Maddie:holds many abuse memories, 4 yrs. old
Mikey:8 or 9 yrs. old, loves pirates, treasures, secrets
Phoenix: old man in his fifties or sixties, he’s the guard
Sky: wise one – ageless
Toby: Maddie’s friend, 5 yrs. old
And lots of others that are not specifically named in the book.
Chapter One
Lilly: 24 February 2017, Morning, Wright’s Homestead
I guess I have to fill you in about what happened. Miss Marple, our therapist, told me people hate it when things are left unexplained. Open gestalts—that’s what she’d called them—are confusing to most. People get irritated when not everything is tied up and explained to the smallest detail. They have an inherent need for closure. They don’t try to be difficult. It’s psychology.
Our story began with Horace Reid’s funeral. We were married to him for…it doesn’t matter. Too many years.
But please, go ahead and forget him. He was a jerk and child molester all his life and his passing was better than the coming down of the Berlin Wall.
Unlike the East Germans we, however, didn’t stage a big revolution. Most of us were too afraid. We were like the fish in the pond that didn’t notice the gradual pollution of the water until it was almost too late. We had too many child-parts and us older ones didn’t work together well enough to operate effectively.
Doctors diagnosed us with Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID as they call it. But don’t get all hung up about it. You could call it green eggs and ham; it wouldn’t make a difference. It’s just a term that holds no meaning for us. The Disorder part doesn’t describe us, but the scumbags who inflicted multiple waves of abuse on us from early childhood. All the term ‘disorder’ does is it shifts the blame to the victim of the abuse and lets the perpetrator go scot-free. For me, DID means we are a family of parts. There are many of us—fifty altogether—and we call ourselves the Tribe and when we come out in force, a lot is going on.
Becoming a person with different, distinct parts was our way of coping with abuse and bringing order into the chaos of our life. The Original person was Elizabeth. When bad things happened early on in her life, she’d called on the angels for help—and the angels listened. She could go away into the recesses of her mind and we came along, taking over and coping with whatever happened.
To begin with, we were two, but soon we had to call on more help. Things were just too hard for just one or two people to cope. It turned out we all love Elizabeth and go through fire for her … and many of us have, even if we weren’t aware of her in the past.
Call us crazy, maybe we are. Enough people have called us that over the years. To us, it’s the world that’s crazy with all the wars, mayhem, murder, and abuse wherever you look. Compared to that, we think we are pretty cool.
After Horace died, we needed a Five-Star-General to plan our getaway. That’s when Sky stepped up and organized us. To be honest, that was probably the first time we older ones worked together. And it worked. We escaped and found the start of freedom and a new life in our late aunt’s homestead on the South Island.
As it happened, total peace and freedom had to wait because our childhood abusers must have felt threatened about our newfound freedom and tried to get rid of us.
The good news was, though, we were no longer the confused woman they’d known, the one who didn’t have the slightest idea if she was coming or going. We became organized and started working together as a team. That was our turning point and the beginning of their demise.
Let that be a warning to all the filthy abusers. There will be a reckoning. Karma is a bitch. One day she’ll be back to bite you.
We helped to put the bad guys that hurt us behind bars. That was super cool but it also was a super scary time. The aftermath was ugly. It’s what I struggle with the most. It turns out, when people find out you have a psychiatric diagnosis, they can’t help but hold it against you. We immediately became the mental one and people gave us a wide berth. Often I regret that we had to stand up and tell our story to get Sebastian Feldman and his Gateway cronies behind bars. But it was necessary. They had to be stopped. Many children’s lives depended on it.
So now we live on Auntie Amanda’s homestead with Scottie. He’s our hero and we love him. He’s our lover, brother, father, mate, best friend, and protector. He’s become part of our family and every single one of us loves him differently. That makes for a lot of love. Miss Marple said once,
You guys are pure love.
You all came from love,
from helping a helpless child.
No matter what it cost you.
That was a neat thing to say.
Yep, she was a great lady and we all miss her a lot.
Chapter Two
Elise: 1 March 2017, Midday, Wright’s Homestead
“Next time you talk to the cow at the city council. I was this close to giving her a piece of my mind.” Lilly indicates about an inch with her index finger and thumb. She’s fuming but underneath all that bluster I know are frustration and hurt. She feels people treat us as if we’re attractions of a Victorian freak show like the bearded lady, the elephant man, or the woman with three breasts.
She sits back on the stairs, her elbows resting behind her on the landing, staring forlornly into the empty space.
“I’m glad you didn’t.” I put as much feeling into my voice as I can to let her know she’s not alone, that I have her back, even if I’m less feisty than she is. “The last thing we want is to draw even
