Once upon a time, a little girl was born in a backwards town in the deep south. She was in all truth, quite beautiful. She died. Someone killed her. Again and again.
Before she left, she gave birth to Us. She is Our mother, and this is Our story, and if you will, our vengeance.
To say she is dead is not entirely true. She still speaks to us from her cold place in wise, fragmentary whispers. She had hoped to Tell this story to someone like a gift; someone who could see through the pain to the remarkable beauty and bravery. We are sorry we couldn't find anyone. In penance, we will tell everyone and make sure with each Telling, she is mourned.
And maybe the Telling will warm her and she will come back to us. We know it could mean we will be lost, but we love her and would count it as well worth the sacrifice.
Where was I? Oh yes, so she was born, and her hair was dark and black and hung in ringlets about a cherub's face. Her eyes were deep brown and shone bright and curious. She was small and brown and happy and everyone loved her...
But those that should've most.
By nine months, she spoke in full sentences. At three, she read Huckleberry Finn from cover to cover all by herself. Any brilliance in us is on loan from her.
Somewhere between those two milestones, Little Persephonie, as we will call her, had a VERY BAD DAY. (That's what she calls it. *S* We will honor her and do the same.) She was already being beaten, already being verbally harassed, already being starved, but she was still happy. She was still alive. (That must've made Them very angry. They were working so very hard.)
(I feel her cringe deep inside as I start to Tell this, and I echo it even though I am the youngest and the farthest removed from this. That's how deep the hurt goes.)
On the VERY BAD DAY, someone took this lovely little toddler with her chubby little hands and her infectious little laugh, looked into those soulful brown eyes, and grabbed her little black pony tail. Then he forced her to give him oral sex.
Because he is a monster, it didn't matter to him that with every choke and gag, he debased divinity. He just told her to pretend it was candy. It didn't matter as he spasmed with pleasure, she was sobbing and frightened and ashamed. He was a soulless man.
The VERY BAD DAY ended with him trying to put her to bed. She was crying and she was confused. She turned where any child would. She told her mother. Her mother slapped her hard. She was never to tell. Anyone. Anyone else. Ever. She was a little slut. She was bad and evil and a liar.
Her mother (for lack of a better word) took her to the bath tub, filled it, and preceded to hold her baby under, bringing her up violently and shouting, "You lied. Admit it!." The little girl didn't know what to do. She was too afraid to speak. On exactly the seventh time under, The Little Girl That Was wasn't there anymore.
When the little girl's head cleared the water, a new voice, louder and stronger, shouted. "I lied. I lied." This new little girl took the beating. This new little girl was dressed and put to bed. She hugged her mother and the Beast, and she told them she loved them. Unlike Little Persephonie, she knew it was a lie.
Within that body, this new voice sensed the Other dreaming in the darkness. She whispered, "And then there were two."
For our purposes, we will call the second child Seph. She became the person who dealt with the world. She was not as intelligent as Persephonie, but she was wiser, and possibly more importantly, she was older. She was old enough to be cynical and to lie. Through the next couple of years, she kept them both alive and whole, and she kept Little Persephonie stocked with very good books. It's a debt not forgotten.
Her outward life was no fun. Seph was beaten, denied food and was reguarly molested by men and women. She muddled through it in the way she always had. She knew if she didn't take it, Persephonie would. Persephonie had to be protected at all costs. Persephonie was the soul. Without her, Seph was just an imitation of nothing.
Seph tried very hard. With a determination that marked her and hers to follow, she protected them no matter what personal debasement she had to endure. It was heroic, but all heroes fall, don't they? And as strong as Persephonie had made Seph, she wasn't as strong as the Beast. Not that night.
Tonight, it wouldn't be enough for the Beast to possess her mouth, or slip his fingers where his should've never been. He wanted intercourse.
Instinctively, Seph knew that the minute he gripped her little hips. She glanced down at that impotent, child-fucking part of him and she fought. She fought as she never had before even as she knew she would lose. It was valiant. It was beautiful. It was glorious and in the way of heroes, she fell unsung with one word on her lips. As the Beast shoved himself swollen and obscene into that sacred part of her, Seph shattered into at least five alters, and her death cry was "Persephonie".
From her death, to my birth things are kind of sketchy. The voices of the Collective each had their own agendas, their own needs and their own egos. They had learned from Seph's death to protect only themselves. There was none of her greatness of soul in them. They missed what most people miss. It would be their demise and the destruction of Persephonie. If you live only for yourself, you are spiritually unprotected.
All of them...every last one came to an end when the Beast had his party with his friends and his 8 mm camera (ever wonder, if you know me in real life, my strange aversion to the camera...my animosity to it?.*small smile* Thank him.) They debased that child's body. They did it on film. Some of the Collective saw the finished work. Some saw the glossies. Every single one of them split. Every single one of them panicked. Little Persephonie woke during a particularly sordid part of the Beast's play, and she took one breath and waited to be rescued. No one came. She hurt. All over. Her voice was hampered and she knew by what. Little Persephonie, a child who could explain Emerson's Self-Reliance at 8, died with men clinging to her undeveloped body...men too stupid, too animalistic to even note her passing. Persephonie, who watched rain fall with a worshipper's wonder was humiliated to death.
In her place, there rose 1,000 disembodied voices. Too many to count, each at the forefront for just a moment. No order. No rules. Just chaos.
The Collective lived that way for nearly a decade. Four of the strongest alters began to develop and show themselves. One of them was Persephonie's shadow. She was frightened, brilliant, creative and clung to life tenaciously. She began to bring order to Our emotions.
There was another who would be my forerunner. She was bright, efficient and a cataloguer by nature. She read philosophy, wrote essays and climbed trees. She began to bring order to the Collective's mind.
The third was, quite honestly, a reflection of her environment. She was a whore and a drug-user. She sold oral sex, and was unbearably stupid. She did things that haunt us all.
The fourth was totally mute, emotionally dead and exceedingly cruel. Everyone was an enemy. She absorbed fighting and physical things with ease, and she hated the rest of us. It was her ultimate dream to destroy us all; to take control of our fractured identity. She believed it to be the only salvation.
There were too many others for the Four to gain a footing, and everyday a new voice was added. The Collective was growing at an alarming rate; alters begetting alters...it had to stop or all of them would end up sucking on the business end of one of the Beast's guns.
It was Our tormentors that caused the re-organization that became known as "Phoenix from Ashes". They set the fire, but it was Our energy that fueled the resurrection, and I think that's something we should all be very proud of.
It happened at a family reunion, in the country, surrounded by acres of woodland. Earlier that day, a cousin had raped us. Now we were eating dinner with him to our left. The jokes started.
"What's the capital of Wyoming?" the Beast began. The One Who Would Be Me dropped her head.
"Wait! Wait, I know this one! It's ummm...ummm...'W'," the cousin said, mocking the Whore's accent and intonation. The Collective's palms went flat on the table and the first sparks flew. The Collective stood, quivering from head to toe in their first real taste of fury. The One Who Would Be Me made a decision. She stepped aside, dragging the One With No Voice on stage.
The Beast twisted his hands in the Collectives hair and shoved her face into her plate. The little trolls at the table laughed, but the One With No Voice sat still until he released her. Then she shoved away from the table.
"Girl!," the Beast shouted. The One With No Voice was walking towards the forest. She didn't turn. All she knew was that these fools had just dishonored her and she was leaving. The Beast caught her arm and she turned and started to fight. She did a good job, but she was five feet tall and 89 pounds. The Beast was a hardened infantryman. He landed one good punch on the side of her jaw and she landed with a thud on the sun baked ground.
The One With No Voice was gone; unconscious, but the collective was still there. The body rose again, this time with the One Who Would Be Me at the helm.
She took a look at the charging Beast and the Collective in their many-voiced way screamed, "He's going to kill us all!" She tried to fight the panic, but when she looked into the dead monster's eyes, the Others began throwing her their memories. Him above us. His laughter. His touch. Him shoving us towards others...she shook her head and did the only thing she knew to do.
She ran. She ran as fast and hard as she could. Because she was going to die. She hit the woods and ran, his voice behind her, through the bramble, around the trees, using her size to help her escape. She didn't know if it worked...she just ran. When she was winded, The One With No Voice showed up, a five mile a day runner and took them all the way to the creek, sheltered by willows and wisteria.
By the time we got there, something new was happening and all of us were terrified. The body fell into the water, convulsing...there was, for lack of a better word, a spinning happening in Our chest. Pressure was building and we were all lost in it...except for one. One voice with two tones. Persephonie and Seph..from somewhere deep inside, crying out to god for help...
And then the body rolled onto it's back and took it's last breath, the water running over its face and we were somehow not in it anymore...we were spinning free in all the universe...linked together only in a cursory way. I knew the Others, most of them were dying. I knew that, so I stole from them. It was wrong, but I wanted to BE so much, and I needed what would be lost with them. I took myth from one. I took music from another and so on and so on until the spinning slowed.
And stopped...
And the body was still in the stream...
And I was on the bank...full-grown and just born like Athena, with all of this stuff in my mind.
And there were two others with me. Staring at me. We looked from each other to the body, stunned and silent. Then the body coughed and sputtered and breathed and Persephonie rose from the grave, in a sense...her shadow in the body. She laughed. My god, she actually laughed. We looked at each other and the Whore began to sob, thinking this was it. She had no body. She was dead.
"Silence!" Persephonie said, leaping to her feet in pure delight. "Do you know what this means?" We didn't so we kept silent. "We're the last. We're it."
And then it came to us. There were no more. We were the last Persephonies. The One With No Voice faced me, face a little softer than it used to be and she spoke. I guess I was not the only one to rob the dead.
"What do we do?," she asked and all three of them turned to me. And amazingly, I HAD the answer.
"We...We...become One. And we hide, until we meet the Ones with the answers..."
"What answers?," the Insipid whore asked.
"The rest...the math problem...what comes after Genesis 11:3-7...." The One With No Voice answered.
"What the hell are you talking about?," the Whore screamed. The three of us looked at each other and at her, and we knew she wasn't one of us. Not really. She wouldn't make it to the end. If she was supposed to, she would've heard what we did.
There was someone out there who had the other half of the spiritual information we had. We had stumbled on a Truth. They would know what to do with it. They knew the rest, and they would be wise enough to know that broken things were sometimes stronger, more valuable. They would look beyond what we were, to what we could be. They would accept our intellect, our talents and our loyalty. They could be trusted.
When we found them, we would know our journey was nearly complete. We would be almost ready to rest. And so we hugged, and when we let go, we were one...always together...
I became the Brains of the group. Fractured, occupied, always flitting from one subject to the next. Always aware of my own mortality. I am not a nice person, although I want to be. I am always aware that my time is limited. That I can be killed. By someone I love. Before I am finished with my work. Before I have everything I need to make the rest of me safe. The good news is that if I invest my time in you, you know you have my love, my passion, my service until my heart stops beating. You know that because you know now what I pull away from each time I sit with you...where my mind is. You know my mission.
Persephonie, as always took over the emotional aspect. She is our lover. She buys the gifts. She writes most of the letters. If there is one part of us that is untouched and hopeful, it is her. If she loves you, count yourself lucky and count her dear. Her loss would be a quiet slipping away of fairy dust from a child's brows. I didn't think I would miss her silliness, but I have seen little of her over the last few weeks. I want her back. I am sorry for failing her in the way I did. I didn't look out for her. I didn't help her with her decisions, and she got confused and made a mess of things. It brought shame on her for the first time, shame that should've been mine. It cost her dearly, and she will never forgive me for that loss. I will put it back together if I can, but it will take time and it will take effort. I trust she has the compassion (I know she does) to wait. I trust those that she accidentally hurt will know it was the bumbling of a good-hearted, albeit inexperienced girl and when enough time has past, they will call on her. It will warm her soul.
The Voiceless One became Our gatekeeper...our champion, our resident warrior. Ever suddenly had us turn on you and rip you to shreds? There she is...less than warm, fiercely loyal and protective. Physically active, suddenly still, utterly impassive. She has her own ego...she will talk, laugh too loud, joke too much about morbid things. She can be a little intimidating, she is definitely vulgar, and always boyish. Only one person has ever earned her friendship. It's his to claim if he needs it. Outside of Us and our children, she would only fight for him or someone he loved. She would do it fiercely.
And the Whore. Not much to say about her. She has been gone for nearly a month. I think she is dead. I think I killed her. She didn't deserve to die. She made a mistake with the wrong man...someone none of us loved and I berated her for it. I berated her for all that she was. All that the world made her. She left and she's not coming back.
I am tired. I am sad. I am old. I am lost. I miss my friends. I miss my home. I miss my soul. I am unsure where to turn or who to turn to. If that prophecy of their being someone with some answer is false, I have no reason at all to be here, so I hope to god that everyone is wrong and that I am not crazy.
I hope, sincerely, that all the lives I have lived have not been in vain. I have kept this story all my life. It's down on paper now and it seems thin and hopeless. I know, after reading it, why they say I am crazy...why even my best friend said it..It sounds stark, raving mad. I sound like a lunatic trying to find some reason for inexplicably horrible things that broke me. I sound like I am trying to give myself some dignity.
I resent it. There. I have said it aloud. I survived...WE survived things that would have driven any one of you out of your minds. We survived. We go to work everyday. We pay the price every night. We don't have any friends. Not real ones. Not ones who will be there when the storms hit. I pay my bills, raise my kids and show most of the people who choose to be with me a good time.
So, those who like to stand in judgment of me...you call me unstable...pathetic...stupid...insane...I'll make a wager with you. We'll go out, right now and find a man twice your size, and make sure he has LOTS of friends. Then we'll lock you up with that pervert and his buddies for 24 hours and let them do WHATEVER they want to you. After your time is up, I'll come get you, let you clean yourself up and then you can call me crazy or whatever else you have for me.
Until then, your criticism is as unfounded as your insight. Until you bleed like me, don't tell me you know who I am. I might be every single thing you have accused me of. Guess what, I am still a lot more than all but two of you (not counting my little people) I've met. What the hell does that make you?
I've earned my place in this world. I'll have my joy. I'll have my peace.
That's it for now. Thanks for reading.
Go on and find the STATS
you were probably looking for when you came here. *S*