My name? It shouldn't matter, it doesn't matter. Not really. I could be anyone couldn't I? I'm just a screwed up kid, living on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.
I had a name once, Daughter. But I threw that all a way.
"You're evil," my mother told me with wet and wavering eyes. "You are a demon."
The thing is? I could not deny her that fact. I was starting to think I really might be.
She tied me down to a chair, you see. She doused me with Holy Water while she shouted bibical quotes at me. She waved a cross in my face a couple of times.
"Why isn't it working, Kali?" She screamed and shook me so hard I could feel my brain hit the sides of my skull.
She took out a lighter, and waved a small metal cross over it, and she pressed it to my skin.
"It's bubbling!" She screamed. "You are resisting the cross!"
I screamed and cried, but she didn't stop. I was down there for hours. Or days? Weeks. I don't know. I was on a steady diet of Holy Water and sacramental wafers.
But that's about when I started feeling numb. Pain and pleasure and displeasure were all starting to blend together into a cocktail called Misery.
To add an umbrella onto the cocktail, she took me to the Catholic Church. She walked into the office of Father Wood. She sounded like she was raving mad, screaming about a demonic daughter. Saying she could see horns coming from my head and that my eyes were red.
Okay, she was raving mad about that. Too raving mad for Father Wood.
"We do not do exorcisms anymore, m'am," he said.
"What do you mean you don't 'do exorcisms'?" She yelled. "My daughter is a demon, Father! Cure her!"
He rolled his eyes and he poured oil on my head. He said some bullshit in Latin.
All the bullshit of which my mother cried with happiness.
"We'll have a new life together now, Daughter," she said and smiled as she walked into the front door. Of her house.
I didn't belong there. I didn't go into the front door, no.
I ran.
And then I became a different name, I was called Girlfriend.
Darren was perfect. That's what the problem was. He was too perfect, and I was too perfectly imperfect. For him, and for anyone it seemed.
"Kali," he said. "It's like a switch. One minute you're an angel and the next moment..."
"A devil," I finished for him.
He nodded softly. "I can't anymore. I can't be with you..."
That was when I became empty. It was like someone took an ice cream scooper and scooped out all of my insides. There was nothing in there but poison.
It started my life as a teenage nobody.
Author's Note:
This week I read Chapters 1-9 of Asura: Tale of the Vanguished. This book is basically the Ramayana, expect it is told in the perspective of the Rakshasa (demon) king, Ravana!
I loved the way that this story was written. It is in a first person perspective but very heavily close to that person. We get every thought and sensory details. In fact, the story has very little dialogue or action. Most of it is the reader in Ravana's mind, which I loved!
I know that on many of your stories I comment that you need dialogue and such. But, this story has taught me that there is a time and place for such close introspection in a story.
Thus, this story is a close introspection from my character from my Storybook, My Life As A Teenage Rakshasi!
