Prologue
The car ride was awkwardly silent. I’d always known this day was coming, I’d tried so hard to prepare myself not to feel hurt by it, but, with every word she said- every lie she’d told. I suppose I started to believe her. I let my guard down. I told myself I wouldn’t. I can’t trust anyone. They always leave me. I’m broken, they say, too far gone. They call me ‘troubled’. I just wanted to be normal- I still do, in a way.
I really started to feel normal again, for a while. She helped me a lot. My Auntie, I mean. She said a change of scenery is what I needed. She said a proper family, who can provide for me better, is what I deserved.
I know she just said these things to make me feel better.
She’s afraid of me.
I can tell.
She didn’t want me around little Amy when she was born.
She’d deny it if I ever suggested it. She’d say “honey, you’re being silly. Don’t think like that. I just want you to live the life you deserve, with loving parents who will have time for you. Someone who doesn’t have to juggle two jobs to put food on your plate”
In a way, I knew this to be partially true. She couldn’t afford me. I understand the choice she had to make, between me and her daughter-to-be. She’d be a good mother. Better than mine ever was.
The car had stopped at an old farmhouse. It wasn’t huge, but it was bigger than my Aunts. My Auntie had hopped out of the car, and gently helped me out of the back seat, as if I were still an infant. I appreciated it anyway. I knew it was how she showed she loved me.
She did love me.
Nobody else ever had.
But that’s why it hurt the most when she left me there. “Be good. Don’t ever forget what I’ve taught you. You know I would not have let you go if I didn’t trust the young lady you’ve become” I vividly remember her crouched down in front of me, pointing to the purple book in my clammy hands, that was much nicer looking than it is now.
“And when you feel angry, or upset what do you do?” She asked me. “Write it down” I said in a voice I probably wouldn’t recognise today- laced with emotions now buried and forgotten in my journal forever. She nodded, placed a kiss atop my head and before I knew it, I was in an unfamiliar home, and yet, the feeling was as familiar as ever.
As my new family smiled at me and welcomed me into their embraces, I knew it would not last. Soon those smiles would turn fake. And those embraces would grow scarce. As it did so many times before.
But for my Auntie, I told myself, I would let this be a new beginning. I would prove everyone wrong, I’d prove myself wrong.
And so I smiled back at them, that plastic smile I’d mastered over the years, and I told myself if I kept pretending, one day it’d be real.
But as I write this in my journal that is near sogging from the tears I do not deserve to cry, I know I have failed. Yet, I feel like I can breathe again.
And as I stare at the last bit of food left in the freezer, wondering just how much longer it will last, I am reminded of a bit of home, and the family I once had. But they are gone. And it is my fault. But at least I am safe.
Nobody can abandon me anymore. Nobody can hurt me.
Because they are all dead.
ARABELLA KATT
THE KIDS ARE CANNIBALS
xCaptainCl3mentinex
PROLOGUE
