your heart and retreated away from others.

When I was young, growing up in this machine, I would often find a dark quiet space to hide, away from others. Especially when I felt bad. I had never been afraid of the dark, unlike many of the kids I’d met in the foster system. It was almost like a comforting stillness, a warm blanket, or a friend that helped you hide. No one could bother you if they couldn’t find you. I guess my habit of always hiding in the dark wasn’t considered endearing to foster parents, seeing as I seemed  to always get moved on in the end.

The back and forth all ended when I was seven and to my misfortune the Anderson’s entered my life. 

To this day I'll never understand how or why the Andersons became my foster parents, but there mustn't have been thorough background checks. Looking back on it, it was likely influenced by whatever conspiracy theory they were following at the time, but I bet the fortnightly government checks sweetened the deal. Whatever their reasons, it was obvious was the foster system had not done their due diligence and the Anderson’s were the last people who should of been allowed to have kids, let alone take in a foster kid.

Oh yeah, I guess I should mention my foster parents were massive conspiracy nuts! Name a bigoted conspiracy and they probably followed it. They were borderline neonazis, the only reason they hadn't joined a militia or Waco'ed with a cult, was because they switched conspiracies like others change underpants. If you can name a conspiracy, I can guarantee they likely followed it at one point.

Sometimes seeing how other kids internalise their parents beliefs, I think back on how lucky I was to not end up like them. Gag, eww! I kinda want to vomit at the thought of a ‘me’ existing who grew up like them..

School always kept me grounded and prevented their beliefs from completely rubbing off on me. The rents had wanted to homeschool me to prevent the “federal indoctrination system” from corrupting me, but the state foster system required them to keep me in the public system until I was 16, before I could drop out.

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That was the heart of why I had run away from home, at 16 I refused to drop out and it had been a source of conflict since. I was almost 18 now, not far off graduating with my high school diploma and I had big plans. 

Big plans I was working hard for. Since I was 15 years old and faking parental permission, I had slowly been building a small nest egg under the floorboards of my room. Several nights a week I spent flipping burgers and on weekends I worked at Walmart. 

All this saving so that when I graduated, I could go to college and leave Mr and Mrs Anderson, their conspiracies and their bigotry behind and never come back.

I had it all planned out. I’d been researching courses and picked out what I wanted to do and I had identified the scholarships I needed and I knew what welfare and loans I was eligible for. Then I had found a cheap area to live to rent near one of the local colleges. I’d even located a doctor and even the psych i would need. Not to mention there was even a planned parenthood not far away. 

I knew that last one because my foster parents had picketed it at one point. 

What I'd never anticipated was getting run out of the house before any of that could happen. Kicked out of home with nothing but the clothes on my back and the contents of my pockets.

The whole time I had lived with them, their constant conspiracies had always gotten on my nerves. The endless verbal brow beatings that forced me to keep secrets from them, I knew how bigoted they were. I just had to wait till I was 18 and had graduated, then I’d be living my own life, free of them and free to be me.

Constantly wearing a mask at school and and an even greater mask at home had been grinding me down. I knew who I was in theory, but how could it feel real when I constantly had to hide it behind masks, that I could only let slip in a few places online. The masks kept me safe at home, but I could feel my frustration building. Nodding and making vague grunts of agreement had got me through so many of their bullshit conspiracy rants. Problem was recently I had started talking back.

Today, when I got home from school, they’d told me I needed to pack a backpack and grab a bug out bag, as we were spending the night in their homemade backyard doomsday bunker. The world was about to end, they feverishly claimed. 

Enough was enough.

 I’d had it and this time it was beyond just talking back, I had snapped and yelled at them to come to their senses. Like hell I was going to let them yet again, force me into spending the night in their doomsday bunker, when I could be doing my school work and studying for exams.

Had I expected them to take that well? Absolutely fucking not. Was I surprised when they pulled one of their unregistered guns on me and told me to go fend for myself?  Yes, I almost shat myself when he pointed it at me, you try and tell me you wouldn’t be, but also no it wasn't really all that out of character for him.

So here I was walking with no destination, no money, no plans and nowhere to go. Could it get any worse? You bet, if my whole shitty life was evidence and if those darkening clouds on the horizon could be trusted. 

I better find some cover before they make my day worse, getting rained on is one thing, dying from exposure another entirely. I shivered as I imagined my awful name on a tombstone and the obligatory obituary. I didn’t want to die before I got a fresh start.

Scanning the horizon for the skyscrapers that marked Penrith's heart, I changed course and began my trek out of the monotonous suburbia. With every mile the clouds appeared to get darker. As I drew closer to the city the houses and green lawns began to be replaced by shops, businesses and apartment complexes. Sherwood maybe? 

I looked around, but everywhere was closed, the sun had passed behind the clouds a few miles back and it was likely setting. It had to be approaching 5pm.

The clouds burst drenching me to the bone with cold late autumn rain long before I made it to the city. 

Taking the opportunity to deal with my still parched throat, I turned my face to the heavens and tried to catch the rain with my mouth to drink. The first few mouthfuls of icy cool water soothed my burning throat. 

Then I opened my eyes and saw the clouds. You know when you see something that leaves you stunned and breathless? Well what I saw made me forget to swallow. I inhaled. Choking, I painfully coughed and spat up to offending water before glancing back up at the clouds through tear filled eyes.

Behind the clouds was a light show unlike any I had seen before. The closest comparison I could make was as if someone was firing off fireworks in the clouds, flashes of colourful lightning amidst the greys of the clouds. I pinched myself sure I must be dreaming or in some sort of hallucination, but I didn’t wake up and the strange lights did not disappear. The part of me that remembered all my foster parents’ conspiracies darted through a dozen explanations from UFOs, chemtrails, nuclear war, mind control experiments to even some new world order plot.

A jerking tremor coursed up my body from my toes to my head. I was already starting to feel the cold. The lights in the sky could wait, I knew I needed to find cover and I knew I needed to find it quickly. Spotting playground equipment in a nearby park, I ran for it and took shelter under the metal platform of a climbing structure.

I fell on my ass in the wood chips, panting from the cold, from sprinting after hours of walking. I was out of the wind and rain, I could stay here for now. The world around me was blurred out by sheets of rain and raindrops pelted the platform above my head with the sound of a machine gun. I still needed to decide what to do about my situation. 

Unfortunately, I wouldn't get the chance to think on it.

The sky flashed, bringing everything into contrast and instead of thunder came a long high pitched sound like steel tearing under tension. Every part of me went agonizingly hot, even my bones felt as if they were on fire. Then suddenly as it started I felt cold. My head pounded. I felt dizzy. Every bit of feedback from my body felt wrong. Everything felt larger, or maybe I was smaller. Something was wrong with my eyesight. I just closed my eyes and waited for things to feel normal again...