Harold Johnson takes one last look at his wretched life. He has a crazy wife, and a young daughter that is always weeping, expecting for him to do something. He has nothing to live for. Harold hugs his jacket to his body tightly as he briskly walks down to Central Park. Not that it really mattered. It would all be over in a short length of time. He knew that there was no turning back now. All he had to do was pull the trigger.
His final destination meet him much too quickly. All his thoughts are blurred together and he couldn’t even try to un-sort them. His beady eyes follow every living thing in the park, wondering what they were thinking and where they were going to. Everyone had a destiny. For him, it just wasn’t here. He longs for their certainty and purpose. Because of it, Harold almost shutdown the process. Instead he retrieves the gun from his pocket. Time freezes in its tracks. He stares at the barrel of the gun, pushing himself to do it. The determination boiling up inside him is the only thing that pulled the trigger. He didn’t do it. He couldn’t have. But sure enough, he did. The last thing he saw was his own daughter’s huge owl-like green eyes rimming with tears. The smell of his near death wavered through Central Park, through the mountains and to the sky. Nightmares of the day still mock her. Some claim they can still hear the gun erupting, the splatter of blood, or Harold Johnson’s moans. They’re lying. That day Harold Johnson left to someone much, much worse than that.
Zendra Johnson’s eyes fly open as she squirms out of her tangled, sweaty sheets. She is met only by more darkness. Zendra sits on the edge of her bed as she tries to recover her breath. The same nightmare has been apart of her routine. She thought she should already be over her father’s death, but something about it still clings to her. She heaves herself onto her feet as she feels her way down the hall and into the kitchen. She is the only one that occupies the house since her mother is traveling often. The only people she had contact with were her mother, housekeeper, and tutor. When her father died, she was only in first grade. Everyone at school blamed her for his death, on account of Saskia Miles, her personal enemy, and the endless teasing was too much for her. She asked her mother to take her away from school. She agreed on one condition; she would be locked away in a house with no light or mirrors. Zendra agreed thoughtlessly, thinking anything would be better than her school. She was immediately shipped away to somewhere where her mother still refuses to tell her, and started her school with her tutor, Evon. Over the years she became familiar with the floor plan and easily maneuvers through the twists and turns. She doesn’t know anything about herself except for a small list of things she keeps tucked under her pillow.
My name is Zendra Johnson. I am seventeen years old. My father was killed when I was six. I have many nightmares. My only friends are Opal, the housekeeper, and Evon, the tutor. The only other person I know is my mother. I live in a house with only pitch black darkness and no mirrors and no chance of escape. My mother travels often so I normally am alone. Sometimes I hear someone breathing outside my barred window. I long for the smell of grass and someday I would like to feel the sunlight on my hair. I spend my time writing blindly or staring out into the darkness. I don’t like my father. He left my mother raising a young child alone, without thinking of her or me. Only of himself. I don’t like my mother. She did this to me when I was too young to understand anything. I like feeling textures of different things. I don’t know if I am blind or if it really is that dark. Sometimes I dream of some mysterious man rescuing me. I hope it will happen.
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