From The Top Of The Mountain

Part 1

   Here I was, running fast and clumsy down the steep hill. Finally away from him. Each step was the terror leaving me. It was all happening like it was in slow motion. I felt so free for the first time in ten years. I started to cry and laugh at the same time. It was the best feeling I ever experienced  in my entire life.

   For years on end I would dream about this day. Smiling as I thought of every moment of my life. The pain and anger filled in each day. The brutal abuse finally over. And all I could do was smile as tears streamed down my face. I jumped from rock to rock. Holding onto the trees as I held my balance. I headed in a straight line.

   Finally, I was going to live a normal life. I looked up at the sky, the twinkling stars reading my thoughts. The fear I knew I was trying to hide. That was just it though. Would I live a normal life? Even if I could, now that its over? Or is it? Robby had a lot of friends who murdered. Who hit, yelled. Were they really the only ones? I slowed my pace. I suddenly stopped. I gazed out scanning the mountain tops and seeing the lights in the far distance. 

   Was it supposed to be like this? Was my life really supposed to be this miserable? I didn't know and there was no way that I was going to find out. Not here. Not in the dirt and trees of my personal hell. The thoughts of real love and a real family. My family. I had a loving family waiting for me just waiting. Tens years of being so far away. But that's just it, I wasn't far. Not at all as far as it felt. I leaned over and felt dizzy.

    My breathing slowed down. Was I supposed to feel different? I didn't think this through, I thought. But what was there to think, Brandon? I thought. Nothing, absolutely, nothing. I had years to think about what life could have been. This is your life, I thought. This will never go away. The burdens will haunt you for over decades until the day that you die, I continued in my daydream. 

   It's been tens years. I had forgotten where I lived. Not the house, but the route. How was I going to make it home. The thought of being caught again, made me shiver. I was five years old when I was taken. And now that I was fifteen, abuse and hunger was all I knew. So was there a normal life for me out there in the city of which I lived the five perfect years? I stood up and walked the rest of the way down the mountain. I quickened my pace, but didn't run. I wanted time to think. My future was only so close, yet so far. I was made to be miserable. There was no leaving this world without pain. 

   I thought about my parents. Not that I never did. It was just the fact that I never had hope like I did now. And seeing the life I used to live in the distance, enchanted me to believe it was going to go right where I left off. Never had I thought about the reality. I am a fifteen year old boy, who has three years left of being considered a child. And I can't live a perfect childhood in just three years. 

   I thought about school. I never really been to school. I thought about my brother and how my mom had been pregnant when I was kidnapped. 

   I shivered, I blamed it on the chill of the air. Though I knew it came from a much deeper source. I had never met my other sibling. Was it another boy or a girl? A part of me hoped for a girl, just to have hope in something new until I finally got home. 

   I smelt the air. Against my skin, it felt nice. The bruises seemed to be so visible in the moonlight. I didn't expect to see them so clearly. I pulled out the thin blanket from the bag that had been dangling from my back since I left. I laid it under the trees and sat on it. I got even colder and wrapped it around me instead. Was I even far enough? It wouldn't matter. I took care of him. He can't get me now.