Child of the wilderness.

[adrianne]

Child of the wilderness, born into emptiness.
Learn to be lonely. Learn to find your way in darkness
Who will be there for you? Comfort and care for you?
Learn to be lonely. Learn to be your one companion.

The cemetery itself wasn't the scary part, and neither were the corpses that laid six feet underneath the tombstones. The cold, night air that surrounded the graveyard wasn't what maybe people uncomfortable, and neither were the ghosts that were rumored to float around these areas. No, what scared people away wasn't the many dead trees, and the unraked leaves that broke off of them. It was the metaphor of it all, what all of this represented, that kept people away from the rusty, old gates that made skins crawl as they were opened and closed. Death. They squirmed at the very sound of the word; it was such an uncomfortable word for them. It was frightening to most, the thought of not living, and the fact that the mystery what happened after someone died was unknown to absolutely every creature in the world. Sure, some people will try to explain that death is a soul leaving the body, and it either travels to some heaven or hell, or it reincarnates as another being. Some people are absolutely convinced that there is a life or two after death, but the fact is, no one was ever considerate enough to die and come back to tell the rest of us what happened..

Humans are the only animals to show any curiosity or give any consideration to a continuation of life after death. Animals like cats, dogs, birds, or reptiles won't be caught bending on their knees and bowing their heads to pray to a high being or burring the dead and bringing fresh flowers to their grave every so often. No, when a lion dies, his body is left wherever he took his last breath, and is eventually decayed overtime, turning into meals for scavengers and fertilizer for the ground beneath him. His lioness gets lonely, but there are no thoughts running through her head of a day where she'll once meet him again, when it is her turn to pass on. No, she goes on tending for the ones that still here, still alive, and she accepts the fact that her mate is gone, with no false hopes or fairy tales of seeing him again.

Why do we care so much for our dead? There are tons of answers that she has found in her anthropology books, and her teachers have tried to explain the answer to Adrianne, but she doesn't get quite it a hundred percent. It's a comfort thing... her teacher once told her. The concept of death is too uncomfortable for us, so we resort to our religions and burial rituals to put some ease into our mind about death, because quite frankly, we're afraid of dying. Okay, so humans are afraid of dying. . .

Why?

That's why she was here, at the cemetery, today. She couldn't see the spookiness that everyone else saw here as she walked through the gates. To be honest, it just looked like some messy field, with dead leaves and stones sticking out everywhere. Some of them were pretty extravagant, like a huge crucifix and one person had a large statue of an angel above theirs. She thought that was really unnecessary. They probably spent a fortune on it, and it's not like their dead beloved was oh-so-grateful that their tombstone was bigger and prettier than everyone else's. It's not like it mattered to them, now.


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Never dreamed out in the world there were arms to hold.
You've always known your heart was on it's own.

Death had been such a close neighbor to Adrianne for so long. She had no choice but to learn the concept at an early age. In fact, she can even remember the first day that it finally clicked for her. May 14th, 1995. Minutes had just passed after the incident with Kyle. One hand was squished between her aching thighs, the other laid across over her burning stomach. She lifted that hand and examined the blood dripping from it with wide eyes. What had just happened to her? She didn't know, herself. One moment, she was showing Kyle a new move she learned at her dance lesson, the next moment, he was on top of her, slapping her and telling her to stop screaming. His dull nails broke through the skin on her stomach as he held her wiggling body down, and then ...

He wasn't the daddy in the home videos she watched. No, that daddy was so much nicer. He would talk to the pregnant lady's stomach, rub it and say, "Hello little Adrianne. Do you know who I am? I can't wait to see you, my precious angel." Kyle called her his precious angel, but that didn't make up for all the other vicious things he did. Her tiny, bare body shook from the cold air in the basement. She must've stayed there for hours until someone finally opened the door and rushed down the stairs. "Adrianne, are you down here? It's dinner time, hunny. OH MY GOD .... ADRIANNE ARE YOU OKAY?!"

She was the only foster mother that believed Adrianne when she told her about what her foster father did. Apologies spilled out from her mouth from when Adrianne first confessed, until the ambulance arrive, and when Mrs. Wilson took her back to the orphanage. She didn't want anymore foster mothers or fathers from that point on. She was too shaken up to go to any other home but the orphanage. The only thing Adrianne wanted was to be back in her bed, lying down, with absolutely no one around. She didn't want to think about anything, feel anything, see anything, hear anything. Just like her birth parents, she wanted to be completely numb from the world, in her own little box under the ground. "Mrs. Wilson ...?" The nine year old looked up with her tiny, weak blue eyes. "I want to be with my real mom and dad."
She didn't realize just how much she meant those words until about the third or fourth foster father.

She's been coming to her parents' graves ever since.

So laugh in your loneliness, child of the wilderness.
Learn to be lonely. Learn how to love life that is lived alone.

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Cross-legged she sat in front of the two simple, normal tombstones. Susanne A. Harper and Jeremy M. Harper. Some birth date she'll never remember - March 9th, 1986. Her fingers fiddled around with the soil beside her, over her birth mother's grave. She didn't feel sad, hurt, or any other feeling of grief. No, she wasn't sad that her birth mother and father were gone; she already went through the sadness phase many times as a child. Over the years, Adrianne developed a different emotion for her graved parents. Jealousy. Oh, how lucky were they, to be completely numb from everything in the world, able to feel no happiness or pain. They got to take a nice, long nap and were forever unconscious to this ugly world that surrounded their coffins.

Sometimes the what if thoughts breeze through her mind. What if the person that caused the car accident left five minutes earlier, and wasn't running late to work? What if her parents made it to the hospital that day, and took Adrianne home with them? They would've treated their precious daughter so perfectly. What if Adrianne was raised so perfectly by them, instead of the other parents. She wouldn't be here right now, envying the many bodies that rested underneath her. Her thoughts wouldn't be so sickening; her mind would be less crazy. The scars on her back wouldn't exist, the awful memories would vanish ...

Her hands clenched harder into the ground. Susanne and Jeremy were so lucky that their eyes didn't work anymore, and they couldn't see what their prefect, precious little angel grew up to be, scarred and broken far beyond repair. Physically, emotionally, and mental unstable, she was far from the daughter they probably pictured her becoming. More like Humpty Dumpty than a princess ... the Phantom instead of Raoul. A child who was supposed to be raised to become the perfect little girl, sweet and kind and lovable, is now the ugly beast who is forced to hide from society behind a mask, not for her sake but for theirs. Shelter away the rest of the world from a creature like Adrianne. No human should ever see the aftermath of what has been done to her.

Maybe she could've turned into a pretty princess if she was raised by her parents instead, but that didn't matter, because it's not what happened. They died, and Adrianne was thrown into the pit of lions, to be chewed and toyed around with as they pleased. Oh, how lucky her biological parents were, to not be able to hear her sick thoughts or feel all the bumps and indents across her body.They would be so disappointed in their daughter. What an unhealthy, ugly grown lady she has become. What a pathetic, disgusting creature she has turned into.

"I saw Kyle today. He found an article I wrote in the magazine, and my naive boss gave him my address."

Her tone was calm, and almost a little melodic as she shared her most recent journal entry story to their deaf, decayed ears. This was her routine; she'd come to the graveyard, share the stories to her parents that she couldn't share with anyone else, drown herself in envy as she observed the peaceful, dead scene around her, and then in about of couple of hours, or when someone came along and disturbed her silence, she would leave and come back in a few weeks to do it over again.

"He has a daughter, now. She's 10 years old. Yes, that would be right ... I remember now. His wife ... what was her name? ..." She thinks for a moment, and then rolls her eyes. She can never remember the foster mothers' names. "I don't know. Anyways, you wouldn't believe what he named his daughter. He was the one that thought of the name, too. ...."

She had to pause for a moment to stop her tone from turning malicious. Through gritted teeth she spoke the name of Kyle's 10 year-old daughter.

"Adrianne Sarah Jones ..." Another short pause. "He didn't stay long after I found out her first name. I don't know what sick, twisted part of him thought that I would be happy about him naming his daughter after the little girl he raped 10 years ago but ....

I told him that he was sick, and after he saw the way I looked at his daughter, that was when he began to scream. I didn't touch her, Adrianne! I haven't touched her once! .... Bullshit."

She continued reading on from her diary. This was her little graveyard routine; She would go a couple of weeks without coming here, and then someone major, like Kyle coming over to show off his new toy, would happen. Adrianne would write down her angry, sick thoughts in her journal, and then she would go to the cemetery and read the story to the parents she never did meet. Yes, she knew they couldn't hear her, and that her words were just floating off into the dead air around her, but she did this anyways. She let her crazy mind believe for a moment that they actually did listen, just so she could get her stories out. Then she would go home, and come back in a few weeks to tell them a new tale.

. . . I didn't touch her, Adrianne! . . .

Yes you did. was all she could think in her head. You touched her like you touched me. You're going to destroy her like you destroyed me. You, who marked the beginning of my torture. You, who influenced me in so many harmful ways. I wonder how many times she's been in your basement already. Does she take dance classes, like I did? Do you let her show you her favorite moves? I wonder if her face looks like mine did, when you pound her for hours in that freezing basement. I wonder if she struggled. We have the same name, I wonder if you gave her the same scars you gave me...

"Oh how jealous I am of you." She confessed to her parents. "You're lucky you can't hear my words ... my thoughts ... You would hate me if you did." A small laugh huffed through her teeth as she shook her head in disappointment of herself. She's not exactly the precious angel her parents often described in those home videos. No, not the most perfect baby in the world.

"A beast like me should be caged up. They should lock me up, and never let me out."

They should put me in a box like yours, stick me six feet under, and just let me sleep forever.

Learn to be lonely.
Life can be lived, life can be loved alone.

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