Heroes

Prologue

A van. Men in white coats. My parents. These are the last things I remember about my life before this. A van coming to take me away, men in white coats reaching out for me, my parents standing by our house. They were...crying. My mother was anyway. She wasn't full on crying, but I saw two tears slide down each cheek. My father was just there, a face of steel as always, but with a softness to his eyes. I tried to shout, to call out to them, to say anything, but I was too frozen with fear to make a sound. The men grabbed me and threw me inside the van, closing and locking the doors behind me. As the van started to move, I looked out of the window at the back and saw my parents slowly waving at me before bowing their heads and going back inside. I placed my hand on the window and I choked the following words: "I love you." I knew where they had sent me and why they had sent me, but that didn't make it hurt less. I wriggled round in my seat and tried to put them out of my mind. However, that's a difficult thing for a 12 year old to do. After what seemed like a long journey but that wasn't really, a large building loomed up in front of me. Castlewell Asylum.