Except One

"Second star to the right, and straight on till morning"
That Peter told Wendy was the way to Neverland

Regan had not had a normal childhood; she watched from her window as the children next-door and across the street of her small English village ran out to play various games. Her bright blue eyes would follow their football or tennis ball with an envy burning inside. Her fingers would clench on the window-sill in longing when she heard the laughter of little Becky Far...Sometimes she wished she could laugh like that. And even then, at the tender age of five she wished she knew how to smile. But she couldn’t, because for poor Regan...there was nothing in her life to smile about.

She would jump, as if she were guilty for simply having wishes when she heard her step father thunder down the stairs or her mother groan from her position sprawled across the kitchen table. She never took notice of them anymore; she had grown up like this and had learned not to take notice of the drunken yells, the various syringes littering the counters or the nasty smelling men that would arrive on the front door.

The little girl took shelter on a small sheltered beach fifteen minutes from a place she lived, but had never called home. When it all started to become too much, she would walk barefoot, and ragged dressed along the rocky path to the beach, sometimes trailing a stick behind her, other times, simply trailing her thoughts.

At the age of seven, Regan no longer talked unless it was absolutely necessary. She had learned that sometimes, words got you nowhere and in her world, words were not needed because her thoughts and her wishes were loud enough, not to be spoken.

By seven, Regan was truly alone. She was the one that had walked past her mother, passed out on the couch on her way to tuck herself into bed, read herself a fairy tale she had to conjure because she had never owned a book. It would only be morning when she realised her mother was not simply unconscious, she was dead.

Many that lived in the village, found it strange that at the small funeral, the little waif like girl did not shed a tear for her dead mother. She simply stared as they lowered the casket into the ground, blinking slowly as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She did not flinch when her step-father and guardian laid a heavy hand on her shoulder, bringing with it promised hurts and broken dreams.
She never made friends, stayed be herself. People hurt her and therefore she did better not knowing them. She turned away from the efforts of friendship extended towards her, buffeted away the many curious children that often asked, with her elfin proportions and long scraggly white hair was she a fairy?

Regan would simply stare and shake her head, no....

There were no such things as faeries...for faeries belonged to the imagination...and now Regan, could not, would not, believe in imagination. Her reality was too dark to allow her to be rescued in a world of dreams.

He drank, he drank all the time. And then he would touch, caress her face...tell her she was beautiful and then as he sobered, her would hit her. Scream at her. She was dirty, vile, unworthy.

It became worse as she got older and his intentions grew bigger and badder. She became more beautiful, and she would be punished for it. It was her fault he felt that way towards her. Her fault he did those things.

Regan stood on her beach, today was her seventeenth birthday. She had not been awakened by a loving mother, or a caring father. She had not been presented with a birthday cake or even a birthday card. A lonely bird had chirped outside her window, singing the only happy birthday she would receive. But for Regan, it had been better that way. She preferred him...away from her.

But he had come, as always...into her bedroom. And he had pinned her down, his breath suffocating her with its alcoholic steam. She shivered where she stood, the sand curling between her toes...she could feel the throbbing all over her arms from where he had held her....the aches in her legs, her thighs from where....from where he had....

Regan’s breath came in gasps and she collapsed onto the familiar sand that had soothed her on so many other occasions. Her weak fingers scrabbled at the ground for a moment, in her mind still imagining she was in that room, with him...fighting him off, begging, pleading for him to allow her to leave.

Her eyes hardened as her tears suddenly drowned...and she got up. There would be no more begging, no more pleading. Tonight would be the last night. It was time for her to go. If she grew up, the world would just welcome her with more pain, and more disappointments....there could be no more wishes, no more desires, no more happy thoughts....if she had ever had any...

Slowly and with a purpose, she walked towards the water. No fear hit her as she entered the calming sea that lapped around her body with reassurance.

Everything will be okay, it whispered...the elements were here now, and they were ready to take her back from where she had first come from.

She kept walking, until finally her tiny toes no longer tip toed across the sandy surface. She swam, with the strokes she had thought herself, to the middle often vast blue duvet that covered the earth. She kept swimming, until the current she knew was out there, caught her, She fought it for only a single moment before her arms gave out, weak with pain and exhaustion.

The waves crashed now, each one momentarily blinding her as they swooped over and onto her. She swirled underneath the surface, fighting blindly with no hope. Her head broke the surface for the final time and she looked up as her small body began to sink again

“I’m never growing up” she whispered, and the softest of smiles graced her pretty lips as death kissed her welcome. She began to sink, her head tilted upwards so she could see the stars for one last time. Her arms floated above her head as water was sucked into her lungs, drowning her. Her eyes stayed open, haunting as she sank lower and lower, her hair rising around her body like a halo, as if God had graced her an angel all ready.

Blackness began to descend and she welcomed it. Regan was ready to leave a cruel world that had never given anything to her. She didn’t take much notice of the dark shape descending down onto the water. She looked with wonder as the boy with dancing eyes took her frail hand in his and pulled her upwards. He was an angel, sent to fetch her for heaven.

Regan sighed happily and allowed her eyes to close, saying hello to the warm darkness of Death.