Natess;
My mutilation had started when I was four, as the skin on my neck began to split and form the gills, and scales began to cut through my back and legs.
I had been a test tube baby, and my parents, being cheap, had gone for an unregulated scientist, who had probably mixed my DNA with that of the Loc Ness Monster. My parents had tried everything, doctors, new scientists, DNA testing, and before long left it as it was and accepted me as I was.
When I was seven my mother started going to a woman's group connected somehow to my elementary school. She slowly became friends with another woman her age, and one night, invited her and her husband over for dinner.
I remember the night like any other. My mother had pulled my hip length hair into a braid that twisted and pulled, and revealed my biggest insecurity.
The doorbell rang at quarter to five and my mom sent me to open it, as I did the eyes approached me, and what started out as friendly smiles, turned into wide eyed stares of horror. I stepped back as my mother stepped ahead of me and introduced me.
"That's your daughter? Has she always been... like that? What caused it? Is it contagious?" The woman was frantic. Convinced I was Satan spawn, possessed by demons.
Over three cups of coffee and half a crate of cookies, she had convinced my parents to call an exorcist. They kept me up until eleven waiting for the man who I didn't understand.
When he came I tried to hide, slipping under my bed, and covering my face. I could hear my fathers nurturing voice as his hands clasped around my ankles and pulled me out.
Laying me in a tub of hot water, the tall, dark man began plucking out the scales on the backs of my shins, up my back, and before long tearing at the gills on the side of my necks. I spent four weeks in the ICU, recovering from the injuries that had caused my breathing deformalities.
When I was released from the hospital, I thought it was the end of all my problems. I'd go back home, be with my family... and be a normal little girl again.
When I stepped down into the foyer of the hospital, barely able to walk, it was not my fathers arms who lited me off the ground and carried my to a strange silver van, it was Kevin, my foster fathers arms, wrapped comfortingly around me, as I layed against his shoulder.
Since then, I've lived with Keving, Lina and they're young daughter for eight years, barely holding on to the life I used to have. I go to an all girls school in Maple Ridge, BC, fourty seven miles away from my home town, the name of which I try to forget.
I have forgetten many things; My mothers face, my fathers name, my baby brothers first words, the colour of my favourite dress. None of these things seem as important anymore.
I still love my parents, and I believe that they were doing the right thing. My foster parents told me I will never see them again, and if I do, they won't know it's me. I think this is because they were told I'm dead. I don't mind. I'm actually okay with the fact that I will never see my family again. They're nothing of importance to me.
This morning our school was given a presentation about "The Mutant Project" a project designed to help the kids in section 900. The screw ups. The test tube babies that were experimented on. Me.
The project was created two years ago, when more of us around are age were being found in schools around the coast of the province. Basically, it's a bootcamp-like lab, called The Academy, where we would be taken for a year.
Supposedly they've found the cure for a few of us with traces of animal genes, and some of us... well, they're working on it.
Each of the girls in my school, as we left the auditorium, picked up the confirmation form, most stopping to read quickly, or ignoring it completely before throwing it in the paper bin or garbage can. As we made our way back to our classrooms, i snuck into the bathroom and read over the sheet slowly.
Without knowing what I was doing, I grabbed a pen from my bag and began filling out the form. Name: Natess Leanne Crestin; Age: Fifteen; Birthdate: 05/27;... Before long the form was filled out with indented pen lines.
I had covered everything from my height and weight, to the fine details of my mutation. I bit my lip, folded the paper, slipped it in my pocket and pushed open the bathroom door.
The minute I dropped the letter on the desk, four words ran through my head. What have I done? Leaving my confirmation on the coordinators desk, meant one thing, I had just turned myself in to the Mutant Project, as well as I might as well have turned myself in for murder.
