Stitched Souls

Screams in the Night

My life began with sirens.

As far as I'm concerned, the beginning of my life wasn't the moment I was brought into this world or the earliest memory I have. It wasn't the best memories, hardships, or relationships. It wasn't even the year that my parents broke up and my life became a living hell on one side and a small patch of heaven on the other.

I only wish it was something like that. For me, lives like that are merely dreams, the lives that other people get to live, in movies and fairy tales. A nice happy sort of picturesque life, even just a simple one seems to tease me because I can't have that be my reality.

If I had to choose when my life began, I'd choose the moment when my life really took a turn for the worse. I share that moment with many other people, actually. I'm not really all that special. We're all a part of the madness, all of us dreaming and hoping about very similar things. It wasn't an accident, a bombing, a mass shooting, or anything like that.

Again, that only happens in movies, books, or to other people. But then again, if I could travel back in time to tell my past self what was going to become of me, I wouldn't have believed one word. It didn't seem like anything like this could happen. Until it did. To people like me.

My life changed on the day that a man singlehandedly stole the souls of an entire generation.

That's both a social and physical death sentence in my world. Scientists for years had been studying the power of a human's soul and spirit. How could a single human being survive great stress and setbacks and come back from them? They had to know, and eventually they found out. The very core of a human being is so strong that if one could harness its capabilities, the human race could go farther than it ever had.

It was slow going, but eventually this new power source soon had the world twined around its fingertips. Souls were used to power everything from cars to computers to coffee makers (gotta have that soul juice). The stronger the soul, the farther you went, the more you could do, the better you were at just about everything.

We thought we were at a new age.

We thought nothing could have happened.

People never learn that you can't just assume something will go right. Stupid fricking Murphy's Law still exists, you idiots.

Humanity had it coming. It had been a mostly peaceful day. Not much news, everything seemed to slow down, the day was nice, the flowers were blooming. The day seemed perfect.

After midnight, the world erupted into chaos.

Millions of people arose to a unified surge of terror. It was like someone had flicked a light switch off and people began to scream  everywhere. I had never felt anything quite like it before. I'd broken my arm once by falling off a merry-go-round and I thought that was the worst thing ever, but that was peanuts compared to this new pain. It felt like someone had cracked open my chest and ripped out my heart. I could barely breathe without molten lava flooding my throat and lungs.

The emergency lines had never been so busy before. News channels around the world were broadcasting the same story. The towns were peppered with shrieks and wailing as people tried to figure out what was going on. The police came out with riot shields and had to batter people back as they moved the victims into the hospital.

I remember them coming for me. My dad and mom were still together at the time. They had been sleeping in their room, next to mine, when I started screaming until my voice went hoarse. They tried to comfort me, but there was nothing they could say or do that could help me. When the paramedics arrived, my dad fought like a caged animal and didn't want them anywhere near me, but one well-placed punch later I was being strapped onto a stretcher and locked into an ambulance.

That was the last time I ever really saw them able to handle being around each other.

I don't really remember the next bit, so I had to be filled in. I was taken to a hospital and placed with numerous other kids from my city and some of the nearby towns, all my age and suffering similar symptoms. The doctors had never seen or heard of anything like this. We were perfectly fine physically and mentally aside from a little stress and pain, so nothing should have been out of line. But when they checked on our souls, nothing showed up. Not a blip, not a glimpse, nothing.

They ended up having to knock us out. Eventually, hundreds of screaming and thrashing teenagers finally proved to be enough so they stabilised us in between waking and dreaming states.

The screaming resumed when we woke up, though there were sobs and bawling intermixed within.

When I got up, the pain was gone, but I still felt empty. My once happy heart now felt like a ball of lead.  Just below my left shoulder was long, raw scar that looped around my chest and stopped at the center of my sternum. I stared at it blankly, not sure what to make of it. I didn't quite know what to think of the screaming either. At least I was handling it quietly.

When I was told that someone had went around and stolen the souls of countless people (including me), I smacked myself with a pillow and flopped back on my bed. I stayed that way until my mom came and got me. She wanted to be everywhere with me and nowhere with my dad. I didn't want to hear the doctors gush over the medical marvel of the artificial soul resting within me. I didn't want to hear how I had become my own Frankenstein's monster.

I had to stay in the hospital for a few days in order to make sure the stitches were set. The doctors said it would be a good opportunity to come to terms with what had happened. It just made me feel like one freak inside one giant circus. My shallow, selfish inner voice chimed in that at least I wasn't the only freak around. Oh, yeah, that's really uplifting.

The week I came home, my mom filed for a divorce. I don't really know what happened during the time I was in the hospital, but it couldn't have been anything good. Within less than two hours, my dad had all of his belongings boxed up up and loaded into his truck. He came into my room, kissed me on the forehead, told me he loved me, and left. My mom and I didn't speak much that night.

My mom was worried about letting me go back to school, but I finally convinced her that many of the other victims were going back, including my best friend, Eric, and that I was strong enough to handle it. I don't think she really believed me, but I don't think she was in much a mood to argue with me either. So it was back to textbooks and classrooms for me.

The beginning went by well enough. Most of the other students seemed to look at us differently. Some people avoided us like the plague. Some were indifferent to what had happened. A good chunk of the people looked at us from the other way. Now they could mock and insult more people in a single go. Lucky us. People were already giving us names. Monsters, freaks, patchwork kids, and a bunch more names I'd rather not repeat. None of those stuck very well, so we sort of ended up with a name we could at least go behind: the Soulless. Hey, we might sound like some heavy metal band, but whatever, it was something we could agree on.

Some people have accepted what has happened. They can take the teasing and emptiness and move on with their lives. I wish I could be like them, but I still can't let it go. I feel like my soul is calling to me from wherever it is. I just wish I could find it again.

Not to be normal again.

Not to stop the mocking.

Just to feel like myself again.