From the Mind of Dr. Lilith Black-Shadow

Growing up, I wanted to believe the world to be full of wonder, beauty, and magic … even in a city as crime infused as London. The gaslit streets hid their own dark truths – pickpocketing, house-breaking, violent affray and calculated murder. Vices from child prostitution to opium dens ran unabated on the Victorian streets of 19th century London. Still, every morning I held on to that crazy little thing called hope. Convincing, maybe deluding, myself that if I did right by the world, the world would do right by me. Wishful thinking from a mind trying to bury the horrors of a childhood gone wrong. It all started the day my mother died. The day of my birth. And if that was the extent of my childhood trauma, color me lucky. But that was just the beginning. From the time of my earliest memories, my senses began to develop in ways I couldn’t understand. I could hear sounds, voices, frequencies from places far from the reach of my vision. See details in objects, colors, people that were beyond the visual spectrum. Feel the tiniest fluctuations in the universe – vibrations, waves, particles smashing into each other. And a physical strength well beyond the years of a child … and these aberrations stirred up an anger in my father of volcanic proportions. Grabbing, shaking, and squeezing with vice grip intentions became the norm. Black, blue, and purple shades constantly patched over my milky white canvas. Screaming at me – maniacally, at times – to never use my abilities. Well, I couldn’t always control them. I was a child … but what did that matter? Instead of trying to help me control them, understand them, or even explain why I had them in the first place, his rage pushed him into a constant state of drunken darkness – blaming me every day for the death of my mother. The yelling got louder, the violence longer, more destructive until one day, he was so out of control he broke both my arms … and cracked my spine. That’s when I learned I heal exponentially faster than naturally possible. Maybe that’s why the abuse got as bad as it did. No matter how bad he hurt me; I would heal. Broken bones, broken spirit, broken heart. What he didn’t stop to think about was the scars on the inside didn’t heal quite so fast. Not that he would’ve cared, even if he had stopped to think about it. This went on for years. And it’s not like there was anyone to help – social services didn’t exist, yet and being a girl in Victorian London meant being invisible in the best of circumstances. I tried to hide my abilities, but they only got stronger … and the worse things got – the scarier things got. I started to sense the darkness, not just in my father, but in everybody around me. A black void of terror coated my every emotion. A constant living nightmare when awake; a sinister, demonic purgatory when I closed my eyes. I tried to block it out, protect myself, but the pure evil that crept its way in was suffocating. I lived in a constant state of fear, crying – hell, sometimes laughing – myself hysterically to sleep more nights than not. Then one day, everything changed. I don’t remember what I did, but whatever it was, sent him into a rampage, a ravaging storm of fury … I remember thinking this is it, this is the end, the moment he finally kills me – part of me hoping he would. Then it would be over … I could be with my mom. The torturous screams pierced my mind, forcing it to run as fast and hard as it could until, until . . .

- from the mind of Dr. Lilith Black-Shadow