Blood Diamonds

Chapter 23

A Girl Named Diana—1955

Since she was a little girl Diana was always an isolated soul preferring the pleasure of her own company. No one knew of her father or even her paternal lineage; everyone knew her only as the little orphan girl abandoned by both parents as an infant to unsuccessfully bounce from foster home to foster home to eventually suffer the cruelties of the local orphanage. There was nothing special there; no trace of her long-lost family in sight; no memorabilia of her heritage left behind when she was put into the system by concerned social workers who assisted her mother with her domestic troubles before her sudden disappearance. All Diana had was stories; the little fragments of information passed down to her by word of mouth so that she may somehow connect the dots of her murky past. No one wanted her, and so, to make life easier rather than wade through the pain of rejection, she always made it a habit to be alone.

There was one person who didn't hesitate to shed some light on her past though. From what she had gathered from the mean, old matron who ran the gloomy children's facility and held no qualms about recounting the orphans' tragic pasts to them at every opportunity she got, her mother was a homeless, poverty-stricken drunkard and a whore who appeared one night at the local Carnival City public hospital ("pregnant as an overstuffed zucchini" in the words of that nasty matron), begging for assistance from the shocked doctors and nurses who were obliged to help her according to their professional oaths. Diana was born minutes later, after the arrival of the ragged, pregnant woman who screamed in incoherent sentences of foul play about some man who "got her good". The next day the dirty mother, who could not walk properly twenty hours prior, was gone, never to return again.

Now, ten years later, little orphan Diana was an isolated individual with no real support system (only people constantly reminding her of what she was not or what she couldn't do). She had a quiet and mousy disposition, only spoke when addressed by an elder, and rarely interacted with other children in the orphanage. In fact, the child didn't have a single living friend. Her best friend was a stuffed animal in the shape of a bat, which she carried everywhere she went and spoke to frequently in hushed whispers (more frequently than she spoke to any of the people around her) as if the inanimate toy were somehow responding. She could often be seen giggling or mumbling with her stuffed friend tucked safely under one arm or sitting idly alongside her—a disturbing sight for those surrounding her who watched intrigued and a little afraid. This creepy demeanour left her all the more cut off from the rest of the children. Everyone knew that she was strange as far as young children were concerned, but adults and youngsters alike waived it away, crediting the behaviour to an introverted personality that she would soon outgrow.

On warm, sunny days Diana happily played solo in the sandpit, always creating miniature structures of a home which she imagined to one day live in and ignoring the other children around her who screamed with glee from some game they ran around playing together—her lack of interest in any social interaction with the others never bothered her or anyone else. On one of those warm, typically uneventful, sunny days she sat and spoke affectionately to her stuffed bat in the sandpit with not a care in the world. "And a moat, Mr. Moonshine? I think our castle needs a moat," Diana remarked while scrunching her pale little face in thought and digging a shallow trench around the crudely built sandcastle. Mr. Moonshine, a companion incapable of any intellectual response but was nonetheless her only friend, sat propped up in the sand beside her, staring silently. The sun glinted off his beady, black, glass eyes, making them sparkle to create the illusion that he really was a living creature. "What do you mean you don't like water?" she asked the inanimate doll, surprised by this previously unknown fact. "Water is the best, most refreshing thing on a hot day. You can do lots of fun things with water, like swimming. I love to swim, although I'm not very good at it. What's that? Water is the basis of all life and completely destructive? I don't know what you mean, you say the weirdest things, M. You prefer to fly among the clouds? Well clouds are water you silly thing," she chuckled, then sighed. "Oh, M, I'd love to fly," she suddenly said with a dreamy, longing expression, then burst into a fit of unexpected giggles. "Don't be ridiculous, I can't fly!" she bellowed, utterly amused.

"Oi, who are you talking to?" Donny Lorenz, another child, and bully, who resided in the orphanage screamed roguishly. He was two years older than Diana, physically big for his age, rudely boisterous, and always took great joy in torturing the other young children who were smaller than he was, especially Diana.

Diana looked up at him hovering over her creation. His presence cast a shadow across her sandy structure.

"I said who are you talking to?" he asked more aggressively, clearly instigating unnecessary trouble.

Diana continued to peer at him with half-closed eyes on account of the sun shining brightly, not saying a word and with a blank expression that gave even grown adults 'the heebie jeebies'.

"I wanna play here. Move, now!" Donny commanded.

She ignored his forceful demand and returned to her imitation of a moat, digging the trench deeper and deeper with every scoop of her tiny, soiled fingers. The sand was embedded within her fingernails from all the handiwork, making the tips of her fingers black with dirt.

"I'm talking to you, freak!" Donny yelled louder, before deliberately stomping one foot heavily on Diana's creation. The fragile, sandy castle crumbled under the weight of his foot.

Diana didn't react, but stopped what she was doing and froze with her head bowed toward the crumbling ruins of her sandcastle. The sight of the child sitting so eerily still instead of responding with tearful cries or force would have sent chills down the spine of the bravest person, just not Donny, who continued to torment her with another stomp on her sandcastle and more mean jabs. His child-like mind could not grasp the unnatural manner in which she reacted. "Freak," he repeated, not sensing the immediate danger he was in. Boys, as Diana would soon learn, were unfortunately slower and not as in tune with their sixth sense as their female companions, which is most probably why females made stronger witches; this trait gave them the ability to be more connected with the primordial forces of nature so that they could more easily utilise their natural resources as a source of power.

The boy sniffed unexpectedly, then lifted a hand to his nose. Something trickled down his nostril; something warm and runny, like heated mucous, but not quite. He peered down at his stubby fingers and frowned. They were tinged in a thin film of watery blood, bright and red. Instinctively, the boy did what any child would have—tilted his head back and stumbled backward in shock, intending to retreat from the sandpit to find a nurse who could treat the nosebleed at the infirmary.

All the while Diana didn't move a muscle. She was completely and silently still in the same position, stuck in a trance that encapsulated her mind. She seethed with anger, and subconsciously used this lethal emotion as a source of power to exercise her will for vengeance. She didn't know what she did or how she did it, or if it even was her, but the boy's nosebleed grew progressively worse. By the time he had turned around and staggered out of the sandpit and onto the concrete ground that made up the playground, the thin, watery blood was gushing out of both nostrils. It ran in torrents down and across his shut, quivering lips, onto his chin. The blood dripped thicker with each passing second, like a macabre tap. He whimpered, then screamed, unable to contain his fear any longer, and started running toward the building as fast as his little legs could go. But they didn't go very far, because the blood soon oozed from his eyes, casting a red blur over his vision; it was everywhere, red and runny, pouring from every orifice, including his ears. He placed his palms on his face and tried covering his ears with outstretched fingers in a futile gesture to stop the bleeding. It was no use. Donny Lorenz collapsed screaming on the orphanage stairs. After what felt like hours, which was in fact mere seconds, he went silent, lying in a pool of his own gooey blood that still dripped from every gap in his head. The boy was dead.

Diana snapped out of her daze and continued where she had left off, humming happily as she worked, with Mr. Moonshine beside her somehow smiling malevolently. In her mind nothing had happened at all.

The doctors were totally baffled after their investigation of the deceased child—internal haemorrhaging without an identifiable cause. In the weeks that followed, every child and adult within the orphanage was thoroughly tested and investigated as a precaution. No one exhibited any unusual symptoms even slightly related to Donny's in his final minutes. None of the other kids saw what had happened on that tragic day either. The entire chilling ordeal was,and remained, a medical mystery.