Winston Hills University : House of Trauma

Prologue - Travis

The story that you're about to read isn't a pleasant one at all. In fact, most of you who read this may end up a bit traumatized by the experiences these characters may go through. First, let's start off with me and my little origin story. My name is Travis Timothy Tedford. For a majority of my life, I grew up in the city of Los Angeles. My mother, Monique, was impregnated with me at the age of 16 and had me 9 months later at the age of 17. Her father, Manuel Tedford, was a Hispanic man who had originally spent most of his life in Dallas, Texas. He was a very introverted man who had served in the Vietnam War all those years ago.

A couple of years after he met my grandmother, Diane Francis, who was a black woman. While my grandfather was very loving and kind to my mother, my grandmother, on the other hand, was a different story. She suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and unfortunately, that affected her marriage with my grandfather, so after only two years of marriage, they had split. My grandfather ended up marrying three more times after my grandmother and ended up having more children, so it was hard for him to concentrate on just raising my mother, so she would often go live with my grandmother.

Once my mother got pregnant with me, my grandfather bought her an apartment and told her it was time for her to mature and learn to be an adult. My mom was very wild and reckless growing up, so even after she had me, it didn't stop her from partying with her friends, and eventually, she even fell for a man who was ten years older than her, who went by the name of Slim. I was about 3 when I met Slim, so I don't remember the exact details of how that went, but my earliest memory that I had of him was when I was about four years old. My mother was passed out drunk, and I was afraid of the storm that was going on that night, so I tried shaking her awake, but she just wouldn't wake up. A few minutes later, in came Slim to check on her, and then he tucked me into the couch and assured me everything was going to be fine. He then closed the door and left for what I thought would be the night, but I was wrong. He came in 2 minutes later, opening the door just to look directly at me with a very unfriendly face that terrified me. I immediately got off the couch and ran back to my mom and laid next to her. He didn't want to risk waking her up, so he had finally left. Slim was a very unpleasant man. Since I wasn't his child, he treated me very unfairly and was very abusive towards me. When my mother found out about what he was doing, she yelled at him for it, but his response to it all was always the same. "He's too soft! If you don't toughen his ass up, he'll turn out to be a faggot," he'd say.

My other family members found out what was going on and eventually began taking turns watching over me at their homes to keep me as far away from that man as possible. Since I was only a kid, I didn't fully understand everything that was going on, and I was very attached to my mom. So when I was away from her too long, I'd get homesick and beg for them to take me back to her. Every time I'd go back, I had hoped things would be different, but they never were. Thankfully, I eventually started going to school, so I didn't have to see Slim as much as compared to before.

When I look back at it, despite everything I was going through, I was a very lively kid who loved to play and make friends with everyone. I loved school so much I always dreaded when it was time for me to go back home. I remember one day when I came home from school, my mom happily announced that she was pregnant. The thought of having a little brother excited me, so I remember being very happy about it. Later that day, when I was alone with Slim, he also broke the news to me. He opened his arms and told me to come over to him, which I assumed meant he wanted a hug. He had never displayed that kind of affection towards me, so I remembered being so happy when I was walking over to hug him. Unfortunately, when I did reach him, it wasn't a hug he wanted to give; he was smoking a cigar and jammed it right into my stomach. I could still remember the burning sensation that I felt while he had it jammed into my stomach. Slim was hoping he'd have a boy since he already had a daughter who was a bit older than me with another woman but was disappointed when he found out it was another daughter he was expecting. That's when the abuse got worse. For every little thing or mistake I'd make, he'd find some way to abuse me, whether it was by punching me hard in the stomach or chest. Sometimes he would even get creative and have me get hurt in other ways. Once he had his daughter and me play in the main room, and he dared me to jump off of the speaker, and after I did, I had fallen and bruised my arm to where I was bleeding. I tried showing my mother, but she wouldn't have it; she just ignored it like she usually did those days. Things got worse after my sister Alanna was born. Slim then started to blame me for whatever trouble she'd get into, and I'd be the one punished for it. It got so bad to the point where the school started to notice that I was coming to school scared and covered, and one day the school counselor called me into her office.

"Hi Travis, how are you today?" She asked gently. Since I was only six years old at the time, I didn't really understand what a counselor was, and I had assumed I was being punished for something.

"I'm okay," I responded shyly.

"Okay, good. So the reason you're here today is because I wanted to talk to you about some concerns some of your peers have had concerning you," she said. I can remember myself beginning to feel nervous and sick to my stomach. If I was in trouble and Slim were to find out, I knew I'd be severely punished for it.

"How's everything going at home? Your teachers have noticed that you've been coming to school very scared, as if you were afraid of something. Is there something you're afraid of?" She asked. I thought about it for a moment and before I knew it, I spilled the beans and told her everything. I was hoping by doing so that the main problem being Slim would finally go away. What I thought would make things better only made them worse. Shortly after my visit with the counselor, the cops showed up at my apartment looking for Slim, and my mom denied everything that they were accusing him of and scolded me for telling our personal problems to the counselor. Despite all the abuse at home, I ended up doing very well in school and won Student of the Month three months in a row.

By the time I was 8 years old, things between my mother and Slim began to worsen, and she eventually met another man one night when she was out at a club. The man's name was Jordan Robinson, and he was 7 years older than my mother. Like Slim, he was also a drug dealer but made way more money than Slim ever did. Soon, the time came, and we were forced to move due to my mother having issues with the landlord. After that, Slim also decided he no longer wanted to be in my sister's life and disappeared shortly after. Jordan was kinder than Slim, but one of the worst things about him was that he would take turns playing favoritism between me and my sister. He would favor me and then bully my sister for a long period of time and then would switch up between us the next few months in a repeated cycle. We ended up moving to LA shortly after and remained there till this day. My mother and Jordan had two sons together, so my mother eventually stopped paying me much attention after I entered my teenage years.

All the abuse and trauma I had to deal with over the years slowly began to catch up with me in my teen years, and I slowly began to start acting out. I would get in trouble at school, steal from stores, and do all kinds of other things that could have ended me up in jail. To punish me, Jordan would take me out of school for long periods of time so that way I wouldn't be able to interact with anyone outside of the house. Me being an extrovert found that to be a worse punishment than even the abuse. In order for me to finish high school, I had to go to continuation school to catch up on my credits. After getting my high school diploma and attending Santa Monica College for a year, I finally had what I needed to transfer into a university. The only university that accepted me was one located way far out by San Francisco called Winston Hills University. Thankfully, it was over 6 hours away, so I immediately jumped at the opportunity. I packed all my things and took one last look around my room and thought about everything I had endured in there over the years. I know I may not have been too detailed about my teenage years as much as my childhood, but you'll learn more about that as I continue telling you my tale.

My mother and siblings took me to the airport to say goodbye. "Damn, after today I know things won't be the same again. After college, you'll go and live your own life and decide your own fate. I just want you to know that I'm proud of you and I'm so sorry for everything you had to go through because of me," said my mother as she began to tear up. I always had a soft spot for my mother, so I didn't really blame her too much for everything that happened to me growing up because it's not like it was her fault every guy she dated turned out to be a psychopath. However, one thing I didn't forgive her for was staying with them for as long as she did. "It's okay, Mom. No matter what, I still love you and always will," I responded as I hugged her. I then hugged each of my siblings and waved them off. Jordan and I at that point didn't talk, so he was glad I was leaving and didn't even bother coming to see me off.

As I sat in my seat on my flight, I began to go over all the papers I had received from the university. It said I was to room with two other people named Tanner May and Liviu Stefan. I could tell by reading the last one that he was most likely a foreigner from another country. I had always wanted to make friends with people from other countries, but due to Jordan's strictness, I was forbidden from ever using any social media. As I sat there in my seat while the plane took off into the air, I began to smile and couldn't help but feel excited for my new journey in life. I finally had the opportunity to leave behind the despair and trauma I've suffered in my 19 years of living. However, this new chapter in my life is only one of the five stories I will be telling you about. The other 4 will be about 4 other young people whose life experiences were either worse or soon to be worse than mine.