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azuredistraught) wrote2014-03-18 09:48 pm
azuredistraught) wrote2014-03-18 09:48 pm
Time To Be A Ghost
?-orphanage 8-adopted 13-'mom makes contact 16-Marked 17-'mom' captured 19-now
My earliest memories are of the orphanage that I grew up in. There wasn't a lot of us there, so we were all very close knit. We took care of our own. There was a great sense of belonging in those walls. Something that was never given to us from any of the adults that worked there. We were kids, so we never really took care to notice, or were bothered by it even if we did know. We had each other, and that was all that mattered. We gave ourselves meaning, we seized each day.
When someone was adopted it was tradition to bawl your eyes out. We said we were happy for whoever left us, that they were tears of joy. They would in turn whoop in joy, and do some merry jig. All of it was forced. We never wanted them to go. We never wanted to leave. We were so safe there. Everything was handed to us on a silver platter. Well, maybe a paper plate, but it was still given to us. Like a loaded gun with infinite ammo. No worries, except on how to entertain ourselves next.
Of course when my time came I handled it like the best of them. Stupid grin on my face, with a steady stream of tears running down my cheeks. It wasn't anything against the man and woman I was soon to call family. I was leaving the warm, secure environment (family) I had loved so much. My life would change dramatically in a matter of hours. But I had to smile, for the younger ones. So they knew it wasn't anything bad to leave. That even though things are changing, they are not all bad. That there was something greater outside our walls. I didn't mean it, and they could tell, I'm sure.
The smiling man and woman who took me in were named Desmond and Molly Crossings. Beautiful people is what they were. Golden hair, pearly teeth, clean, respectable, these were just the first things to hit you. They were clean, and they were perfect. They were perfect, yet they were adopting me, so there must have been something wrong with them. A messy boy, with untameable long dark hair, covered in dust, dirt under the nails, holes blown out of the knees of the pants... well you get the picture. Why would such a perfect family want me? As the days grew into nights, days into weeks, it hit me quite clearly. They were like the adults that raised us at the orphanage. They didn't care. If they didn't care, why did they adopt me in the first place? Ah. Their perfect lives lacked one thing: a child. Why didn't they have one of their own? They seemed so happy together.
The world is all about facades. These people weren't happy. They didn't fight, or get angry, or cry, not like I did. They expressed themselves in different ways. On different scales. No family meals. Mom and Dad having their own bed rooms. No family bonding. No picnics. No nonsense. They didn't like me. They didn't like each other. I figured out quickly that they had been a 'pre-destined' couple of the Society. An 'arranged marriage' is a simple term for it. But to save face they needed a child, and, here I assume, they didn't want to touch each other, so they went with the logical route of battling paperwork to get stuck with my ungrateful ass.
The man that was to be my father was the head of a pharmaceutic company, one of the bigger ones that I couldn't pronounce. With him being the owner, boss, what have you, he was rarely at home, and when he was there, he was busy in his study working. Not to be disturbed. A man that could send you shrinking out of sight with one glance.
The woman to be my mother was a hazy sort of lady. She only seemed half interested with the world around her. Only seemed half in tune with reality. She also ran her own business, although it was nowhere near the caliber of her husbands. She had started a small shop selling decorative porcelain masks, after all if something is going to run your life, you might as well make a buck off it.
With her being a maker of such things, the walls of their home were lined with the haunting gaze-less objects. Imagine walking the halls at night when you are 10 to dozens of faceless stares. You can bet I thought something was staring out at me from each and everyone of those cursed objects. Anyway, they seemed to be the only decorations in the house, besides the fancy furniture that sat unused in most other rooms.
The house was kept in immaculate conditions, which startled me when I first came there. However did they keep it so clean when it's used everyday? The correct answer was that it doesn't. I had been right in thinking that if it got used it should be dirty. However, if it wasn't used, it wasn't dirtied. The only roomed that ever saw any use were Father's study, Mother's workshop, and the bedrooms and bathrooms. The kitchen even sat unused most days.
The only hand in raising me that my parents had was in my schooling. Father had one more reason for adopting me, or so it seemed. He needed an heir to the throne, as it were. Someone to inherit the company that he could easily control in his elder years. Well, that was my guess for his grooming, anyway. I needed to have 'A's in everything. Something lower than this was intolerable, and would result in no dinner. Which, funny enough did motivate me. The idea of no dinner meant that if I had succeeded there would be dinner. Remember what I said earlier? No family meals. There were hardly any meals at all actually. I had to feed myself if I wanted to eat. Home cooking? What's that?
So father was grooming my mind for positional take-over, however for the majority of my free time I had was spent without the presence of either adults. I was either off in the woods getting irrevocably dirty, or in my room staying unmistakably clean.
My earliest memories are of the orphanage that I grew up in. There wasn't a lot of us there, so we were all very close knit. We took care of our own. There was a great sense of belonging in those walls. Something that was never given to us from any of the adults that worked there. We were kids, so we never really took care to notice, or were bothered by it even if we did know. We had each other, and that was all that mattered. We gave ourselves meaning, we seized each day.
When someone was adopted it was tradition to bawl your eyes out. We said we were happy for whoever left us, that they were tears of joy. They would in turn whoop in joy, and do some merry jig. All of it was forced. We never wanted them to go. We never wanted to leave. We were so safe there. Everything was handed to us on a silver platter. Well, maybe a paper plate, but it was still given to us. Like a loaded gun with infinite ammo. No worries, except on how to entertain ourselves next.
Of course when my time came I handled it like the best of them. Stupid grin on my face, with a steady stream of tears running down my cheeks. It wasn't anything against the man and woman I was soon to call family. I was leaving the warm, secure environment (family) I had loved so much. My life would change dramatically in a matter of hours. But I had to smile, for the younger ones. So they knew it wasn't anything bad to leave. That even though things are changing, they are not all bad. That there was something greater outside our walls. I didn't mean it, and they could tell, I'm sure.
The smiling man and woman who took me in were named Desmond and Molly Crossings. Beautiful people is what they were. Golden hair, pearly teeth, clean, respectable, these were just the first things to hit you. They were clean, and they were perfect. They were perfect, yet they were adopting me, so there must have been something wrong with them. A messy boy, with untameable long dark hair, covered in dust, dirt under the nails, holes blown out of the knees of the pants... well you get the picture. Why would such a perfect family want me? As the days grew into nights, days into weeks, it hit me quite clearly. They were like the adults that raised us at the orphanage. They didn't care. If they didn't care, why did they adopt me in the first place? Ah. Their perfect lives lacked one thing: a child. Why didn't they have one of their own? They seemed so happy together.
The world is all about facades. These people weren't happy. They didn't fight, or get angry, or cry, not like I did. They expressed themselves in different ways. On different scales. No family meals. Mom and Dad having their own bed rooms. No family bonding. No picnics. No nonsense. They didn't like me. They didn't like each other. I figured out quickly that they had been a 'pre-destined' couple of the Society. An 'arranged marriage' is a simple term for it. But to save face they needed a child, and, here I assume, they didn't want to touch each other, so they went with the logical route of battling paperwork to get stuck with my ungrateful ass.
The man that was to be my father was the head of a pharmaceutic company, one of the bigger ones that I couldn't pronounce. With him being the owner, boss, what have you, he was rarely at home, and when he was there, he was busy in his study working. Not to be disturbed. A man that could send you shrinking out of sight with one glance.
The woman to be my mother was a hazy sort of lady. She only seemed half interested with the world around her. Only seemed half in tune with reality. She also ran her own business, although it was nowhere near the caliber of her husbands. She had started a small shop selling decorative porcelain masks, after all if something is going to run your life, you might as well make a buck off it.
With her being a maker of such things, the walls of their home were lined with the haunting gaze-less objects. Imagine walking the halls at night when you are 10 to dozens of faceless stares. You can bet I thought something was staring out at me from each and everyone of those cursed objects. Anyway, they seemed to be the only decorations in the house, besides the fancy furniture that sat unused in most other rooms.
The house was kept in immaculate conditions, which startled me when I first came there. However did they keep it so clean when it's used everyday? The correct answer was that it doesn't. I had been right in thinking that if it got used it should be dirty. However, if it wasn't used, it wasn't dirtied. The only roomed that ever saw any use were Father's study, Mother's workshop, and the bedrooms and bathrooms. The kitchen even sat unused most days.
The only hand in raising me that my parents had was in my schooling. Father had one more reason for adopting me, or so it seemed. He needed an heir to the throne, as it were. Someone to inherit the company that he could easily control in his elder years. Well, that was my guess for his grooming, anyway. I needed to have 'A's in everything. Something lower than this was intolerable, and would result in no dinner. Which, funny enough did motivate me. The idea of no dinner meant that if I had succeeded there would be dinner. Remember what I said earlier? No family meals. There were hardly any meals at all actually. I had to feed myself if I wanted to eat. Home cooking? What's that?
So father was grooming my mind for positional take-over, however for the majority of my free time I had was spent without the presence of either adults. I was either off in the woods getting irrevocably dirty, or in my room staying unmistakably clean.