A little while ago I posted a story about how my mother died and the events leading up to it. It has been years since that happened and I made my peace with it long long ago.
I had been debating with myself for several hours the previous day over whether or not I should read the journal. What if it had been tampered with by the man? What if he was leading me into a trap? Eventually I decided that the only way that I would even be able to know what really happened was to read the journal. I know that in my last post I said that I thought that it wouldn't do anything, but that was a year ago. That's a year that I've had to think abut this.
On the other hand, rushing into things without assessing the situation and making an intellectual decision is how most people end up dead. Or worse as I would later find out.
I decided that I would sleep on it, and then when I wake up in the morning I would decide what the proper course of action would be and how to best go about it. Simple plan right? Unfortunately things are not always that easy. When I finally fell asleep after hours of imagining what else the man did to my mother before she finally died, I had a terrible dream.
I don't remember all of the details, and it most certainly was not a prophetic dream. That didn't stop if from scaring the living shit out of me by the time that I woke up in the morning. I don't remember everything, but I do remember the middle.
I found myself in a dark forest walking through it. I don't recall how I got into the forest, I just remember having this horrible sense of dread while I was walking through it. Like something was going to attack me. I walked for quite a distance before finally coming to a clearing in the forest. One would imagine that this would be a relief to me. This was not so. The clearing in the forest was filled with dozens of dead bodies.
The bodies were mangled and destroyed in a way that almost looked exactly like my mother's. Arms were torn of of each body. Sometimes the right arm, sometimes the left arm. Some even had both arms ripped off. A few of the bodies were lucky enough to have mangled twisted legs that faced the wrong way still attached to them. The rest just had them completely torn off. All of these body parts were lying on the floor of the clearing. In a random assortment similar to a child's room littered with toys.
That was when my mother appeared. She walked out of the shadows of the forest and into the clearing. She walked into the clearing and just stood there staring at me for a time before she finally spoke.
"It's your fault you know." She said.
I had no idea what she meant. How could it be my fault? I hadn't even been there when she died.
"W-what do you mean?" I asked with a slight stutter in my voice.
"You just had to be the hero didn't you? You had to go in and save those kids. Now look at you. No, look at me. Look at what you've done to me. You've killed me!" She said. Then she started laughing. It took me a moment to realize that the laugh wasn't just coming from her. It was coming from everywhere. The trees, the grass, the flowers, the rocks. Everything in that damned forest was laughing. At me!
The laughter just kept on and on. Continuing like a music track on repeat. It continued on for what must have been a half hour(Though in a dream you can never really tell.) until my mother's body began to get lacerated. With each "Ha!" of the laughter, my mother's body gained another wound.
"Ha!" The forest yelled. Across the chest! "Ha!" the forest yelped. This time across the face. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" There was no sign of it stopping as my mother's body slowly got sliced into nothingness. What was I doing during this time? I was cowering under my arms trying to protect myself from some unseen force.
Then at long last, my mother was gone. Cut up with nothing left of her to see. The laughing had stopped completely. Now there was only silence in the forest of my dreams. That's when I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I didn't turn around because I knew what I would see. It would be the man. Who else would it be? The tapping continued until I finally relented and turned around.
Standing before me was the man. He stared at me smiling. That same same that he had on his face when he pulled the trigger on his gun. The same smile he had worn when he killed my friend. Then he laughed. This time it didn't come from everywhere. Only from him. He laughed and laughed and laughed. I wanted to crawl into a ball and die. But I was paralyzed with fear. Then he stopped laughing.
There was absolute silence throughout the dream. Nothing moved, nothing spoke, nothing made a sound. The man broke the silence by whispering a single word into my ear. Quiet enough that it creeped me out, but just loud enough that I could hear it. "Saranthia."
That's when I woke up.
My body when I woke up. My heart was beating rapidly. Which was probably the cause of my awakening. Upon waking up I knew what I had to do. There was no more putting this off. No more pretending to myself. No more lying. I had to find out who this guy was and kill him. Mind games or no, I had to find out what really happened to my mother. Or else what happened to her would haunt me until the end of my days. I had to read the journal. Or forever regret my hesitation.
I had placed the journal in my safe in order to protect it from theft. I had thought I was safe once. Not again. Never again. Turning the safe's lock I opened it up revealing to me the journal among other precious possessions of mine. I pulled it out and opened it up to read. Best to start from the beginning. I thought as I turned to the front page and read.
At first it was dull. The journal was a very thick book that began far before my birth. For the most part she had a very normal life. The journal was mostly compromised of things she had done with her friends on her nights out, the occasion sex with my father. Then I finally got to the month where she claimed she got pregnant with me. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. No "Oh joy! I'm having a baby! Not even the slightest suspicion that she was with child." Absolutely nothing.
For the nine months that I expected her to be talking about how happy she was and the friends congratulating her, the morning sickness, the cramps, the cravings, everything that came with child birth, she had written nothing. The most eventful thing that happened was her getting drunk and accidentally kissing one of her friends!
Finally I got the the supposed date of my birth. Then I realized what was going on. I was adopted. But why would they not tell me that I was adopted. Reading on I finally realized why. Now I could just tell you, or I could give you the journal entry. Here it is(I thought it would be better for reading to type it out rather than take a picture):
On the other hand, rushing into things without assessing the situation and making an intellectual decision is how most people end up dead. Or worse as I would later find out.
I decided that I would sleep on it, and then when I wake up in the morning I would decide what the proper course of action would be and how to best go about it. Simple plan right? Unfortunately things are not always that easy. When I finally fell asleep after hours of imagining what else the man did to my mother before she finally died, I had a terrible dream.
I don't remember all of the details, and it most certainly was not a prophetic dream. That didn't stop if from scaring the living shit out of me by the time that I woke up in the morning. I don't remember everything, but I do remember the middle.
I found myself in a dark forest walking through it. I don't recall how I got into the forest, I just remember having this horrible sense of dread while I was walking through it. Like something was going to attack me. I walked for quite a distance before finally coming to a clearing in the forest. One would imagine that this would be a relief to me. This was not so. The clearing in the forest was filled with dozens of dead bodies.
The bodies were mangled and destroyed in a way that almost looked exactly like my mother's. Arms were torn of of each body. Sometimes the right arm, sometimes the left arm. Some even had both arms ripped off. A few of the bodies were lucky enough to have mangled twisted legs that faced the wrong way still attached to them. The rest just had them completely torn off. All of these body parts were lying on the floor of the clearing. In a random assortment similar to a child's room littered with toys.
That was when my mother appeared. She walked out of the shadows of the forest and into the clearing. She walked into the clearing and just stood there staring at me for a time before she finally spoke.
"It's your fault you know." She said.
I had no idea what she meant. How could it be my fault? I hadn't even been there when she died.
"W-what do you mean?" I asked with a slight stutter in my voice.
"You just had to be the hero didn't you? You had to go in and save those kids. Now look at you. No, look at me. Look at what you've done to me. You've killed me!" She said. Then she started laughing. It took me a moment to realize that the laugh wasn't just coming from her. It was coming from everywhere. The trees, the grass, the flowers, the rocks. Everything in that damned forest was laughing. At me!
The laughter just kept on and on. Continuing like a music track on repeat. It continued on for what must have been a half hour(Though in a dream you can never really tell.) until my mother's body began to get lacerated. With each "Ha!" of the laughter, my mother's body gained another wound.
"Ha!" The forest yelled. Across the chest! "Ha!" the forest yelped. This time across the face. "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!" There was no sign of it stopping as my mother's body slowly got sliced into nothingness. What was I doing during this time? I was cowering under my arms trying to protect myself from some unseen force.
Then at long last, my mother was gone. Cut up with nothing left of her to see. The laughing had stopped completely. Now there was only silence in the forest of my dreams. That's when I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I didn't turn around because I knew what I would see. It would be the man. Who else would it be? The tapping continued until I finally relented and turned around.
Standing before me was the man. He stared at me smiling. That same same that he had on his face when he pulled the trigger on his gun. The same smile he had worn when he killed my friend. Then he laughed. This time it didn't come from everywhere. Only from him. He laughed and laughed and laughed. I wanted to crawl into a ball and die. But I was paralyzed with fear. Then he stopped laughing.
There was absolute silence throughout the dream. Nothing moved, nothing spoke, nothing made a sound. The man broke the silence by whispering a single word into my ear. Quiet enough that it creeped me out, but just loud enough that I could hear it. "Saranthia."
That's when I woke up.
My body when I woke up. My heart was beating rapidly. Which was probably the cause of my awakening. Upon waking up I knew what I had to do. There was no more putting this off. No more pretending to myself. No more lying. I had to find out who this guy was and kill him. Mind games or no, I had to find out what really happened to my mother. Or else what happened to her would haunt me until the end of my days. I had to read the journal. Or forever regret my hesitation.
I had placed the journal in my safe in order to protect it from theft. I had thought I was safe once. Not again. Never again. Turning the safe's lock I opened it up revealing to me the journal among other precious possessions of mine. I pulled it out and opened it up to read. Best to start from the beginning. I thought as I turned to the front page and read.
At first it was dull. The journal was a very thick book that began far before my birth. For the most part she had a very normal life. The journal was mostly compromised of things she had done with her friends on her nights out, the occasion sex with my father. Then I finally got to the month where she claimed she got pregnant with me. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. No "Oh joy! I'm having a baby! Not even the slightest suspicion that she was with child." Absolutely nothing.
For the nine months that I expected her to be talking about how happy she was and the friends congratulating her, the morning sickness, the cramps, the cravings, everything that came with child birth, she had written nothing. The most eventful thing that happened was her getting drunk and accidentally kissing one of her friends!
Finally I got the the supposed date of my birth. Then I realized what was going on. I was adopted. But why would they not tell me that I was adopted. Reading on I finally realized why. Now I could just tell you, or I could give you the journal entry. Here it is(I thought it would be better for reading to type it out rather than take a picture):
Today me and Jeffery finally faced the facts. We just can't seem to have a child. The doctor said that the chances were slim and I guess he was right. There's something wrong with me that won't let the eggs pass through the Fallopian tubes. Bottom line is that I can't have a baby. But it's not the end of the world. We could still adopt.
So we went to an adoption center and talked to some of the people. They told us that it was possible, but there would be a very long list and we would be put at the very bottom. Halfheartedly we agreed. We would have gone home babyless had we not met this wonderful man! He said that he could get a child. A baby too! Not some lost teenage rebel that nobody wants to take care of anymore.
At first we were skeptical. What if this man was a scam artist? But we got some help and looked up his company with the help of some people at the center and the internet. It turns out that his business is completely legitimate. He belongs to a complany known as the "Purposeful Human Advancement Initiative" or PHAI for short. He said that our child would be part of some sort of experiment on how children react to finding out they're adopted at a later age. The only catch we have is that we're not allowed to tell him he's adopted until he's twenty five at least. He said that it's such an old age because that's when the brain finishes development.
So we signed a contract and everything and before we knew it, he was bringing us to their headquarters and we were leaving with a beautiful baby boy. We're still deciding on what to name him, but I don't really care what he's called. To me he'll always be the most beautiful boy in the world.
So we went to an adoption center and talked to some of the people. They told us that it was possible, but there would be a very long list and we would be put at the very bottom. Halfheartedly we agreed. We would have gone home babyless had we not met this wonderful man! He said that he could get a child. A baby too! Not some lost teenage rebel that nobody wants to take care of anymore.
At first we were skeptical. What if this man was a scam artist? But we got some help and looked up his company with the help of some people at the center and the internet. It turns out that his business is completely legitimate. He belongs to a complany known as the "Purposeful Human Advancement Initiative" or PHAI for short. He said that our child would be part of some sort of experiment on how children react to finding out they're adopted at a later age. The only catch we have is that we're not allowed to tell him he's adopted until he's twenty five at least. He said that it's such an old age because that's when the brain finishes development.
So we signed a contract and everything and before we knew it, he was bringing us to their headquarters and we were leaving with a beautiful baby boy. We're still deciding on what to name him, but I don't really care what he's called. To me he'll always be the most beautiful boy in the world.
That wasn't the worst of it though. As if it weren't bad enough that I was practically bought from from some shady company. My parents decided not to tell me that even after I turned twenty five. There's another record regarding this in a later entry. As I told you, it is a very large book and after I was born... adopted my mother made fewer and fewer entries in it.
It's Joshua's twenty fifth birthday. He's grown into a such a wonderful man. A police officer. He went to college. He still hasn't gotten a wife yet, but that doesn't stop him from trying. He just broke up with his girlfriend and he's already looking for someone else. Even though he's adopted I loved him like a son. This is the year that I'm allowed to tell him and... I don't think I will. It would be devastating to him, and to me.
Honestly, I didn't know what to think. To be perfectly honest I was more surprised that they didn't tell me than that I was adopted. My entire life I was vastly different from my parents. Different hair color, different eye color. The fact that I didn't wear glasses. They always blamed it on the way that genetics worked. Now I know that they were just lying. To be perfectly honest it's kind of a relief.
But there was still much more left. There was one more entry that caught my eye. it was made one week before my mother's death. It was the last entry.
But there was still much more left. There was one more entry that caught my eye. it was made one week before my mother's death. It was the last entry.
Someone from the PHAI came by today. They said that they wanted to know how Joshua reacted when I told him. When I told them that I hadn't told him they didn't really seem angry about it. Just really disappointed. The man also said that I would regret not doing what he wanted. I don't know what he meant by that, but I'm installing a security system just in case.
I don't know what to think anymore. My entire reality has been turned upside down and crushed under a mallet. I think that considering the trouble that it brought my mother in the past all I can say now is that if you see a company that goes by the name of PHAI, no matter what it offers you leave it be.