Damonic

*This story is a collab between authors Nikki_says_so and ChaeWinacott!  Please Enjoy!*  

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Preface

I used to dream about what it would be like to finally leave the orphanage. 

Ideally, it would be in the arms of some new found mother and father who decided to adopt me. 

Finally take me away. 

Love me as their own.

 I used to picture them in my head.   My new mother would be some kind soul, with big warm brown eyes and long, curly red hair with a just tiny hint of gray.    My new father would have a beer belly and a jolly laugh that would boom out as we played a game of tickle-monster. 

They would love me, unlike my real parents; they’d never want to give me up.

But, I had been stupid back then. 

Back when things like stone-cold reality didn’t get in the way of imagination.  Back when anything seemed possible

 I could almost laugh looking back, because now I knew the truth; and the truth was that nobody wanted a defective kid. 

The kid with the heart problem.

The kid who wet the bed because she couldn’t remember the parents who dropped her off on the side of the road without so much as a diaper. 

The kid who got picked on for believing in things like angels and magic.    

Dreamers didn’t last long in the orphanage—or anywhere else for that matter.  The world could be cruel like that.

So, I got over it quickly.  I toughened up.  Wised up and realized that no matter how hard I tried…

No matter how tightly I curled my hair and tried to look cute and innocent.  No matter how hard I practiced my ‘please adopt me, I’ll be good—honest!’ smile in the mirror. 

That no matter how hard I tried to appear normal, I just wasn’t.

No amount of ‘dreaming’ would ever change that. 

I was damaged goods.  Broken, defective—unwanted. 

The other kids could hope and pretend, but I knew better than that. 

I was better than that. 

It didn’t take long for me to come to terms with the fact that I was never getting out of here—at least not in the arms of some smiling mom and dad who’d carry be piggyback to their perfect house in a perfect suburb. 

So, one day I just stopped dreaming and started planning instead.  ‘The day I get adopted,’ became ‘the day I turn eighteen’, and just like that I saw everything differently. 

I could get a job.  Get a life.  Be someone other than, ‘that girl with the heart thing.’

I could change. 

For seventeen long years, the date of my eighteenth birthday had been like a sweet lullaby.  Something nobody could take away from me. 

Once I turned eighteen I’d be free.

 I could finally get out and begin to peace back together the life my parents stole from me when they gave me up. 

The date was getting closer and closer.  Nothing could get in the way, right?

Wrong. 

Because exactly twenty one and a half days before I would be free at last…

Someone finally came for me and all my careful planning went to hell.