Where This Story Begins (0)

Years have gone by, and I've reached my teen days without forgetting a single detail of what happened that bleak day. If someone were to ask me to paint every detail, I could do it in a heartbeat. If they could see my mind, they would come to realize how clearly I look back upon what happened. I could never ever forget the blood that covered the floors, the voices that echoed throughout the walls, and the cracking of the beating heart within my chest.

And as painful as it was to remember, I couldn't bring myself to forget.

How could I?

How should I?

Those evil, cruel monsters never found me. They had searched the whole house but managed to completely avoid the closet doors that locked me in, ignoring them as if the doors weren't there at all. It was as if they couldn't even see its presence.

After a while, they had left shouting words of frustration, and the police arrived shortly after. They found me huddled in the closet all still and silent, frozen in shock that I couldn't even come to process. I could even remember what one policeman had said when his eyes landed on me.

"She doesn't look like she's breathing. Is she still alive?"

Oh, how I wish I wasn't.

I've learned the painful truth of being alive, and all these years I've never wished for anything more than I have wished for death to come to me.

Maybe then, I could finally live with my parents in the afterlife.

Maybe then, I would remember how to be happy.

Following that event, I was whisked away by the police to live with my single aunt. She welcomed me with a warm smile and open arms, but I couldn't help but feel nothing.

I didn't want to be alive anymore.

I've distanced myself from the people around me and soon, everyone thought of me as the girl they could mess with, the girl they could torture.

It was my first day of school when the bullying started. Since that day, I had been home-schooled by my parents since it had been easier for them. To say the least, it was a horrible experience that left me traumatized for life. I had resorted to huddling against walls, fidgeting when someone got too close, and stuttering over my words when people tried to make conversation. By the end of the day, older kids who found me to be like a mouse had pinned me against a wall and had beaten me so badly that I had passed out against the floor.

The nurse found me, sprawled out on the floor, bleeding to death as she quickly tended to me. She asked what had happened, I never told her.

She couldn't help me.

My aunt had tried to file a report, somewhat guessing what had happened to me, but the school administration had disregarded the issue as simple "roughhousing" that children do all the time. I had been "over-reacting" as they said.

My aunt had moved me to another school after that, but it was almost as bad as the first. My silence irked the kids around me, and they stayed far away from me. I never got beat up as bad as I did, but their obvious avoidance of my presence hurt as much.

It wasn't that I didn't try to speak, but it seemed as though my efforts looked pathetic for them. Learning from that, I understood it best to just save my energy by not even speaking a single word unless necessary.

I turned into an empty shell of a once happy girl.

The police explained to me one afternoon about what happened. I was sitting silently on the sofa of my aunt's living room as they explained it to me.

Those monstrous men wanted me for some reason. Those evil men that entered my house wanted to kill me. They were known to be a gang of sadistic men who were hired by people to kill who "needed" to be killed. It just so happened that they were hired to kill me and my parents for an agreed sum. Even so, they never confessed as to who their client was, and the police have made no advances in their interrogation.

I had resigned myself to the fact that I may never know who was truly behind it all.

After that, I hated the world even more. Most of all, I loathed myself.

I locked myself up even more and no matter how hard my aunt tried, she couldn't do anything to help me. I would sometimes recall how much my aunt begged for me to change, see the world from a different perspective, to smile again.

I didn't hate her for it. I didn't hate her for wanting me to get better.

It was too late though... I was too far gone in the cold, unforgiving depths of pain and sadness and depression.

I've often tried to kill myself thinking: Why not just end it? Here and now? I didn't have to endure this.

But I didn't have the guts to. There in the back of my mind, even through all the times I tried to convince myself that this life was horrible, was always a voice, convincing me to stop and face the world head-on.

After a while, I just gave up on trying to take my life. I just couldn't do it.

Mama would be mad at me and papa... he would... They would be disappointed in me.

I didn't want them to be.

I was their only girl, their only hope left in this world. How could I disappoint them?

I'm 18 now.

A shy, broken girl who has never smiled in years. One who has never seen the light since then. A girl who was scared of getting too close to anyone... just to lose them and go through this pain all over again.

This is who I am...

Raine Woods...

A girl with no hope...

Now I ask you...

Can anyone ever save me when I couldn't even save myself?