I geuss it all began when my mom died. I was thirteen years old, going on fourteen when her body was found, torn to shreds, on the side of the free way. No one ever really found out what happened to my mother. Investigators searched the scene for hours, checking for any clues whatsoever, but eventually came up empty handed. The cuts in her body weren't, the authorities thought, knife wounds, and the case was eventually closed, the conclusion being a mauling by some sort of animal. Why and how her body had ended up in a ditch on the side of the road was never determined. When she had left the house a few days earlier, she had told us she was merely taking a stroll down a trail near our house, three miles from where the police found her corpse.

The days following my mother's death were the longest, saddest, most agonizingly painful days in my life. I will never forget the way the color drained from my dad's face when he got the call from the police that his wife had been killed. He just stood there, in the hallway, looking at me with dead eyes, his mouth slightly open. I knew in that moment something terrible had happened.

That look of misery and heartbreak never left my father's face. Even when he eventually met Her, and insisted he was the happiest he had ever been, the dead, drained look in his eyes remained.

I also suffered. My mom had always been my best friend. I always knew that I could tell her anything comfortably, and that she would always be there to support me. I never in my wildest dreams ever imagined that I would lose her. Little did I know though, at that time, that my mother's death was going to be the least of my problems. She was coming. She would turn my whole life upside down. She was the cause of all of this.

Little did I know.

(Artwork by Stephan Koidl)