The Secret
You know? It’s a cold cruel world out there. And people have to do what they can to survive. I once got a fortune cookie that said “Success is on its way to you”. I’ve yet to see it. My names Michelle Stanley, this is my story.
When I was turning five my parents were throwing me a birthday party. One of those big bashes with a swimming pool, clowns and a lot of high priced guests. What people didn’t know was that my parents used my birthday and every other special occasion as an excuse to have what they called one hell of a time. In the midst of all the commotion my inebriated father decided he’d like to take a dive in the pool. It was too late before anyone noticed. When I was seven my mother got remarried to this guy named George. At first everything seemed splendid. He was a nice guy, had a great name and house, and my mom’s favorite, a lot of money. He didn’t like moms drinking, however, or me for that matter. So when I when I was eleven, he kicked us to the curb. At the time I didn’t realize it was for the better, but it was because I was thirteen, George went crazy, shot his new trophy wife and her son, and then himself. I guess these things happen. After that my mom had to go away for some convalescence, landing me in the care of the state. I have to admit it was nice to have everything feel normal for a while, be around adults who had stable lives and relationships. But I didn’t belong there so therefore I couldn’t stay. Mom got out shortly before my 15 th birthday. We ended up in a dilapidated house in the worst part of town. It was terrible. By this age I was able to see right through mom’s charade. I knew why all these strange men came home with her every night. Sometimes more than one. I knew what they were doing when she would tell me to leave, and the house would smell of chemicals and old sweat. One night on of her ‘friends’ decided he liked me more than he did her. So he held her at gun point until I would give him what he wanted. What was I supposed to do? I was just a little girl who didn’t want her mom to die. I guess these situations are what made me who I am today. That all went on until I was seventeen. One ordinary night I was just listening to mom do her usual rounds under the house when suddenly this terrible smell came through that I couldn’t describe. So I went to investigate and what I found didn’t surprise me at all. My entire kitchen floor was completely engulfed in flame and it was spreading rapidly. I remember pausing to think why we lived in a house this old with no smoke detectors, Thanks Mom. It was me who called for help, and it was me who waited outside alone and it was me who told the firemen I had no Idea why this happened. After the fire was extinguished the nice fireman recovered my mothers’ smoldering lifeless body from the ruin and that of another unidentified male. Later they would tell me that the two of them had been arguing and he shoved my mother into an unstable meth lab so leading to a chemical fire that claimed both their lives. Well I went straight back into states custody, and back to that picture of excellence. None of that appealed to me like it used to. A new school and a new family again; after everything I had been through nothing mattered. I had lost everything, I was an orphan. I had seen both my mother and my father die. Mind as well been an adult, or at least that’s what I thought. By the time I was twenty I had made my way to L.A. working as a call girl\ bartender. They said the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I guess they were right. So here I am working an unstable job, living an unstable life, in the worst part of town. ... I startled awake to the sound of my cell phone buzzing on my night stand beside my bed. “Hello?” my voice still groggy with sleep. “Michelle” the voice said. I looked at my caller id, and it was a number I didn’t recognize. “Hello” I said, “who is this?” with nothing but static on the other end. We’ll that was weird. I thought. I tried to go back to sleep but I couldn’t, so I decided to go for a glass of water. After downing about two or three cups, I decided to make my way out
for some fresh air. When I stepped out onto my front porch, I got a chill, pulling my sweater around myself tauter. It’s kind of cold out tonight. Work was an old derelict movie theater palace turned into a dance hall for underage runaways and middle aged single women still looking for that Mr. Right. It was a place where old rich men in suit and tie combos could come ogle us with starry eyes ravenous for more. On some nights we could get lucky, and have a nice young guy come in for his birthday or bachelor party, having to pay for an entire package at once, plus tipping. The package includes 1 girl, 1 VIP booth, and 1 bottle of champagne. It looked like tonight was one of those nights. “Oh oh, look! Here he comes! OH! He’s actually cute!” said Angela, a bit over zealous. But that’s her norm. “I hope he picks me! OH! He’s coming this way!” I watched as he passed booth after booth looking unsatisfied, and I watched as his eyes landed on me and his expression changed entirely, from one of disgust to one of fulfillment, and he stopped directly in front of me. Just then he turned and said something to his hoard of friends that had been following, and they all shared a nod. Oh great. “Looking for something?” I said, placing my hand on my hip, and flashing him my best smile. “Hi,” he said. ”My names Adam.” All I could do was smile. After I had him seated and his glass poured, I began to dance, but he stopped me. “Wait,” he said. “You don’t have to do that. I didn’t want the dance to begin with. My friends,” he motioned toward the curtain, “they made me do this. When I came inside and seen the curtains, I felt relief because they wouldn’t have to know I refused.” The expression on my face must have given way to my confusion because he began to look uncomfortable. “Is it the money? I’ll still pay you.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of ones. “No that’s okay,” I said, and pushed his hand away from me. He smiled, and I couldn’t help myself from noticing how exceedingly handsome he was. Hmm, Angela wasn’t lying. “My names Adam,” he said again, and thrust his right hand forward.
I was so distracted by my thoughts that I introduced myself by my real name. Mr. Boss man said he lost way too many of his best girls that way. I didn’t want to bother to even think about what he meant. We shook hands, and this is how we met. … “Where am I?” I wondered aloud. It was silent, and it was cold, and it was dark. I didn’t like this. Off in the distance I could make out the outline of a neighborhood, so I began moving toward it. It didn’t seem like I was making any progress so I picked up my pace. As my pace hastened, it seemed like the houses just kept getting further and further away. I was getting more frustrated by the step. All of the sudden, everything disappeared into a cloud of smoke, and I was smack in the middle of a really long straight road surrounded by nothing, but wheat fields, in the middle of the day. “What’s going on here?” I was at a total loss. I had no clue where I was, and the only sign of civilization was an old looking building off in the distance. After walking for what seemed like forever, I realized the building wasn’t coming any closer. I stopped in time to hear the footsteps behind me, but they just stopped short. This made me break out in a full blown sprint. I tried and tried but I couldn’t get anywhere. My legs felt like they were made out of play dough that had been sitting out for a few days. Horrified, I built up my biggest and best scream, sat up straight in my bed, and shrieked. “Whoa, what’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream?” Adam had whisked himself into the room almost immediately. He took my face in his hands and met my eyes straight. “I won’t let anyone or anything hurt you Michelle.” He kissed me on my forehead, and just like that, he was out of the room. Adam hardly ever slept in the bed with me. If he did it was just until I fell asleep. I know this because I always woke up alone. He’d taken me off the street and made me his wife. He’d made life perfect. We had a huge house with a maid and everything. But lately he’d been different. Distant. I was beginning to wonder if something was the matter with him. He’d been going out more and more and staying home less. I wondered if he was seeing someone else. I put my head back on the pillow, and then turned it over to the cool side, but I was still uncomfortable. After trying to get back to seep for who knows how long, I finally started to see sunlight through the windows. Had I been sleeping? Was Adam home? I had no clue. What should I do? I peeled myself from the sheets and went out the door.
Our house was nothing short of amazing. Rooms upon rooms, door after door. Tall curving staircases. And the windows, large open windows. Often times I would entertain myself by getting lost in my own home. It was just that big, and Adam and I were the only ones aside from a maid here and there. The best part was I was usually undisturbed. Sometimes I’d find a room and stay there until Adam or the maid brought me some food. Somedays when I was sad I’d find the perfect room and not come back for days. After I lost my mother I locked myself in my bedroom at my foster house and didn’t come out for a week. Adam always told me that I shouldn’t do that; that it’s unhealthy to dwell, and I should think of happy things like flowers and Valentines Day. Trying to watch television in this house was impossible. There wasn’t ever anything good on, and today was no different I wondered out the bedroom door and down the hall, and without thinking about it, picked a door to go through. It was a room of books, with two other doors on the opposite wall. No windows however, so I wasn’t satisfied. I decided to go through the door to the right, and it led me to a lavatory. Not staying here… I giggled to myself. Following straight through, I came to a room that was barely visible from the lack of light. It alarmed me, and I couldn’t see for another door, so I decided to backtrack and go through door no. 2. Door number two brought me to a spiral stairwell, which went up for two flights. I figured I had nothing to lose. Climbing them was tiring, and more tedious than I would have wanted. They were old and kind of rickety. But alas, I made it to the top. It opened out into a long wide vestibule with doors lining both sides. I walked along, and picked one at random. The room I had chosen looked comfy. There was a desk with lots of chairs surrounding it, framed documents, and a huge window overlooking a huge wheat field. This was what I was looking for. I eyed each chair carefully so as to pick the best one, and I ended up choosing the one closest to the window. It had a place for my feet. Hours must have went by because Adam came looking for me. He usually doesn’t look right away. He burst through the door with a very exasperated look on his face that quickly change to relief and then to anger. “Michelle! How many times do I have to tell you; you can’t go wondering off like that! Do you know how long I’ve been looking?”
“I’m sorry,” was all I said and I followed him back to the place we inhabited. All along the way Adam was saying things like “worried sick” and “you can’t do that”. I wasn’t really listening until I heard him say “you’re under my care.” I stopped walking. “What?” he said. “What was that? I’m under your care?” He looked like he didn’t know what I was getting at so I continued. “I’m not under any ones care,” putting emphasis on the word ‘care’. Adam’s mouth opened as if to say something but he shut it just as quickly. This angered me even more, and I’m guessing it showed on my face because Adam’s expression changed to one of anger. “Don’t you know what’s going on here?” he said looking tired, and less angry. “Sure I do!” I said, “You think that because I live here with you that you can control me, or that you know what’s best for me, well you’re not my father! He died a long time ago. No one knows what’s best for me besides me.” I quickly walked away from him. I couldn’t believe he would say such a thing, and so I went right back to my hiding place. I really enjoyed the room I’d found earlier that day. It was completely new to me, yet I felt I’d been there before. The walls were the color of custard, the kind I drank when I was just a kid, in a foster home, at a Christmas party. I didn’t like it. It also had the comfy chair as I liked to call it. I fell asleep here earlier; I planned to do it again. This chair is so comfy, I thought, as I settled in further. It didn’t take me long to dose off. At the time it felt like I blinked my eyes and I was in front of those houses again, in the middle of the night. Only this time I could actually move toward the, but I didn’t stay long enough to make any real progress. In a puff of smoke, everything was gone. I was in the middle of the dirt road again. I knew I wasn’t going to be there long enough to figure it out either so I just started strolling along to the big building in the distance. After walking for what seemed like an eternity, something in the corner of my eye caught my attention by the side of the road. A small movement caused me to almost jump out of my comfy chair and scream my head off. This must be what alerted the maid to my location because she came rushing in almost immediately saying “Michelle! You can’t be in this room! Come with me.”
“Hum, excuse me? You work for me do you not?” I studied her purely confused expression and understood. “Right. You work for Adam.” She still looked confused, but I didn’t care. I just walked past her and out the door. I wanted away with her so I walked fast taking turn after turn, not really paying attention to where I was going, until I came to the corridor I recognized. This is where Adam and I fought earlier. And that’s when I heard it. Thud. Thud. Thud. The sound was hollow and repetitive. Slowly I started walking towards it, looking for it. Thud… Thud… Thud… It was almost eerie. The fact that there was no other sound gave me a chill. Thud… Thud… Thud! Whatever I was hearing was getting closer. The closer I got the more it frightened me. After I deduced it to one door, I turned the knob and I’ll never forget what I saw. The first thing I seen was my white teddy bear. It was lying face down on the floor. I leaned down to pick it up and something struck my head. So I flicked on the light from behind me. At first all I could see was feet suspended in the air. The image didn’t make sense to me at all. And then I looked up. Adams neck was bent at an inhuman angle, and his nose and ears were bleeding. His eyes, those beautiful eyes, were completely blood shot, and bulging to the breaking point. Suddenly everything was quiet and all I could see was his face. Blank, cold and staring into nothing, and seeing nothing in return, I started to hear my heart in my ears, and a slight ‘whooshing’ in the distance. Out of nowhere, I no longer felt the floor beneath my feet. … Beep…Beep…Beep… Am I in the hospital? What’s going on? I opened my eyes, with a strain, as if I’d been sleeping for days. At first everything was one bright white blur, but then I began to
make out the shape of a young woman sitting in a chair in the corner. And she was staring straight at me. “What’s going on here? Where am I?” I asked her, but she just stared blankly at me. “What’s the matter with you? Why am I here? Why won’t you answer me??!” she was beginning to look pained, and I was beginning to get frustrated. “Look here! I need some answers now, or I will” – just then a nurse walked in. “Hello Michelle, how are we feeling today?” She looked smug, almost satisfied. This fueled my fire. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? WHY AM I HOOKED TO THIS MACHINE?” “Michelle! I’m surprised to hear to talking! We found you unconscious in the hotel part of the hospital. You have such a bad habit of wandering off. But we brought you here and kept you hydrated until you woke up. How are you feeling?” “Hotel part of the hospital? What was I doing there? The last thing I remember was being at my house… in one of my new favorite hiding spot, when…” Just then my memory came flooding back to me. Graphic images of Adam, all too close to the ceiling and I couldn’t help but break down and start crying. “What is it? What’s wrong?” “Don’t you know?” it was difficult to speak between sobs. “Adam, he’s dead. He hung himself. I found him, just before I passed out.” “Adam? Adams not dead.” “You know Adam?” a tiny trickle of hope spread down my spine. “Adams an orderly here. You’ve been a patient with us in our mental wing since your foster parents brought you here when you were seventeen, in a catatonic state. We’ve been caring for you ever since. Michelle? Are you okay?” I was getting dizzy, and starting to feel like I was going to pass out again. What she was saying couldn’t be true. “I worked in a whore house. I lived in a huge house. I had a maid.” “You had an orderly.” She said simply. Her face sympathetic. “I don’t need your sympathy!” I was starting to sizzle. “I saw Adam dead!! I lived in a huge empty house! I’ve never been in this hospital in my life!” I grabbed the nearest object and hurled it at her. She was lucky I still couldn’t feel my legs.
As she ducked from the vase of flowers I threw, she also pushed a button on a watch-like contraption on her wrist. Almost immediately after, two men in scrubs came rushing in. one grabbed me by this wrists, the other by the ankles, while I watched Mrs. Know-it-all pull out a syringe and fill it with this liquid, and then put that liquid into my hip, just above my butt. Almost instantly I started to feel dizzy, and sleepy, and I couldn’t quite keep talking. Things around me blurred and shifted. I thought maybe if I rest my eyes for just a second it would be okay. … I was smack in the middle of a shanty neighborhood. And it was dark out. But for some reason it seemed familiar, and that scared me. One of the many dark houses had a light on, a seemingly warm glow. It drew me towards it. As I got closer I noticed I could see people moving inside. A man and a woman, and they were arguing. Three little children that didn’t look related whatsoever were sitting on a sofa behind them looking solemn. I was almost close enough to make out words. “I can’t believe you don’t agree with me on this. How many children have we cared for? How many of them have behaved this way. She hasn’t come downstairs in 4 days! The school has been calling wondering if she’s been hospitalized. I’m starting to think it’s the right thing to do.” The woman was beginning to look frantic. Had I seen her somewhere before? “I just don’t think we should react so quickly. She just lost her mother. You heard everything the case worker said she’d been through. I just think we should give her some time. That’s all.” Funny, it almost sounded like they were talking about me. “I’ll compromise with you. We’ll give her three more days. If she’s still not doing anything but laying there by then we will have no choice.” “This is weird,” I said aloud. Breaking the silence outside was a mistake, because as soon as I spoke, all their heads whipped around to look straight at me. It made me jump, and just as quickly as it came, it was gone. The night had evaporated into a cloudless sky, in the middle of the day. The long dirt road. Relief washed over me, and then that reaction didn’t make sense. Why was I relieved to be here? Something in the corner of my eye caught my attention. A small movement by the side of the road. I moved closer to see into the ditch.
Lying in the ditch, covered with mud, was the girl I had seen somewhere, that didn’t speak a word. She looked like she had been drug here, and was just barely alive. In a feeble attempt she pointed at me, and then at the big building in the distance, and smiled. A chill trickled down my spine. What is she getting at? I looked toward the building and it screamed salvation at me. Suddenly it didn’t look as alarming as it did comforting. The windows reminded me of someplace. The wheat field. And then. Everything made sense. I looked back to the girl lying in the ditch and a rock hit the bottom of my stomach. She was starting to melt away, starting with her skin. I watched her decay into nothing and become part of the ditch in a matter of seconds. It was too much. I was going to vomit. This overwhelming feeling thrust me into reality. I wasn’t in the middle of a long dirt road. I was lying in a white bed, in a white room, with a window on the door. I checked for the IV and it was no longer there. Trying to stand was almost impossible. Shakily, I made my way to the bathroom. Cool water on my face seemed to be exactly what I needed. I was feeling so groggy. How long had I been sleeping? I splashed water on my face for what felt like forever. It just felt so good. I decided to take a cool shower. My muscles were tight, and kind of sore. I must have been in bed for a while. I stayed in the shower just standing there letting the water fall on me until there was no more hot water. I took my towel and wiped the mirror with it to get a glimpse of what I looked like; fore I had not seen myself in days. It almost pained me to look. At first I thought my mind was playing tricks on me. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. I was staring into the face of the silent girl, the one who melted away in my sleep. This couldn’t be my reflection. I lifted my hand to my cheek, and the girl mimicked me exactly. It caused me to gasp and I watched as her mouth formed the small shape of an o. there was no denying it. It was me. She was me. I am her. I made my way back to the bed, and I was startled to see the woman who injected me with that liquid sitting in the chair beside the small table in the corner. She was looking at me sort of expectant. I didn’t like her, I didn’t want to give her what she wanted so I just stayed silent, and sat down. “What’s going on here? Where am I. Adams dead. Nothing makes any sense anymore.”
“Michelle I am getting to be sick of this charade. Adam is most certainly not dead.” She got up out of the chair, walked over and opened the door. I watched as she poked her head outside and nodded this way. She came back in and following behind her was Adam. Only he was wearing scrubs, and glasses. He met my eyes, and I could see something there, something almost sorry. He looked apologetic. “Mr. Rietz, I believe you owe this young woman an explanation.” She gestured toward me. I felt like a young child learning that not only was Santa clause not real, but neither was their home, or their family. But he just stared at me. “Mr. Rietz here has been brought up on charges for infatuating patients, and developing sexual relationships with them. You being included. You didn’t find him hanging in a loft, you found him messing around with another girl from your wing. We are guessing that seeing this caused you to snap from your alternate reality back to this one.” I was beginning to feel that pass-out feeling again, but this time I wasn’t going to give in. “So you’re saying everything up until now hasn’t been real?” “I’m sorry Michelle.” She said, and she took my hand. “But don’t worry. We are going to move you from this place to another, in light of recent events I believe a change of scenery to be just what you need. Who knows, you might even make a full recovery.” She led me out into the hall, and a girl who looked almost familiar, as if from a lost dream, stepped out from the room next to mine. Her face was full of emotion as she took my hand. “I’ll miss you.” Was all she said. “Angela?” as I said it, I knew it was right. She just smiled and nodded yes as tears washed over her cheeks. We walked into an elevator, out into a large lobby, and out two very large glass doors. We were surrounded by wheat fields as far as the eye could see. Fresh air was swirling around me. The sun was shining beautifully on my skin. As we started to drive along a long dirt road, I felt I should take one last look at the place that had been my home for so long. When I turned around and laid my eyes on the big old run down looking building in the distance, I felt peace. Everything made sense again. So I relaxed into the seat of my chariot, and faced forward into a new future, with no boundaries.
WRITTEN BY: CHRISTADABRISTA