There are days I wish it were over.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to know who I am and I don\u2019t want to face another night.\u00a0 It\u2019s different when the sun goes down.\u00a0 I know and they know and the world just goes on, ignorant.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
When I was a kid, I would read every fantasy novel I could get my hands on.\u00a0 I was the skinny kid saving his pennies for the dictionaries on Middle Earth and I was the kid alone on the playground acting out the last epic battle of good versus evil.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Teachers would pull my mother aside and tell her I made other children uncomfortable.\u00a0 They told her the reason other kids picked\u00a0on me and ridiculed me was because she allowed me to stay in my fantasy world.\u00a0 I\u2019ll give my mother this; as overworked as she was, she stood up for me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Occasionally she would pick me up early from school, sign me out, and we would have ice cream in the full light of day.\u00a0 I know that she felt it was us against them, but I didn\u2019t know how many battles fronts she was fighting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
She didn\u2019t come home one night.\u00a0 They found her remains three months later, down by Navy Pier.\u00a0 She didn\u2019t die there.\u00a0 The police still call it an open case.\u00a0 The cops that investigated her murder even came around to check on me in foster care.\u00a0I know she didn\u2019t die easy; it wasn\u2019t quick.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I was thirteen when she died, and foster care was one of the worst things that could have happened.\u00a0 When they tapped on my window and I cried for help, my foster parents didn\u2019t believe me.\u00a0 At one point they institutionalized me for schizophrenic behavior.\u00a0\u00a0 That was worse because then the bastards could walk right in\u2013the loons invited them in all the time.\u00a0 Nobody questions why a homeless schizoid dies alone\u2013they pack them off to cold storage with a shrug and a “too bad.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Strange, though, the loons never turned.\u00a0 Never.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I would have won if a weary old priest hadn\u2019t heard my screams one night.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t believe they could crawl along the ceiling and hide in shadows, but he gave me a golden crucifix that has never left me. That stops them, scoffers be damned.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
You don\u2019t know how desperate and crazy you can sound when a white clad orderly is standing in the doorway with a straight jacket for you and one of the cursed ones is smiling at you from the ceiling; they would crawl around like flies.\u00a0\u00a0 I think many of the inmates went crazy after they arrived.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I sleep in the church’s basement now.\u00a0 I do odd jobs, so they let me.\u00a0 I sleep well there, despite the unbelief of the old priest who saved me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I miss my mother.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I work hard to avenge her.\u00a0 That\u2019s what she did, worked hard.\u00a0 Maybe it will all end with me.\u00a0 Or end me.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There are days I wish it were over. I don\u2019t want to know who I am and I don\u2019t want to face another night. It\u2019s different when the sun goes down. I know and they know and the world just goes on, ignorant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,43,3],"tags":[36,14],"class_list":["post-1140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","category-horror","category-short-fiction","tag-amwritingfiction","tag-horror"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lydiaink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/Haunted-Memories-by-Candlelight.png?fit=1536%2C1024&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2114,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions\/2114"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lydiaink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}