Who am I?

Chapter 1

I run through the woods as I hear his voice screaming at me, making me run faster. It's dark and the brisk cold air hits my skin like a pile of bricks. I run, faster, faster, faster until I feel a stump of wood on the tip of my foot, and the next thing I know I'm on the ground. I look up and scream, he is coming. He is going to get to me the same way they got to her, I'm going to die tonight. The world around me starts to spin and I'm paralyzed in fear, I can't move even if there was a point to. I knew my foot was at least sprained, there was no way I could run through the vegetation in this area of the woods. I watch him get closer and closer to me with a big grin on his face getting bigger each step he is closer to me. He grabs his bat and he swings and...

"Mija! You're going to be late for school, it's ten past seven, get up!" I groan and open my eyes feeling discombobulated still, my heart still racing and I am soaked in sweat. "Papi, I really don't feel like going to school today, let me stay home?" I say, knowing that Bruno would say no, but I figured I would give it a try. "I'm sorry but you need to go, you need to keep those grades up so you can get out of this town as you've always wanted." I sigh, I knew he was right. This town used to be a good small town in Connecticut, a great town even. But ever since the mafia took over it has been corrupted, and only the richest survive here. Hoodlums trash the schools for fun, gangsters run around in the streets like a playground, and most of the middle to lower class are homeless or worse now. This town, something happened to it. The colors in the sky here used to be bright and vibrant and now it is dark and mellow, something about here is different than every other place. The only place that isn't annihilated here are the woods, well, miles deep in the woods, of course. The outskirts of the woods are for the weak, the weirdos that have nothing better to do with their lives besides prey on others like they're hunting for deer. I sigh knowing that there is no way I'm getting out of going to school, so I get dressed and leave like every other day.

"Hey Mia, you got a minute?" I hear from the familiar deep voice behind me as I'm halfway out the door ready to go to AP chemistry. I turn around, already knowing what he is going to want to talk about. I force the sweetest voice I can make, and I do that smile that everyone seems to love but can never tell it's fake, "Yeah, sure. Is it about the short story assignment? Mr. Peter's you know it is just a story, nothing more or less than that." He sighs and leans back in his chair and puts his feet on his desk whilst holding my stack of papers made into what I call a short story in his hands, "Well Mia, it's a great story. I'm just very concerned about your well-being, especially since your father came into school this morning asking about you." I gasp, feeling the room start to spin and my head feels like it's floating. I hear ringing and the next thing I know, it's the dark abyss.

He hits me with his bat, repeatedly over and over again. I'm screaming and telling him to stop and to my surprise he does. I open my eyes to see him on the ground with Remi on top of him. "Go!" Remi yells at me while he stabs the man in the spleen, I limp away to the outskirts of the woods. I hear police sirens and everything starts to spin again as the blood pours out of me like a faucet, I slowly give up trying to stay awake and I let the darkness overthrow me. Why me?...

I wake up again screaming in my bedroom, not knowing how I got there or how long I've been there. Thank god it was just a horrible dream that felt like reality, I think. Ever since that night, that horrid night, I had been getting nightmares and hallucinations, I'm slowly going insane from it. Every day, every night, while I'm at school, I can't escape from it. No matter what I do or where I go, something bad happens. I start to wonder if it's me; if maybe I was the toxic one. Ever since I was a little boy telling everyone around me that I was a girl, I had a wall up. Even going to my new school, somehow they know me as the gay boy with a father from the mafia. My father's hands are dirty, meaning that my hands automatically have to be dirty as well. I'm not a murderer, I never was. I thrived off of blood money all my life, and even after I escaped that past, that disgusting and low-life past, it sticks to me like a leech. Just thinking about my past gets angry, my blood boils and I can start to hear ringing in my ears replaying the horrible memories I had. All of the pent-up anger I had all of these years that I've pretended weren't there with a false smile on my face and bland personality of a wimp, it comes to me, all of it. All of the feelings I've felt all of these years but instead of feeling them and talking about them I had sex with someone that didn't love me, or drink until I passed out, or take things I didn't even know what they were or where the came from; all of the hidden feelings come to me. Every day felt the same, and it is hard growing up knowing everyone has a target on my back.

Bruno slowly opens the door as I'm sitting up on my bed, he seems nervous to talk to me. "...Hey, are you feeling better Mija?" he says timidly as if I were made of glass. Considering what happened in the past few months, I guess I was. I don't know why, but that made me even angrier than knowing my father came to my school. "I'm not a baby Bruno, I'm fine, just leave me the hell alone" I snap. His face immediately softens and becomes sad, and he whispers a "sorry" with his heavy Hispanic voice and slowly shuts the door. I deeply sigh and mindlessly sketch in the sketchbook I've had since a child, and I slowly start to let my mind wander. Once I finished my sketch, I noticed that I saw something in the corner of my eye. For some reason, I froze. I knew I was safe, I knew I was fine, but that figure I saw in the corner of my eye was all too familiar. The stocky long and muscular legs, the fat beer belly, and fat and hairy arms, the sickly pale and oily skin that had scabs and acne on it from the drugs, the oily greasy brown hair that was matted like an animal in an American zoo. But when I looked over at the corner, it was gone. I never remembered everything that happened to me leading to the nights of the incident, but I know it was bad. I remember bits and pieces, but when it comes to the important information my mind comes to a blank. I don't know how I got here, I don't know how Bruno came into my life. Bruno was a sweet man from Mexico that immigrated here to make a better life for his family, but then his family left him when his ex-wife found a rich white hag that could provide better than Bruno ever could. Bruno works as much as he can to provide for me even though I don't need it or deserve it, yet no matter how many accomplishments he makes, he never is happy. I'm there, I'm supposed to fill the void in his heart that his family left, but it never will be the same. I'm not related to him, and I'm not from Mexico and have no idea what it's like to deal with racism on the daily basis. I'm Korean, half of my family is and the other half of my family is useless hillbillies that belong in jail or in the depths of hell. Most of the town is white, but I've personally never faced racism as an Asian woman. Just Bruno. Bruno always takes it, too. I've only dealt with racism has faced once in y life, and I could never handle it as Bruno handles it. Me, I'm a freak, or "off my rocker" as I've been told. I don't like people, people don't like me. 

My mom's side of the family was all born and raised in Korea, they taught me to fluently speak Korean but they never accepted the fact that I'm not fully Korean. So slowly as I got older and as it became less obvious that I was Asian, that part of the family slipped away from my life. I didn't fit into the group with the Asian kids and I didn't fit into the group with the white kids, I was all on my own. The other part of my family didn't care about my ethnicity, however, they were nothing but rednecks that took part in gangs and the mafia. My uncle and father's dad was never there for them, he would beat them up until they were twelve and then he left and never came back. Their mother, on the other hand, started to get mixed up with the wrong crowd. They grew up dirt poor, and she worked at the Five Seasons all day every day to get mediocre food on the table in their tiny apartment fit for only two people, so when she found an opportunity to change that she took it. One night she was working the night shift at the Five Seasons like always, it was around three AM and just about everyone was asleep except the drug dealers and the sex workers silently. She claimed she was sweeping the floor, and she turned around and saw Bill stumbling in the hallway drunk trying to get to his room. She helped him to his room, and not much happened later that night. But the next morning, she woke up in the room she was staying in that night to an envelope with 5 grand in it, along with a simple letter. The letter stated, "Thank you for your services, Dae. Call this number when you need better-paying work." So, she took it. She called the next day on the house phone and it was Bill, and he told her to come down to his office and she could do some deliveries for them for some extra money. Long story short, that's where the mafia family started. That's where my family started.