The sunshine hurts my eyes

I've been here too long. I've been sick. I think that it was just from not eating or sleeping well for a while. My throat and chest are healing pretty well. I can't remember what happened to me when it comes to medical problems. The marks don't look like the kind you get from Him. They look like the kind of bruises left by the impact of somebody slamming their fist into you repeatedly. Everybody wants to know what happened. Bondie keeps asking. I tell him what I can, but I think it's only now that I can piece it all together enough to tell the story or write it down. Mostly I've been spending time on his roof. It's gotten hot again, so I can be outside without much trouble. I lay on the roof and sleep and try to get my left side to stop hurting and glare at Bondie when he brings me food and leaves pieces of paper around for me to use.

I'm a shit.

I don't really know where to start. The dreams with the kids are back. I wake up every night and stare into the red sky of the night in the city and wonder where I am. They've become the most comforting dreams I have, which says something about how the other dreams are. I use to live with my grandmother after my parents died. She was pretty old and she died a few years later so my brother mostly took care of me during that time (and all the other times of my life before this). My grandma was pretty foul tempered. She smoked a lot and had a raspy voice she liked to yell at people with from the same chair every day. She wasn't a big woman but she seemed tall, and high above where I was on the ground to me. I guess I was always kinda a small kid. I use to stare up at her and try to form the words that I needed to let her know I needed food or wanted to go outside.

"Spit it out!" she used to yell, trembling as she tried to speak "Speak up and tell me what you want! I don't have all day!"

I guess I should take her advice and just start and get it together and say what happened. Enough stalling. Grandma would have hated that shit.

But then Grandma also hated minorities.

I got a call from Shaun a few months ago. He sounded like he was running. It's hard to remember what I said to him or what he said to me, but I do remember the end of the conversation. He sounded scared and even more manic then usually. I think I was telling him to come and find me or asking him where he was so I could come and get him. Then there was static and I told him to get the fuck away from wherever he was. Then it over took his voice and was so loud I had to toss the phone away from me. It seemed to form a word, becoming a harsh, hallow voice. I can't remember what it said if anything, but I remember I yelled, telling him to run. It was like when I use to take the trains in New York and it would take me by surprise. The sound of it would shoot through me, forcing all the air out of me with the force of it, and only able to collect myself again when my brain realized it was just the train and the noise was from something I could see and touch. Except the train didn't come and there was nothing for my brain of seize onto and nowhere I could let all the air back into my lungs.

I spent most of my time after that looking for Shaun. I didn't hear anything from him and mostly walked around Chicago and it's suburbs, asking street kids and homeless people if they had seen him, which was hard because I wasn't sure exactly what he looked like. I didn't find him. I still don't know where he was during those months. At 1 point I went down to street level. The sun was just going down and I needed to find a place to stay or keep walking. I'm not really sure what happened after that. I think somebody grabbed me and took me into a van or something like that. Some kind of big car. I just remember that for the next few months everybody I saw either wore suits, or white clothing, or something you'd see kids in red walking around looking sad and beat up.

"They think it keeps Him away," said a girl in the cell next to me, I think mostly to herself "it might work. The way everything else might work."

Fucking suits.

I don't know why they took us there. I don't know who they were. I remember I got hurt a lot by guys who were bigger then me and there was a woman in a suit with a perfect blond bun all the time who use to tell people to put new bands on my wrist and sometimes give me injections of shit, mostly to get me to sleep. I feel like whatever I was taking made everything misty and hard to see. My memories are blotchy at best, with patches of clear areas through out, mostly of getting beat up or asked questions I didn't know the answers to. I wondered how I had been there so long without Him coming, how we all were after I realized how many people were there. I realized I had to get away. They gave us pens and pencils to draw with so the people around me didn't dig into their own skin, but no paper. I think they thought it was funny the same way I think they thought it was funny when they would eat in front of us when they were on watch.

I think after a while it wasn't that I wanted to escape the beatings, I didn't want to save everybody there, I didn't want to get revenge on the people who had taken me. I just got tired of it. Being there and watching all this shit, and having to do all this shit I didn't want to do, and being hurt every day. It was kind of like school I guess in that way. You just get tired of it. You just want to leave. They came a day it was raining, but I didn't know it then. I have clear memories of this day. I knew I had to do whatever I was gonna do before they gave me anything. I had to be as sharp as I could, even though I was still out of it from what they had given me the day before. I remember the guy in white who came for me grabbed me by the hair and pulled me onto my feet. He said something and laughed, but I didn't hear. I was too busy getting myself ready for what I had to do.

I don't know what that guy thought but I bet it was something like 'where did he get that fork?' Actually, to be honest, I bet it was something more like 'holy shit, holy fuck, holy shit, that hurts!'

I ran. I ran as fast as I could out of there. I could hear people yelling and somewhere an alarm was going off. I found the stairs and realized we were about 10 floors up. I got to the bottom floor and found a collection of labs and offices. I would have just skipped it if I hadn't seen something with 'S. River' pinned to a board. I ran in and grabbed it. There was a picture of him under it and I grabbed that too. On the table there were files. They all had different names on them and I thought about taking them too, but realized I didn't have much time. A guy in a suit came in and tried to grab me. We fell to the floor and I tried to get him off of me. He had a length of string that he tried to get around my hands. I think I kicked him or scratched him enough that he had to look away for a moment and I sat up as quickly as I could, throwing him off me. He tried to grab me again and I crawled over to where the string was and got behind him. I tried to get up, but he didn't let me, grabbing my pants. I already had the string in my hand. The movies make it look easier then it is.

I got up again and looked in the drawers of the desk and finally found a box cutter. I put that and the photo in my pocket. I was almost out when I saw her. The woman with the bun in the suit was there, with a gun. She smiled at me and lifted her gun, her legs spread and planted firmly on the ground. She smiled and said something like 'I think you want to go back upstairs now.' Then something happened and the air changed in the way I had become so use to, the fact it had been absent for months had seemed weird. He doesn't really make sounds, but the way he moves does. I think it sort of moves the universe around Him, and the universe makes a creaking, slow ripping sound. She knew He was there, but I don't think she knew what that really meant. What that really meant for her or any other living thing around us. I looked up and saw Him, as if in deep shadow in this usually overly lit and white place. Then He too stepped into the light of that place and seemed taller and more powerful then I had ever seen Him. Her eyes widened as I guess she realized what I was looking at. She turned and pointed the gun again. He raised his arm and for a moment it looked like He was about to speak, signalling for silence.

There was.

Then it went through her. She staggered slightly, surprised and looked up at Him. I ran after He started to do to her what He does to people, and I ran, having seen that enough times. I could hear her screaming and the rain that fell onto me as I pushed open the heavy door of that place was warm and made the ground easier to walk on with bare feet. The sky looked new and soft and I was happy to see it again, finally, after such a long time.

It really was just like high school.

I walked for a long time after that. Got new clothes and a notebook. Somehow got in the south side and passed out in a place I only planned to stay for a few minutes. Bondie brought me here and I've mostly been spending my time throwing up and willing my body to heal it's self. Bondie's not bad. He still doesn't look into any of this, which is the way I want to it to stay, though it won't if I stay here much longer. I need to leave soon. I need to find Shaun. I need to stop putting people in danger. It's been 2 years since all this started. I'll be 19 soon. I've made it a while. I just need to keep going. I just need to keep moving.

Internet is spotty here. I have to use Bondie's computer now that I lost the iphone. I'll try to update as much as I can. I need to leave soon. Until then, I'm just gonna wait for my bruises to heal.

- M