Volume Three - WordPress.com — Get a Free Blog Here

actual happiness. Eleven years ago, her mother and her grandmother had both been brutally murdered. Stefani
saw her mother die. It was the only lasting memory she had of her childhood.
She remembered the neighbors yelling on the doorstep, asking if everything was ok. She still remembered
holding her mother’s head as the lady from upstairs screamed when she saw Stefani sitting on the kitchen floor,
staring vacantly at her mother’s lifeless corpse. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. What the heck did that mean,
anyway? Was it supposed to be a consoling thought, understanding her mother was now nothing more than
decaying flesh and bones?
Her life took a bizarre twist that evening. It was only a few hours after she watched her mother die that she
learned her grandmother had been murdered, as well. She had been sitting in the police station, draped in an
oversized man’s coat, clutching her Raggedy Ann doll. She didn’t even shed a tear when the officer told her
about her last living relative’s death. Her insides were used up at that point. Even at her present age, she was
nothing more than a hollow shell of a human being.
With no place to go and nobody to take care of her, she fell into the California system for homeless children.
Luckily, she was quickly placed with a foster family, and somehow, she was forced to start using their last name.
She never really understood this, but once they adopted her, the name stuck. Now and forever more, she was
Stefani Hernandez. She laughed out loud at that. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and she was legally Hispanic. In some
ways the oddity fit her life perfectly.
“Bbbbbbbbbbbbbblllllllllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhh,” she heard the gurgling noise come out
of her mouth as she threw up again for the third time that day. Had she not been getting progressively sicker for
the past few months, she might have thought the nausea was in response to her violent memories. At some
point, she knew she really should go to the doctor, but she also knew she never would. She didn’t trust doctors.
She didn’t trust anyone, really.
Her foster family had been fine for the most part. They provided her a bed and food to eat. She had never
warmed up to them, though, and in some ways, they had not to her, either. They treated her like part of their
family, but she knew she would never fit. She was a freak of nature. The kid whose mother was butchered, and
nobody ever discovered why or by whom. What did it matter, anyway?
On the day of her graduation, her entire foster family had been gunned down in a drive-by shooting. They
were on their way to see her ceremony. The police said it was some kind of gang-related initiation. But they
never found out who pulled the trigger.
Everyone Stefani had ever known or been associated with had died. She resigned herself long ago to
believing she would always be alone.
When her foster family was killed, Stefani made the decision to forego college. She moved to the city and
settled in a small apartment in San Francisco. She held down a job waitressing during the day and occupied
herself as a dancer at night. The pay was good, and unlike most of the girls, she didn’t participate in any of the
extracurricular activities with the male clientele. A guy tried something with her once, and he left with his arm
bent back like a pretzel. She could still hear him scream as she snapped his forearm as if it were a mere twig.
Her strength was freaky.
She didn’t have any friends. She barely even knew the three girls with whom she shared an apartment. She
waved hello to them or said goodbye on her way out, but they never spent any real time together. How many
people wander through their fleeting existences with no hope, no dreams, and no real ambition? She considered
killing herself on several occasions. But she knew that wasn’t an option, at least not before her task was
complete.
The only time she came close to death was when she fell three stories from an open window. She’d been
leaning on the ledge, sitting on the window sill, trying to catch a glimpse of the night sky. She loved the night
air. It was odd how she felt more peaceful during a full moon, when the stars shone and everyone else was fast
asleep. She fell headfirst out the window and somehow landed on her feet. She hadn’t even felt a jar in her
shins. Sometimes she wondered if she were Super-Girl and the yellow sun gave her indestructible, supernatural
powers.
In the end, nothing had been able to save her mother, though. Her family was all dead, gone, and buried.
The only thing she had from her voided past was the Raggedy Ann doll propped on her bed pillows. That doll