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Chapter X. Life of Silence

It has been 2 weeks now. I don’t speak anymore these days. I don’t go to school anymore. Arthur and Liz, my adoptive parents were very much worried about me, trying their best to talk to me, to find out what was the matter. But I just ignored them. I pretty much ignore the whole damn world. Every time I tried to speak, no words come out, just grunts and moans. I have grown hair all over my body, soft, brownish hair on my arms, legs, breasts and back. My facer is now partially hidden by these hair. I resorted to shaving, waxing at least my face but the hair grew overnight. I look like a monster. I wonder when I will wake up from this horrible, horrible nightmare.

Alone in the house, I spend my time looking for clues. Clues as to what is happening to me, about Abbadon, and where I came from. Who am I? Or better yet, what am I?

I found a journal, yellowed with age, and the handwriting was that of someone very old. It contained entries by someone, presumably a man, during the years 1644 – 1646. The entries were horrible, about how the man hunted women and tried them for witchcraft. He had them immersed their hands in boiling water and those who got scalded were beheaded. He tortured, raped and beat these women under trial again and again and again. Some of the women were really practicing witchcraft but some were innocents. The man took a liking to one particular “witch” Anya, whom he kept in his cottage tied and gagged. He took her and had intercourse with her night after night after night until she became pregnant at the ripe age of sixteen. When the time came that she was about to give birth, the man who kept her could not call for the medicine man for the whole town will find out about his immoral acts with this witch. So he took a sharp knife and cut her belly open to get his child. And while the woman lay there dying inside his cottage, looking at the baby girl in the man’s arms, she pointed a finger at him and uttered with her last dying breath: “You will lust after your daughter. And your daughter’s daughter! And her daughter’s daughter. There will be no end for your insatiable lust for the women in your lineage. You will not die! You will feel no pleasure with any other woman but your own flesh and blood. And with each pleasure you feel, there will be pain in knowing you are destroying your daughter’s body and life! shomea k'oneh! ("One who hears is the equivalent of one who recites").