The nothing in this space is so complete that it seems as if I can taste it, feel it, hear it. It takes me back into dark memories of my past reminding me of times better left forgotten.
The boy lay on the hard wood floor his legs tucked up tight, his arms hugging his knees to his chest as he does his best to be silent. His breath short and shallow so not to move the toys and stuffed animals and clothes piled on top of him. He hides alone in the dark space a single small gap his only link to the outside world as he stares out looking through the crack under the closet door. He watches and waits.
The hours pass slowly as he prays that he wont be found by "HER" when suddenly the sound of the small apartments front door shatters the silence.
"Your son is hiding in his closet again." the deceptively sweet voice of his fathers girlfriend Rhonda sounds out and he knows, he knows that he was never safe. She was simply to lazy to come get him. It was easier for her to just wait for his father to come home from work.
"He knows that he's in trouble, I dont understand why you dont just send him back to his bitch mother!" her voice rising in volume pitch and intensity until it cracks just before she finishes her tirade. "He threw his cars at me and yelled that he doesnt have to listen to me because I am not his mother."
It is a lie. The boy has been hiding since his father left for the day. But it doesnt matter. Every day since she moved in she has found a reason to hurt him or to have his father do it for her.
Knowing the truth the boy also knows that if he speaks out against her his father will just beat him harder for lying. So he lay there and cries in silence.
He cries because his father was supposed to save him from the hell of his life, He cries because his father got rid of his sister at the first opportunity giving her to his owns father and step-mother. He cries not because it is going to hurt, but because it happens so much that it doesnt hurt anymore.
My mind reeling from the harsh memory, I pull myself back from the vision of my 3rd birthday and try my best to make sense of where I am now. What I have become.
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I suddenly feel a tug. A sharp pull. Pain. I welcome the pain, relishing in the feel of it after so long sitting in the utter nothingness, feeling nothing at all. Finally there is something. It isn't nice but it is something, it is different and different is good.
There is a faint wooshing sound. Wait a sound... how long has it been since I last heard anything, long enough that a whisper is like thunder crashing in a storm.
I open my eyes and tries to look around but there is only a faint red glow everywhere my eyes turn, tainting everything. I try to reach out, to feel around me but my body refuses to listen to me. My muscles are small weak and undeveloped.
I can hear a thumping sound - DaDump - DaDump - DaDump. It takes but a moment for my damaged mind to realize that it is a heartbeat. Much stronger than my own, but in perfect sync.
"Where am I? What am I? Why am I going through this all again?" I think to myself, a sense of dread filling me with apprehension, fear that I know what is happening. What I have become.
As if answering my unasked question I see a flash.
"WHAT THE FUCK!?" I yell in my own head as I kick and thrash about. "What the hell is going on!? I don't want to be reborn! I want to be gone from all of this!"
DaDump-DaDump-DaDump that steady heartbeat thumps on. My small body unable to continue fighting. My meager energy reserves running out quickly I drift off to sleep again. Dreaming of pain, depression and personal betrayal...
Without warning there is a crushing pain over my entire body. There is a muffled cry and I know that my worst nightmare is coming true. I even failed at destroying myself. I am being reborn.
It hurts, this weak and small body is squeezed as my mothers body writhes about doing its very best to eject this parasite that has been growing inside her for the last 6 months.
As my head breaches the birth canal the light assaults my eyes like sunlight through a magnifying glass, The cold air biting my skin. The sound of my mother crying out in pain and the midwives encouraging words attack my ears like the sound of an artillery cannon. It is all too much. My body hurts, my senses are under attack. I stoically refuses to cry out though. My very will refuses to give this world the pleasure of knowing that it has hurt me, that I am afraid of facing life once more.
I can hear a weak female voice as it says a single word in a language I cannot understand, before I can feel a coarse fur being wrapped tightly around my body. It pricks my skin, feeling like needles piercing my, it is uncomfortable but it is warm and so I drift off again too sleep. The last thing I see before everything blacks out is a single blinking line in the corner of my vision.