Crooked Halos
Chapter Eighteen
Sometimes I dream I got out of here.
It was all a lie. No one ever got out of MerryWeather alive, the ones who left in coffins were the lucky ones; we were the stolen children, the ones left to rot behind bars and walls for however much our parents were bribed.
The scheme probably cost the government millions, but I hear it kept crime rates down... for a time.
I could go on, I could tell you about the months of slow starvation; even after they got the rations here the youngest and smallest kept vanishing from the corridors. The way I hear it they were shot to keep them from any more suffering, they put them down like dogs. Shit, and these were children, some of them not even six years old.
Davey hung himself from the light-fitting, like a morbid puppet with only one string.
Someone once asked me how I live with all the things I’ve seen and the truth is I don’t, I don’t even know who asked me that. Hell, I don’t know if I was ever asked that or if I dreamt it.
Like I said, I could go on, but I won’t, it hurts to remember and to be honest for a long time I was so lost in dreams I can’t even remember what happened after the children started starving. I just know that it was painful, so painful watching them waste away before my eyes and if I was going to say anything it would be that watching them starve was the hardest thing; that was the hardest to live through.
As for the MerryWeather murders that have been so infamously publicised?
Sometimes I never want to say what I found, I guess that’s why it’s documented as an ‘unsolved case’, I guess that’s why there was so much controversy about letting those of us who survived go free. Because truth be told although they officially said they suspected the killer was dead and that it was Gerard, no one could be certain, no one knew.
I am one of five survivors as of today. Tomorrow it will be four and I will not be one of them.
I just hope my writing this will help the others to move on with their lives. I hope at least someone gets out of there alive.
This is the real reason I am sharing this, I don’t want redemption and I don’t want pity, I don’t want people to forgive me for not telling the police I found Shannon dead on the floor of the shower stall where I once hid, with a small letter in his hand apologising to Gerard for letting him take the fall.
I don’t want to remember that and I don’t want to know what Shannon really did to those people.
Now it’s out I guess I just have to conclude by saying goodbye, diary. It’s been nice knowing you. Tonight I’m going back to the hospital. Tonight I’m going to be just another victim.
It was all a lie. No one ever got out of MerryWeather alive, the ones who left in coffins were the lucky ones; we were the stolen children, the ones left to rot behind bars and walls for however much our parents were bribed.
The scheme probably cost the government millions, but I hear it kept crime rates down... for a time.
I could go on, I could tell you about the months of slow starvation; even after they got the rations here the youngest and smallest kept vanishing from the corridors. The way I hear it they were shot to keep them from any more suffering, they put them down like dogs. Shit, and these were children, some of them not even six years old.
Davey hung himself from the light-fitting, like a morbid puppet with only one string.
Someone once asked me how I live with all the things I’ve seen and the truth is I don’t, I don’t even know who asked me that. Hell, I don’t know if I was ever asked that or if I dreamt it.
Like I said, I could go on, but I won’t, it hurts to remember and to be honest for a long time I was so lost in dreams I can’t even remember what happened after the children started starving. I just know that it was painful, so painful watching them waste away before my eyes and if I was going to say anything it would be that watching them starve was the hardest thing; that was the hardest to live through.
As for the MerryWeather murders that have been so infamously publicised?
Sometimes I never want to say what I found, I guess that’s why it’s documented as an ‘unsolved case’, I guess that’s why there was so much controversy about letting those of us who survived go free. Because truth be told although they officially said they suspected the killer was dead and that it was Gerard, no one could be certain, no one knew.
I am one of five survivors as of today. Tomorrow it will be four and I will not be one of them.
I just hope my writing this will help the others to move on with their lives. I hope at least someone gets out of there alive.
This is the real reason I am sharing this, I don’t want redemption and I don’t want pity, I don’t want people to forgive me for not telling the police I found Shannon dead on the floor of the shower stall where I once hid, with a small letter in his hand apologising to Gerard for letting him take the fall.
I don’t want to remember that and I don’t want to know what Shannon really did to those people.
Now it’s out I guess I just have to conclude by saying goodbye, diary. It’s been nice knowing you. Tonight I’m going back to the hospital. Tonight I’m going to be just another victim.
♠ ♠ ♠
Fin.