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

length of time, and she didn’t want anything to happen to her precious abode. It may be ugly and modest, with a
few knicks and pings and chipped paint here and there, but it was all hers.
Before she could scrounge up enough money to buy this place, Kadi had spent the last twenty years of her
life living from one cramped and over extended living quarter after another, always at the mercy of some
merciless foster family. Sometimes, the abuse and neglect would be so horrific she would attempt to run away,
which proved to only make matters worse. And soon she was placed in the most severely strict households
where juvenile delinquents were afraid to tread. Though the only thing that young Kadi could have been
accused of, at the time, was searching for her family. A family that had long since died and the remainder no
longer existed, a concept that was lost on her innocent, little mind.
Those were her formidable years. The years that shaped and molded her into what she was today.
Frightened, untrusting and afraid to hope. She didn’t dare to hope any longer because the pain and
disappointment was just too great and she could no longer bear it. So now, she just resigned herself to the hard,
cold facts of the way life is and not the way she would hope it to be.
After she did her final sweep of the premises to make sure she didn’t leave water running or the iron on, she
went to her car. She took in a few deep breaths to calm herself, then started the car and headed on her way.
“For Christ’s sake, you’re only going to be gone for a few days,” she said aloud. “You’d think you were
going on a world tour,” she chuckled to herself.
“Well, here goes nothing…” her voice trailed off as the enormity of what she was about to do hit her…
again.
“Calm yourself girl,” she began talking to herself again. “It’s not like you’re going to see the Boogie Man…
you’re doing the right thing.”
She turned on her favorite talk radio show, in hopes of drowning out the haunting thoughts that bombarded
her mind. That proved to be a mistake.
“How do you feel about a babysitter killer being paroled and let out of prison to live in decent society? We want to know how
you feel.” There was a brief pause on the air and Kadi could feel her heart thud loudly in her chest. “Caller…you’re
on the air.”
The male voice was filled with judgment and accusation. You could feel his hatred spew through the
airwaves. “Doesn’t this state have the death penalty? I mean…what do we use it for…if not for vicious killers like Ryan
Crowe.”
The caller hung up and the next caller echoed his sentiments. “I agree with the last caller. We have to take back
our city from these pervs. I say we should take up arms and rid society of these rapists and murderers ourselves.”
Kadi could feel a small fist develop in her throat. She could hardly breathe and her hands trembled.
The host regained control of the airwaves from the vigilante mob that was brewing. Her voice was
uncharacteristically calming and reassuring as she responded to her latest caller. ”I don’t think that vigilante justice is
the answer here. Torches and pitchforks are not the answer to fighting crime. What we need is to change the laws so violent offenders
spend the rest of their natural lives in prison, and is never let out amongst decent people again.” There was another dramatic
pause before she spoke again. Kadi braced herself. She wanted to turn the radio off and ignore the outcry of
the city, but she couldn’t. She had to listen. “Criminals like Ryan Crowe don’t just learn a lesson from prison life. They
become more clever and more violent. People that rape and murder innocent girls don’t just stop, they just get harder to catch the next
time they do it. And Heaven help the next girl that crosses the path of Ryan Cro….”
Kadi couldn’t take any more. She turned the radio off and traveled the rest of the trip in relative silence,
accept for the jumbled thoughts that took over her mind.
The rest of the long trek was a blur to Kadi, and the faster she tried to travel to escape her own thoughts, it
did nothing to elude the demons that were chasing her. In a sense, she did secretly hope that this trip would
right some of the injustices that had brought her to this uncertain place in her heart and soul. But first, she had
to know the truth about what happened that fateful night that would change her life forever.
Kadi could tell that she had reached her destination by the way her heart pounded in her chest and rose up
to her throat. The pulsating feeling was suffocating…she couldn’t breathe. She put the car in park and turned it
off. She was there in front of The Trinity House, where all paroled convicts came to live when they no longer
had a home to go to.