Whispers on a Wing

I have a secret, one that completely shook the very foundations of my life when I was just twelve years old.

It started on my twelfth birthday.

I’d woken up early that morning, excited for what the day would bring, when I felt something shift. Looking back at it now I could tell that it wasn’t normal, the way my parents eyes gleamed with satisfaction the closer we came to my birthday. Or the way they would have hushed conversations amongst themselves whilst I was sitting quietly in the next room watching my favourite television show.

It turns out they knew what was going to happen to me all along, they knew what secrets lay just below the surface of my skin, they just chose to keep me from them, to hide the secrets from me until the day they could strike.

The day after my twelfth birthday it had all been over. My parents had waited until I was finished with my transformation before dosing me up with enough sleeping pills to knock out a horse before tying me to the bannister of our staircase. They had used two of my dad’s belts, the leather and metal being sturdy enough to keep me in place whilst they performed their torture. The pills they had slipped into my morning orange juice had little effect on me, my body burning them off quick, causing me to be fully conscious while they started to dig the sharp edge of a hunting knife into my flesh, trying to cut out and sever from me the very thing that caused me to be an abomination in their eyes.

It took them ages to figure out they couldn’t achieve their goal, the new bone having fused together with my spine, my body having reinforced itself over the twenty-four hours so that even a knife couldn’t sever my bones apart and break my body. In the end they’d decided to abandon me, screaming in agony and tied to the bannister, whilst they set my childhood home on fire... with me inside.

They hadn’t counted on me surviving the blaze, not believing I could untie myself and escape from the licks of the flames set by the two people who were supposed to love me unconditionally. Thankfully I had managed to untie myself, using my newfound ‘gift’ to lift me up so that I could undo the buckles holding me captive, and escape into the night.

I wasn’t sure whether my parents had seen me escaping through an open window, which had been blown out due to the heat of the fire. I had been too focused on my escape to look back and see if they were there, watching their home and only daughter go up in flames.

There was one thing for sure, I was going to do everything in my power to prove them wrong.

They had called me unholy, a creature born in the image of Satan, a monster that had no place in this civilised world. I was going to show them.

Since that night I have been running, terrified that they would find me and finish what they’d started all those years ago, but I refused to let them stop me. I had made a promise to myself that I would finish school with straight A’s, that I would get a full scholarship to one of the top universities in the country and that I was going to succeed in everything that I set my mind to. Just because I was different, didn’t mean that I couldn’t benefit the world in some way. I was going to live my life, get an amazing job and make my parents regret the day they left me to die in my blazing home.

Thoughts so far?

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