It was cold, always cold.  Nothing was warm anymore.  Not even the soup that I had cooked in my own kitchen, with my own food, that I now ate in my own bed.  It was like all the emotions that had filled me, kept me running, were draining out... and the hurt… it stayed.  My daughter’s grave was three hundred miles away and yet it felt as if it was still buried within me… as if she was lying there... dead.  I miss her, and I don’t know how I’ll ever get out of this pain that cycles and rewinds only to play again.  The flowers come weekly, white roses, two dozen of them, one from Logan, one from Pete, it’ll go on for three months… as it always has with people of our kind, of our own respect… and then one day I’ll get the package and I’ll go back to my job.

     The memories keep coming back too.  My mother had died secretly pregnant… and here I had died when I was pregnant.  But the pain always brought me back... it kept me alive… but not feeling.  The blood made me realize that I felt.  The inhumane torture of remembrance, of knowing that which I never desired to know that continued to reopen the scars day after day after day.  I felt lost, helpless and hopeless more that I could ever say I had felt found, secure and hopeful.

    The memories never leave you, they haunt you long after whatever proof of the event has gone.  They are the worst part, the most horrid, bitter pain that you can ever feel, live and fear.  They continue to linger, to float over every thought of recuperation, of recovery, of hope, fragile as that may be, and it comes flooding back with sour fears.  I have no idea how I survived the remembrance, the daily struggle of trying to get my feet back again in the one thing I was proud of, my job.  Pete and Logan kept my head above the water, but who saved the rest of me I will never know.

    Pete moved on to his next job, and was apparently stricken with a young lady; it happens.  The ever sturdy Logan, totem of wisdom and rage, life and death, was always there for my calls, rare as they were.  He was a marvelous support, but as I said, together they only managed to pull my head above the water.

   The mysteries in life apparently have a cruel sense of humor.  Although in my line of duty I have never raped or pillaged, I was made to realize that others did, and maybe, for some reason I was the force of good somehow.  I never kill the innocent, they have done nothing to deserve the pain that death brings, but others do, and for once I didn’t understand.   How could I be a force of good?

     My relatives, the ones who care, called, and we… chatted if that is what it is to be called.  My grandmother sent me cookies, from Prague, with care of course.  Life seemed to continue, but I still felt it stop at moments and the stillness was felt and cold.  Like I said, it’s always cold here.  There’s so much on the tapes I’ve had to record from the news that I’ve tried to not watch them anymore.  So much hatred, Pro-life extremists, who cry out for the preservation of life, murder doctors, bomb clinics, and psychologically torture women who have already tortured themselves enough to make that decision for themselves.  College students who fear differences kill gay people, horrible beat them to death, the racism, the anti-minority anything, religions, races, sexual orientations, everything.  It seems as though the world has become a Leviathan.  A creature capable of so much destruction, but yet still possible of life.  We have begun to eat our own tails.  What will come next in this cycle?

    And the seasons have changed; things are growing.  My trees are budding, my first crocus broke through the ground yesterday in a patch of grass devoid of the white curse.  It seemed to final, so forever, the winter.  But it is gone, and I see more and more grass every day.  I feel like I should move on, but I question as to what I am to move on to.  Where am I to go now that I was so used to be being dead, empty inside?  How will I react in relationships from now on?  What about my career?  Can I ever be satisfied again?  I’m still not sure if I feel safe.  I lock all my doors, set the explosives, and the lasers, my personal security system, but I still feel like he’ll come back for me.

    I cannot trust anything anymore.  Anyone, everyone may be a threat to me.  It seems I have to retrace my therapy, and try to relearn what I had worked so hard to know.  Re-become the woman I once was, and maybe can be again.  But I see the way I am now in others too, and that makes me crumble.  I see the hopelessness, the fear, and the numbness in their eyes.  They’re broken, shadows.  They hurt, and it won’t end, it never ends for them.  They are the ones who remember all too well the rape, the touching and the crying.  The tears never leave their eyes because they have drowned their souls.  And they have survived to live as nothing, they have been robbed of every thing they possess, their honor, pride, love, and respect.

   I have joined their ranks as the scarred, the fearful, but I have also taken that step forward, and I want something, I seek, and so I live.  I hurt, I bleed, I’m human too.  But I want, I crave.  There is only one thing that could ever sate my desire, revenge.  And one of these days I shall take it.  It hurts, it tears at my soul day and night, I fear every man I see, hate him, because of that, and it can’t, I cannot allow it to continue.  I must overcome, and I must survive, and I cannot allow this to become another woman’s hell ever again.  No one, man or woman deserves this cycle, this protean torture.  I heal, and then I get hurt, but it cannot return, it will not follow through.  I will stop this, I am Destiny, and I am Death.  I will, I MUST stop this man from ever doing this again.  Hell always glides on the silveriest of wings.

    I was called Destiny for a reason, it did not come from Logan or Pete.  Xogzbezdaubuit or “Star walker” was the investigation file name that contained my parents’ autopsies and reasons for death reports.  A star walker, literally, one who walks on stars was somehow mistranslated by an American agent, to “Star changer”, a hard mistranslation to come by, and so that was shortened to one word, Destiny.  And so their death files were called the “Destiny Files”.  I am the further exploration of those files, of that information.  And I will continue for that reason only.  My parents will not be dishonored in their deaths.  Nor will I.

   Like I said, I am Death, and I do fly on silent, silver wings. Revenge is a bitch, that bitch’s name is Destiny.

                                                                         Finis
 
 

    I know this is not a work of art, but writing this story has meant a lot to me.  I am a survivor of sexual abuse.  I have never tried to openly try to express what its like on the inside.  And I cringe every time I learn that one of my closest friends has had the same experience.  I hate every time I cannot control it from stopping.  But it is a part of my life, and I have had to slowly learn to accept what happened.  In taking my favorite role-playing character and turning her into (in my mind) a survivor, it has helped.  I’ve been reading the statistics and they say that one in four, ONE in FOUR, twenty-five percent of the population of women have been sexually abused.  And that’s only for sexual abuse, it does not include physical, emotional, only sexual abuse.  One in NINE (it used to be one in ten) of our boys have been sexually abused.  It’s repulsing.  This is my way to try to get the pain out.  I’m sorry if the story was horrible, and childish, but it needed to be shared.  Once again, my apologies if the story was not prize work, what it meant to me was.
        Thank you,
             Nitemare Queen