Prologue
I’ve been taken.
Unfortunately, I won’t be a part of the percentages that get found.
I’m one of those doomed to dwell in darkness forever.
You won’t see my picture on an eleven o’clock press conference asking the public if they’ve seen me. You won’t be able to open a newspaper to my face or see me on a billboard with a number underneath my name saying, “If you know the whereabouts of this woman please call.”
They won’t have a story on the First 48, or Law and Order or even Sixty Minutes. Hell, you won’t ever know that I’m missing because to the world I don’t exist.
I’m in darkness.
Have you ever thought of the irony in the word ‘darkness’?
Bear with me for a moment, will you?
Close your eyes and tell me what you see. Darkness, right? It’s a part of us whether we like it or not. Our eyes are capable of functioning in the dark. It’s something that our bodies are meant to do. Think about the time of day where most of us get to rest our bodies; it’s at night. Some of us even sleep at night with something covering our eyes to shelter them from any form of light that may insult our eyes in the morning. Most people wait until dark to live and party, and people seem to do their worst in the midst of darkness. It soothes some, and it’s the time in which we rejuvenate our bodies and minds, but when people mention bad things, do you notice it always makes you feel dark, dismal and sometimes even scared?
Anytime you watch a horror film, don’t you notice how dark it is? When you’re a kid, people scare you in the dark because you’re most vulnerable. The boogieman comes out only in the dark. ”Come out of the darkness into the light”; even the Bible depicts dark as evil.
But sometimes living in the light is far worse than living in darkness.
Some have tried to bring goodness to the meaning of darkness with sayings like, “Once you go black, you never go back.” But black represents darkness too, does it not? Black cats equal bad luck, Black Tuesday represents the start of the Great Depression, black eye, blackmail, the black hole.
As far as someone’s financials for a business though, if a business is in the black, it’s a good thing, but when someone dies, you’re programmed to wear black to the funeral. Darkness can be cynical, don’t you think?
God, I’m so cold.
The Light of Darkness…
For most, darkness means depression and sadness, but for me, lying on this cold ground, it means peace. I long for the darkness to take over, but it won’t.
Damn fucking darkness. It knows I’m waiting. It knows what I want, but it won’t give it to me. It all but threatens to consume me.
Darkness is such a tease.
I’m lying on a very cold surface, and I can’t begin to tell you for how long. My face is on fire, throbbing slowly with each painful beat of my heart. My jaw is on fire. I think I have broken ribs, maybe even internal bleeding. It hurts when I move, so I don’t even try because I’m tired of screaming from the pain and blacking out.
Are you seeing where I’m going with this?
Before I was taken, the idea of bringing light and hope in my life charged me, and I thought for once that I was going to make it, but fate has a horrible sense of humor, does it not? I mean, one minute I was staring hope in the eyes, then the next I was pounded into unconsciousness.
I was scared at first; not knowing where I was, waking to darkness. My senses are shot to hell, so there’s no point in trying to use them. I have one eye open, but I can barely see out of it, and the other one is swollen shut for my troubles. I could be buried for all I know because there is absolutely no light coming into this space. My sense of touch is being overwhelmed with hopelessness; all I can taste is dread, and all I can hear is my very ragged, sometimes labored, breathing. I can’t even breathe through my nose, but I will say this; I think I can smell death close by.
I’m never getting out of here.
Darkness…
I was introduced to darkness early in my life, and I’ve held on to it ever since. I had no choice in the matter with the spawn of Lucifer as my father. That’s all I had, and that’s all I knew. Misery loves company they say, and that son of a bitch always made sure I was in his company and miserable. My father never raised his hand to physically abuse me, but he didn’t care about using whatever words or actions he could to hurt me. Of course, he wasn’t like that with my other siblings. I was the special one with the light–colored eyes and the lighter complexion. I was the one he hated and despised.
He sowed the seed of despair and despondency into my life to the point that I never thought I was worthy of anything more. I would try and rescue myself from his misery, but some way, somehow, he would find a way to suck all the happiness from me, draining me until there was next to nothing left.
Bleakness has become the only thing I hold on to, and now I’m just waiting, wondering how long it will take for my brain to catch up with my body and let go.
Before you call me a coward for giving up, please know that I’ve done everything I could to get out of here. I’ve fought back, I’ve yelled, screamed, cried, and prayed; nothing worked. . I’m going to die here alone, cold and with every regret I’ve ever had choking me to death.
I so desperately want to hold on to hope—to anything for that matter—and think positive, but finally I have given up the ghost. I want to have faith, but faith has abandoned me a long time ago. I want to dream, wish and believe that I’ll be found, but… hell, what’s the use really?
I give up, Fate! You’ve won! I don’t want to fight the inevitable anymore!
There were some bright moments in my life that I would like to tell you about. I graduated high school when I was sixteen. I got accepted into Princeton, being among the elite of young people that achieved that fete. I had a friend that suffered in darkness with me, so it made it a little easier sometimes. And I had a liberator that paved my way out of the darkness for me. The moment I escaped, I learned what it felt like to live in light. And even though darkness was always at my heel, I found a way not to let it swallow me whole.
But there was one person that showed me what it could be like if I could beat darkness. He brought promise and beauty into my life. He also brought something into my life that I never thought I would ever feel … Love.
The day I met him is still fresh in my mind. I didn’t have a clue I was slowly being pulled away from who I used to be and enveloped and protected from what was chasing me. Even though I took on a name and identity that was not my own, he showed me how to freely be myself, how to be Kenya Frost. But before I concede to darkness, let me show you what it was like for me in the light; the moment when I first let go of Kenya Frost and became Summer Dean.
Chapter 1
Kenya
“Noooooo!”
I sat up in my bed as his cologne suffocated me. I reached underneath my pillow for the knife I kept there ready for his attack. I regarded the room, my eyes trying to get accustomed to the darkness, searching for him, listening for him, for anybody. I ran my hand through my damp hair and tried to calm my breathing, but I was in full panic mode.
Shit.
I flung my legs over the side of my bed and stood, shakily. I had to make sure he wasn’t here. I knew logically he couldn’t be, but it was that small voice that made me believe he was. I couldn’t calm down in order to move. I was paralyzed. My heart was banging outside of my chest, my lungs screamed desperately to draw breath, and my stupid mind wouldn’t allow me to breathe.
Finally, I started moving and turning on all the lights in my apartment, leaving none of the rooms in darkness. At the same time, I kept praying, asking God for strength and for protection.
With every light on, I started to calm down.
See, Summer, no one is here.
I rechecked every window, and none were disturbed. But when my breathing returned to normal, I didn’t cut the lights. I walked to my living room and sat on the couch. I was wired, antsy, and now wide awake at three a.m.
So I turned on the television, put Pretty Woman in my DVD player and watched Julia Roberts get swept off her feet by her john.
What a realistic love story, right? I mean, does true love like that really exist?
The moment I saw the sky lighten, I threw on a pair of leggings, a tank, my sneakers, and headed for the track. Running is the only thing that calms me. I would actually have liked to go out running the moment I awoke from my dreams, but I was so paranoid and on edge, that I couldn’t imagine leaving my place while it was dark out. It’s crazy, however, how the moment the sky lightens, I don’t feel as paranoid.
There’s a stadium a few blocks north of my apartments with a pretty decent track. For the most part, the track was empty in the early morning, and I was able to run until I passed out, collapsed or threw up. I put a pair of buds in my ear, turned on my mp3 player and blasted my rock music. For the record, I had no idea what they’re singing about, I just liked the beats.
I sometimes used running to fight back the demons of my past. I felt like I was running from a lot: the hateful words my father constantly used, the times my mother kept her blinders on and never intervened, and from the unforgivable things my older sisters, Rasheda and Latisha, said and did, that made life a living hell. I used my pains and my struggles to churn my legs to get me moving faster in order to punish my body.