Three Weeks in Hell

Chapter 1

The anger was strong. The rage he felt at life itself coursed through his veins and made his heart pound. He barely acknowledged the sheer force of self loathing he felt; it was a daily occurrence and now part of who he was. And that was the question. Who the hell was he? All he had was a name. No scrap that, he thought. All he had was half a name – Callen. And that was only a surname. The types of kids that were called by their last name were usually those that were despised, whether that was despised as bullies, or despised as the kids no one wanted to know and just labelled as 'trouble'. Callen usually fell into the second category but there were times when he had to be the bully if only to survive. Survival. Hell, that was a whole new topic. He had no idea how he did it, and some days he had no idea why he even wanted to survive, but it seemed to be an inherent skill. He had survived fifteen years of hell. OK, some months were better than others, but now he had reached his fifteenth year, things had reached a crescendo.

He picked fights knowing he would lose and he regularly skipped school. He had shoplifted in plain sight of a store detective, hoping to get caught and be suitably punished, but lady luck had for once been on his side and he'd easily evaded the rent-a-cop. He deliberately wound up the last three foster families he's been placed with, earning himself the belt, being locked in his room and even locked out of the house. Not that it really mattered as he'd spent more and more days and nights roaming the streets than in the so-called safety of a home where adults apparently wanted to help him.

'Out of control', 'a challenge' and 'a hopeless case' were the three phrases the social workers had freely spoken about in his presence for the last five or six years. Callen had lost count exactly when those phrases came to embody who he was. Maybe it had started earlier. He'd been ten when he'd hit his foster father with the broom handle that had been used to beat him. That fighting instinct had stemmed from witnessing a previous foster father beating his foster brother to death in front of him. Life had not been kind to Callen, but it was the violent thoughts and memories he allowed to surface that fed his mood, as he listened to the inane and condescending babble of his latest social worker.

"I'm just trying to understand what you're thinking, Callen,"

Callen pushed back a mop of dark blonde hair from his eyes. His head remained low but he looked up at his latest case worker. She was making all the right noises and Callen studied her slowly. She was older than his last one – at least thirty. He guessed she was kind of pretty. Her face was oval shaped with dark brown hair that bounced around her shoulders when she moved her head. Her brown eyes were magnified by her thick rimmed glasses and as her hand poised over her pad, she had a tendency to fiddle with her engagement ring. Callen wondered whether it was a clue that she was unhappy in her personal life.

In response to her question, Callen just shrugged his shoulders. He didn't give a crap that Miss Williams wanted to get inside his head and understand him.

"Callen, I'm here to help you. If you can tell me what happened in your last placement then I can investigate the matter further."

Callen again glanced up at Miss Williams and quickly looked away as he inadvertently made eye contact.

"I only have the information provided to me by your foster father, and it isn't very complimentary about you. I want to hear your side of the story. I don't believe there is any such thing as a bad child. Children are vulnerable and impressionable and it is up to us adults to help shape you in to the people you become. If certain individuals abuse that position of trust, then they have no right to be involved in the lives of young people and children, particularly those that are at risk."

Miss Williams observed her young charge. She had read Callen's file months ago and her first impression had been the same as many of her co-workers, some of which had the so-called pleasure of placing him in the past. But seeing him now, after he had spent over a month on the streets and been arrested for burglary, all she could see was a child that was broken; a child that was so full of rage and hatred – of himself and of the world – that he was spiralling in to a life from which he would very soon struggle to escape. Lorna Williams had been his care manager for the last four months and had placed him with the Stoneman's. They were a family that had proved solid in the past. Sure there had been the usual gripes that came from them preferring the older children. Older children meant teenagers. And teenagers in foster care fell in to two categories. Those that recently had the misfortune to be taken from their parents, either for their own safety or through a family tragedy, or those children that had been in the social welfare system from a young age and for various reasons, had never been adopted. Either way, the children were extremely vulnerable, and being at such a critical age were frequently a challenge.