Hell On Earth

Chapter One

Am I scared? No, not scared. Ha, scared would be a complete understatement given the circumstance that I am in.

But absolutely gut-wrenched and terrified? You bet.

The thing is, I have never been away from my home. Ever. Well, except to leave said home to attend public school. Throughout the early years of childhood, I grew up in the suburbs with nothing but passing cars and people who kept to themselves to look at. I did not have many friends, which was something that did not bother me as much as it did my mother, but I was comfortable. I was well aware of the fact that I was not like the other children in my neighborhood. The title of "freak" made its mark on my adolescent brain, and I felt no need to pursue in the act of creating friendships to rid myself of it. "It is not normal for a girl your age to be so alone," said my mother. As the years progressed, so did my mother's worrying. The day my mother burst through my bedroom door stating that I needed to go far away from home as soon as possible, gave way to a life that was forever changed. I have never been on my own before, either. Growing up in a single-parent household sheltered and afraid of the world has always caused major setbacks for me. This goes hand-in-hand with the reason of why I do not have friends. But again, I am comfortable with that. My mother, who was frantically pulling my clothes from my dresser, told me I had exactly one hour to pack all of my things, call the sad excuse of a public school to tell them that I will not be returning anytime soon, and be out of the door for a group of strange men that are of no relation to me to come and pick me up and take me away.

What kind of mother tells her teenage daughter to pack all of her belongings and be set for a couple of strange men to come by and pick her up? Well...mine does. My mother had — keyword "had" — an incredibly hard time trusting men after my father. My father was abusive and lusted after things that caused our family to fall into turmoil. After my mother decided to leave him, we were on our own, living in a small apartment complex located in the suburbs of Chicago. The men there were not any better than my father. One of the men my mother wasted her time away with had familiar characteristics to those that my father possessed. My mother would come home with bruises and welts on the inside of her thighs, her inner arms, and anywhere else that could not be seen by the public eye if you were to glance at her. However, I could see everything. On a particular drunken night, my mother came home after having spent the evening with the man and immediately retreated to the worn down couch in the living room. Having thought she had fallen asleep, I made my way into the room, but was greeted with a slumped figure comprised of wetted eyelashes and a runny nose. When I took my mother into my arms, my body went into shock as a visual display of the abusing echoed and illuminated itself in my mind. To put it shortly, that particular man never laid another finger on my mother.

I was born with an extremely talented gift. This is not exactly a great gift...it is both a blessing and a curse. I can recall that in the fifth grade, strange things started to happen to and around me. There were not one, but multiple voices rambling on inside of my head. I could hear almost every one of my classmates' thoughts, and if I concentrated hard enough, I could pick out which thoughts were whose. Now, any fifth grader would find this pretty rad, right? Not me. I was not as thrilled to hear the thoughts that Lucas Shilling was thinking of regarding to what our female social studies teacher would look like without her clothes on. Disgusting.

But, when I went home that day and told my mother about my power, her face lightened to a ghastly shade of color, making her look as white as a ghost. Being eleven years old, I did not know what was going on. I thought it was completely normal to hear all of my classmates' thoughts whenever I was at school. Hey, if it were not for Billy Randal, I would have failed that Language Arts test. Thanks, Billy.

My mom took me by the arms and made me swear up and down that I would never, ever tell another soul about my special talent. I promised her and life went on.