What's your name?

Chapter 10

Tk sits both Cameron and I down on the floor against the wall. He paces back and forth in the middle of the room for a second before finally sitting somewhat in the middle to talk to us.

"Okay." Tk takes a deep breath. "Here is my story. When I was little, my mother thought that I was not her child. She felt as if I were another being entirely. My mother wouldn't hold me and she wouldn't even talk to me.

"She felt like me being 'other worldly' was her fault and so she started hating herself. She would cut herself all of the time and I found about 6 suicide notes on my bed. Eventually she convinced herself that it was not her fault, but my father's fault for concieving this 'thing'.

"She would try everything to murder my father for about a month until he just up and left. I remember standing at my bedroom window watching my beaten and bruised father walk away from me forever. I went to sleep that night crying.

"I never went to school when I was little. My mother kept me locked up inside. She would never feed me so I had to cook for myself. I was annarexic as a child and my nutrition and cleanliness was a joke. I would eat rotten foods when it was just me and my mother. She never went shopping.

"About a week after my father left, my mother went out for a night. She came home around 2 am dragging something with her. It was raining and as I looked out the window, I began to cry with God. She was dragging my father's dead body. She had been digging in the backyard for the last week and I assumed that that hole is where she buried him.

"My mother then blamed me and herself for all of this. She thought that I killed my father. She would beat me every day and tell me that it was all because of me. I would agree and tell her that I was sorry. She would scream 'liar' and throw anything she could find at me.

"One night just ended it all though. One night she had just had enough. While she was asleep, I could tell something was seriously off so I called 911. I am glad that I did. There was no cop who just rushed right over though. They took forever to come. But in the meantime, it felt like everything happened so fast.

"I had the door open waiting for them when my mother comes behind me and holds me by my neck, pinned to the wall. she starts punching my gut and I try to break free. Then she has had enough of me. She took a knife. It was huge. The biggest knife I had ever seen. She looks at it lovingly. It was the knife she used to kill my father and the one she used to kill me.

"She shoved the knife right through my stomach and I felt like I was already dead. The last thing I saw was my mother running the knife through her own chest where her heart was. She pulled it out and blood went everywhere. She fell against the floor and I reached out my arm to catch her fall, but I never even moved.

"Just then as I was fading into unconciousness, I heard the sirens of the cop cars. I heard someone tentatively open the doors and I looked at him and smiled as best I could before I let go. From that moment, they took me into the cop car and sped off towards the hospital which was shockingly right around the corner from my house.

"They sewed up what my mother had ruptured and gave me back the blood I had lost. I of course don't remember this, but I was told what happened by one of the cops who saved me. He said I had been unconcious on a coma for a week.

"That cop was the first person I saw when I woke up that day. He was holding my hand and tears rolled down his smiling face when I opened my eyes. I tried to take my hand out of his, but I was so weak that I couldn't even move my fingers.

"He let go of me and ran to the nurse. She came in and saw that I was awake. Immediately she began to cry as well and she rushed over and started rubbing the top of my head and she kissed my forehead. She was so happy to see me awake, though I didn't know why. I wasn't even human, or at least that is what my mother had me believing.

"Eventually, I got my strength back and was released from the hospital. I was told I was going into foster care. I ended up living with the cop and his wife, the nurse. They took me home and gave me my own room. They fed me weird foods that I had never had before, like spaghetti and hot dogs. They took me to school and they supposed I was about the age for first grade by that point.

"I just went through the motions, never actually enjoying or hating my life. I didn't speak after that accident. I never talked at all, so I would be bullied at school by all the kids. They called me names and gave me bruises. It was normal to me, so I didn't expect anything less.

"The first time I spoke was in the second grade. I was getting beaten up by some older kids on the side of the road. This girl dressed as a boy came over and saved me. No one had ever stuck up for me before. I was always alone. But that was until I made a friend. This girl took my bag and carried it home for me. She actually walked me home.

"I had to know her name. I spoke for the first time in two years. I asked this girl what her name was. She told me it was Kio. I didn't know why she dressed as a boy and gave me a boy's name, but I didn't care. We were friends and we would meet every night from then on. I still never spoke anywhere except with Kio. I had no reason to.

"Eventually, Kio and I found another boy who was beaten by a girl. Kio walked up to him and asked him to be our friend. To my amazement, the boy agreed. So then the three of us would meet every evening. Those nights were the best nights of my life. I felt happy and safe for the first time ever.

"Then we would meet less and less and I longed to see my friends all of the time again. That is how I ended up here. The reason that my rude actions occured this morning was that I saw an apparation of my mother and I was trying to get revenge on her. But then Kio, you snapped me out of it. So that is what happened."