The Birth Created By A Murder

adopted

i took a calming breath to still the raging sea inside me.
"my mother was a bad person. She hurt us, bad. Nearly to the point of death. The hospital, the night the policeman took us, recorded that they found heroin in our system. we was starved, beaten, cold and sick. This had happened to us for four years. Nobody could help us. i dont have muvh memories from this time, but i have plenty of scars to remind me it was real. I dont have a biological dad, been searching for yeras. always a deadend, but i did have a dad. my brothers dad. he tried to help, he tried to fight for us when we wnt into fostercare. He never missed a contact appointment, always showed us equal love, affection and gifts. he was amazing. i can feel his love still to this day."

i paused. wondering how i should continue. its not hard to relive these memories, its hard to stay on track. theres just so much bottled up inside me.

"the next significant event was the last time we saw him, it was bonfire night. He took us out, he had never done that before, it had always been at the contact centre, i think he took us against the rules, but not for a bad thing, to say goodbye. he drove us to a park in the countryside, i could smell the bonfires in the air, i rememeber hearing the fireworks. its such a good memory to say its my last one of him. it felt fun, loving and, just, so real. after that we never saw him again. i was 6. we didnt realise he wasnt allowed to see us again, for they had found a couple to adopt us and we had to transiton."

My face turned dark. i remember the first time we met this couple. we hid behind the sofa, i cuddled my brother close to me feeling protective and angry. anger was all i felt. nothing else really. and my brother, all he felt was fear. we hated them. more adults. we had already been in 4 fosterhomes. constantly shunned, bullied and moved about. labelled troubled children. my brother was fond of hurting their pets. poking goldfish eyes out, biting and hurting the dogs. killing anything small enough to catch. and me, well i was an angry little girl that bit and screamed.

"We got adopted, i was 6. it was a hard transition. i remember it was winter because i constantly felt cold and everything felt dark. we had never had our own rooms before, we had always shared, and suddenly we was seperated, at our most vunerable times. The new man who wanted us to call him dad spoke harsh words, to keep us seperated, under no circumstances were we allowed to share a room anymore. we had to be seperate. it was awful. we became troublesome, pushing back on this new unwelcome man. the adoptive mother was nice, she spoke to us nicely, softly, and made us lovley food and home baked goods."

The therapist looked at me before nodding. "was she good to you? whats her name"

"yes and her name is carol. his name is tony" i sighed. "he beat her, controlled her. i heard it alot. the thuds, slaps and muffled cries. i could feel it in the home. he was a fucked up man. he already had 2 children to a previous wife, then he had testicular cancer and became infertile, therefore, the adoption for carol, as she wanted babies. Anyway, we knew it wouldnt be long before he started hurting us too. and i was right. all the way up until i was 15 years old he came up with extremley creative ways to hurt us and punish us. i learned so much from him via this physical abuse, but it was the mental war he lead that got me the most." i smiled.

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An evil glint flashed in his cold empty eyes, stretching out his wry thin hands. He smiled, flashing his ugly teeth. "you know, if you just obeyed me, silently, all would be well. youd be rewarded" he said excitedly. "but no, here we are again, having to punish you. Carol fetch me my slippers please."
carol silently obeyed. 11 year old sophia trembled, hot tears sprung in her eyes.
"i was just reading my book" she breathed. "i didnt do anything else, it was just mr piggy he fell from my bed"

Tony laughed, "such a lier. you was playing in your room, a teddy does not thud like i heard"
sophia trmebled, hes a microwave teddy, full of heavy beans. she hadnt done anything, she had been simply reading in her bed, silently. trying to escape her world.
tony grabbed her arm, dragged her to the sofa where he forced her over his knee. he began hitting her with his slipper, harder then the last. counting to 100. sophia cried, struggled amd screamed she was sorry.
after he was done, she could barely move, bruises upon bruises forming and swelling.
"now sit, and write 100 times i must obey and not lie" he ordered.
he watched her cry as she carried out her task in immense pain. this was a daily occurance for her.

a few weeks later, she had returned home from school, she rushed to the bathroom as fast as she could. fear striking her little hesrt. she had drawn bugs on her arm in felt tip pen and tried desperatly to wash it off. Tony burst into the bathroom, furious he spat "what is this shit? what have you done" he mommentarily disapeared and returned with a scrubbing brush. grabbing her arm he began to intently scrub at her skin. by the time he was finished, sophias voice had been screamed dry, curled up on the bathroom floor, carol queitly came in, gasping at what she saw. the poor girls arm has been scrubbed raw, quite literally. that night sophia heard tony beat carol for standing up to him. that was the last time carol ever tried to stick up for sophia again.

as years passed, tony spent less time beating, and more time mentally fucking his adoptive daughter up. forcing her to run for over an hour barefoot in his large garden. it releases happy hormones he laughed at her exhaustion and bleeding feet. he forced her into her room, skipping her food, calling her fat. then commenting to how skinny she was and allowing her to eat large portions of food. commenting how her body was becoming more womanly. what a fucked up man. luckily she did not experience sexual assault from him, needless to say how innapropriate his comments was.

sophias only escape was school, her sanctuary. despite all the abuse at home, she did so well here with good grades and a couple of friends. tony forbade her to see her friends after school being closed up in her room. however sophia obtained a little after school job sweeping cut hair and making coffee at a local hairdressers a 40 min walk from home. of course he controlled her money, saying he was saving it for her. she never saw it but was just grateful to be out of the house. tony had become one of the schhols goveners in this time, towards the end of school, to control what he could from there too, not allowing any classes with her brother to class, completley apart, not allowing her school tripes, no luxuries. it made it hard for sophia to excel where she could, she won an art competion with her art class and was denied going to paris for an art filled educational wekend trip. this drove her heart to break and became so angry.

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the therapist was jotting notes down in her pad of paper, her face a vision of complete proffessionalism unweilding any emotions. she looked up "so thats a start, how about therapy or school, did they not notice anything peculiar, did you even try to communicate to anyone over the years?"

sophia laughed "hes a rich man, a school govenor, plays the piano at the local churches. why would anyone believe his messed up adopted kid, he was quick to blame my behaviour on the situation i was in as a baby, called me a lier and that i was just getting confused with bad dreams. no adult believed me for years. my class tutor, started to believe me, tried to help me out at school. but she couldnt get to deeply involved. i could always feel her worry for me, we became close, i saw her as someone i could trust but to a limit, i knew she couldnt be too involved at risk of her job"

she paused eyeing her therapist nervously. "my therapist was called gelerdine. when i was eventually removed from tonys care at 15 i continued to see her at school, turned out she was repeating everything back to tony and he even got my fosterhome address which he wasnt allowed and turned up outside the property. i was terrified. she got fired after that. i never wanted to see another therapist again"

sophia and the therapist both shared a sigh after that. the therapist nodded and smiled.