schmaltz

this is all so alien to me. ive been here before but ive been gone for so long. do you think anyone's noticed? i don't even look the same. things have changed. and so have i.

theres that old school i went to a couple years ago. i loved being a kid. not a care in the world. don't know much about life, but thats okay because i have my parents behind my back. oh wait.

ha. i remember this park. this is where i had my 9th birthday party. i fell off the swing and scraped my knee. everyone overreacted. do you need an ambulance? i guess everyone cared about me. cared.

see, i can remember these things but it's all so surreal. ive grown. ive grown at least a foot now since i left. my hair is different. i liked it but the bad man cut it off. i never liked him. hes the reason i left. the park. i can remember every detail. it's been haunting my dreams for 3 years now, since it happened.

i need to cross the street and i have to take my attention away from the pavement to look for cars. none. and i start walking. oh hey theres people. one of them is an old classmate. we hardly talked much. she's more of an acquaintance i suppose. we make eye contact and exchange smiles. i guess someone remembers me. i wonder how my close friends will react.

that man. hes dead now. i didn't kill him. but the killer isn't alive either. i should feel bad. but what morals do i have? im alive. even if my once brown eyes turned dull and full of misery and agony. what that man did is not okay. but ive learned to let it go. i can't change the past, but i can always accept it.

it's windy right now. im still looking at the ground. a dirty white paper hits my foot. this intrigues me. that paper could be an assignment that someone dropped on their way to school. or maybe a restraining order, or divorce papers. when i pick it up, i find out that it's neither. it's nothing but a missing persons paper. but who is it? it's me. age 12. i had a life ahead of me. i could've still lived out my childhood.

i decided to meet up with my friend and the park, but she stood me up. i decided to walk home but this person or people gosh they covered my mouth and eyes and put me in van. all i remember is waking up with my hands and feet tied, and tape over my mouth.

i was alone. for a while. there was this man. he would always touch me and i never liked it. he would do these things to me that my mom told my sister not to do with her boyfriend. im so going to hell. they gave me water and apples. nothing else. i would cry every night, never to sleep. i never slept. eventually though, he decided i wasnt enough and i had a friend. it was another girl. she looked to be 16. the man let us talk but only for a while. and he would monitor our conversations. i had someone and thats what mattered to me.

one night, he said he would go out and my new friend and i were allowed to talk, for once without anyone else listening. i didn't understand much at the time but she explained everything. she had told me we had been kidnapped to become this man's sex slaves, and that we might not ever go home. i didn't like this. i remember crying into her shoulders the whole night.

the man did come back. i know this because he brought someone else with him. this time though, he had brought a boy. he left us three and we didn't know much about the boy but we felt sorry for him and we welcomed him. the three of us fell asleep and when we woke up, we got to know him. he said he was 14 but before he could tell us his name, the man (who was listening) interupted him, like he did to the girl when i met her.

nothing big happened for a while. and then the thing happened. the man had taken the girl, and the boy and i stayed close to each other. this night was different. the man had been making the girl scream and cry, as if she was being murdered or something. it went on for a while. the boy and i started to cry because we had become so close to her, that we felt her pain.