What is real to me is the screams of rage and tears of depression followed by the sting of a slap across the cheek of my heart. The  way my brain goes blank and then on a glance this tragic memory plays on a constant loop before my mind whispers. “This isn’t real”, I keep telling. I am loved and needed but in that small dark and twisted corner of my mind I’m alone in a bubble with my head between my knees crying out to the people surrounding me.
Life for an orphan was never meant to be easy. I’m struggling along even when I feel as though my wings are mangled up and tangled up in a web. Held under cruel judgment and hatred. I’m surviving even as people chip away at my heart until it’s shredded and being held together by the hope that soon someone will love me. So I hold onto that hope as much as any child would hold onto the fingers of their parents as they first learning to walk.
The matron of the orphanage has us all tangled up in vines that she manipulates better than any puppeteer to ever walk upon our small Isle. The most callous thing about Ms. Corwell was her ‘unusual punishments’ as she calls them. If you had told anyone what she was doing they would know it was illegal. Ms. Corwell was delusional, she thought us all unholy and unclean. Conversion therapy had been outlawed, but that didn’t stop Ms. Corwell and others from practicing and the saddest part was that we were always her test subjects. It was usually the one she hated a particular day out of all of us at the orphanage got the bulk of the onslaught.
The older kids and I looked out for the little ones. We protect them from Ms. Corwell as much as we can without constantly watching them. Sometimes it’s not enough. Ms. Corwell locks them up in a tiny, empty, and dark room for days on end when she refuses to deal with one of the kids. The only way to count the days is the beatings she delivers. One in the morning and one in the evening. The ‘cell’ as we call has blood stained across the once white brick walls. While someone is in the ‘cell’ we try to wear out the matron before she comes in for the evening beating. That’s about all we can do, because we all have been at the mercy of Ms. Corwell and it’s not something you would wish on anyone.
Black bars guard all the windows in the orphanage. Looking out at the falling sun as I make a desperate promise to myself. I would stop this, eventually. I shudder racked my body as I wrapped my sickly skinny arms around me. Two hand wrapped around my waist causing me to  leaned into the cold body behind me. The rags I wore bubbled and sagged against my small and lithesome body. A slight smile turned into a grimace when the hand rubbed against a nasty bruise on my ribs. Bending down I struggled picking up a little malnourished girl pulling at my waist while the person behind me ran their ghostly hands through my hair.
“This isn’t real,” I whispered into the air. And suddenly the hands left my body as if it were just a breeze.
“Mama,” the little girl in my arms called out.
“No sweetie not mama,” I whispered sleepily carrying the six month old to the broken-down sad excuse of a crib. The only thing the orphanage could afford. Laying her down I knew I had to make things change. This little girl doesn’t deserve the promise of daily beating and starvation promised to her under the care of Ms. Corwell.
Change was coming as the fog rolled into the creaky playground and krept up the old concrete steps of the orphanage. Once inside the orphanage that night, no one saw the fog slipping under the door to Ms. Corwell’s room and tumbling down her throat efficiently suffocating her in her sleep. The following day as all the orphans arose they rejoiced in the eradication of their demise. Ms. Corwell’s abuse to us all would come to light and we will finally be free to care for each other and not live in perturbation anymore.