!! Trigger Warning: Sexual Harassment, Physical Abuse !!

The moment I closed my eyes, I entered the darkness called memories. Recent memories. Maybe…too recent to even be called memories. My brand-new clothes got stripped of their wrinkles, dried out the water of the pouring rain. My hair was neatly combed, my body in motion, my lungs – once again – capable of screaming when Jack had just punched me against the chin. 

“Hmm. Maybe he doesn’t wanna see ours but wants to show us his.”

I froze again, tried shaking off my stiffness, and fought against the hand in my hair, but Jack kept dragging me back while Drake ordered him to hold me in place. 

I fought them until Hayden tore the backpack from my shoulders and held my arms behind my back, so I could no longer move. Jack turned my head and made me watch Drake approach us. They didn’t bother to silence my screams this time. It wasn’t necessary. Not, when suddenly all of the other, faceless Thunderbirdswere slowly forming a circle around the scene. Like a bloody pack of thirsty wolves, they kept staring when Drake kneeled in front of me but everything I could see were his hands getting closer to my pants. Their bloodred eyes began to sparkle, their forms dissolved into shapeless phantoms.  

I closed my eyes. Tears were streaming down my cheeks.

And then it changed.

Their voices merged into one. A laughter, a hiss. A voice that had been haunting me for more than three years. The voice of pure evil that told me: “Now you get what you deserve, little boy.” 

The smell of the locker room faded, their laughter became an angry roar, and instead of being stripped by hands that knew no mercy, my already aching body crashed into a piece of furniture that didn’t belong to our school, or Seattle, or 2010. 

When I opened my eyes the next time, I was fourteen again. I knew it immediately. Knew that the sun-filled dining room belonged to our Chicago apartment. Knew the hardwood floors and the pictures on the walls. Knew the modern building, the fancy furniture…Knew that it was just the shiny frosting on a rotten cake. 

I cried out when my back hit the edge of our hardwood dining table and fell to the ground. It cracked when one of my ribs broke under the impact. The phantom soccer club merged into one large mass of nothingness, evilness, cruelness. 

“Disgusting,” it hissed in a voice I’d never wanted to hear again, and its shapeless hands reached for my throat. “You’re disgusting!” 

A punch to my stomach made me cough so hard I could taste puke in my mouth. 

“Something like you shouldn’t exist!” 

“Abnormal!”

“Gross!” 

“Die!” The hands left my throat and reached for something behind my head. “Die already!” I saw the silhouette of something heavy, something hard, something that hit my head with deadly force. 

“DIE!” 

A croaking scream on my lips, I sat up with my heart beating as if it wanted to leave my body to escape from me. I didn’t blame it. My body felt stiff as if I’d just run a marathon when, in reality, I’d just awoken from one hour of sleep. I ran both hands over my face and the heavy silence in our apartment mocked my hallucinations. 

My nightmares. 

My past. 

And at that moment, I felt as if I didn’t have a future.