Chapter 47
Milo
MY STORY
I was born to a single mother. A mother who had a drug habit and often used prostitution as a way to make herself money to buy whatever substance she was addicted to at that particular time.
As a toddler, I’m told I spent a couple of stints in care, fostered by families whilst the courts ordered my mother to get clean if she wished to retain her rights to me.
Apparently, she always managed to follow the steps, get sober, and attend the meetings because I would always be placed back in her care within a few months.
I don’t remember much of those days, I can’t really recall anything about the families I stayed with.
What I do remember, however, is when she started drinking when I was about five or six.
She lost her job and things spiralled from there.
She started getting more aggressive, more neglectful.
It took the authorities a while to catch on but at age eight I was taken from her and placed in care on a more permanent basis.
This time she didn’t get clean. Despite the promises and even though she seemed to try, she never managed more than a few weeks without falling off the wagon.
She was still allowed access to me though, the courts trying to use me as an incentive for her to get better.
She tried snatching me from my first family, so I got placed in a new one.
She was so vile to them whenever she visited that they gave me up as well–not willing to deal with her.
This went on until I got placed with the McKinnons.
They were the best family. They already had a daughter but they never treated me like an outsider.
I was their son, and the daughter called me her brother.
They took no shit from my birth mother, and battled with the courts to reduce my visitations.
They could see the damage it was doing to me, how unregulated my emotions became before and after each visit.
It was with them that I discovered computers. For my twelfth birthday they bought me my very own laptop and I spent hours learning how to make web games and how to code various programs and websites. They talked about me becoming a computer engineer, or a programme developer.
But it didn’t last. They had family over in the Republic of Ireland and one day Sinead got a call to say her mother had been in an accident. They returned to Ireland, but because I was only being fostered, I couldn’t leave the country without my mother’s permission.
She wouldn’t give it.
For a while I thought they were going to stay for me.
But, no. They left too, with their empty apologies and fake promises to keep working on the legal tape from stopping me from leaving with them.
I’d had stability for the first time in my life and suddenly it was just gone.
I thought my family had loved me, but I must’ve been wrong because I was abandoned again.
It was around that time I stopped being able to talk. I’d argued and begged to go with my family but no one listened to what I wanted. After a while my body didn’t allow me to voice my thoughts, maybe because I’d been dismissed so much.
The homes that came after tried to engage with me but by that point I wasn’t interested.
I started getting into fights at school, I lashed out at the families the authorities placed me with.
I started diving deeper into coding and found a group of hackers online.
They listened, they taught me. I could speak to them as it was all typed messages over one chat server or another.
Nothing in my real life mattered, so I lived virtually.
And I was good. The hackers I made friends with started offering me jobs, and before long companies were reaching out to me directly.
By eighteen, I had nearly half a million in my bank account.
Organisations, some legit and some not, paid me to break into their servers, or the servers of their competition.
I wasn’t picky, and didn't care about any damage I left behind.
I was tossed out of the care system and, thankfully, had enough money to support myself.
Then I started going after millionaires. I found ways into their banking portfolios, found I could redirect their cash flows. I started redirecting money to myself and a few charities I thought looked decent enough–ones that helped kids like myself.
I guess I got careless because at twenty-one I got arrested.
The charges against me were long, irrefutable, and the prosecution was backed by one particular bastard I’d taken more than my usual percentages from.
He’d been trafficking women, not that the authorities knew that.
He’d shown them the laundered accounts of his shipping company.
My only defence was insanity, and with my silence and a few other assessments my lawyer insisted on, I had various diagnoses to lean on. Were they accurate? I have no clue. But that all led to Friarsley Institution for the Criminally Insane. I was sentenced to fifteen years.
The staff treated the inmates like their own personal experiments. Drug trials were run on us, various new treatments that needed testing. You name it, we were put through it. It was rare that we escaped physical punishment for more than a few days at a time.
I endured nearly three years of that cess pit.
It fractured my mind, broke me entirely.
I couldn’t tell reality from fiction on some days.
I kept seeing these beings, ethereal and glowing.
They spoke to me and were trying to get me to give them information.
They talked of other realms, and a stolen power, and wanted me to choose to help them get it back.
They caused my medications to be increased.
I guess I must’ve talked about them in the therapy sessions–whilst still non-verbal, they used to inject me with something that would cause my thoughts to spill free.
I had no control. I couldn't stop it no matter how much I tried.
Shortly after my twenty-fourth birthday, I managed to escape the main building one night and run to an outbuilding.
I couldn’t get off the grounds, I knew that from stories that circulated through the inmates.
I’d accepted that, but just wanted some time alone, time where I made the decisions about what I was doing, where I was going.
In the outbuilding, I discovered a lockup with some cans of petrol and lighter fluid. I decided to end it there and then.
The hospital was small, the only civilisation in a remote location. Staff slept on the second floor and the residents on the third and fourth. I saturated the whole downstairs with the fuel and watched it go up in flames. I’d disabled the fire alarms before I’d lit the match.
After that, I don’t remember much until I woke up in a hospital, handcuffed to a bed. I was the miracle sole survivor without a mark on me. I didn’t understand because I had been on the floor where the fire was. I should’ve burned. Should’ve died first.
They monitored me for a few days, as I did have mild smoke inhalation burns to my throat and lungs, but was discharged and sent to another prison. They’d added murder, thirty-six counts–to my crimes and I was sentenced to life, without a trial.
The prison I landed in after the hospital was thankfully more legit, but it was a mainstream one. It was alright, I suppose. I was just starting to settle in when I was transferred again, to Darkfield Prison, and assigned the number Nineteen.
One thing I managed to do was keep the voices hidden.
I hadn’t spoken a word the entire time at the hospital and didn’t talk at all at the prisons.
Without all the extra medications, my mind was once again my own, even if there were still some other voices.
I considered them a side effect until I found out about Hell and the real reason behind my transfer to Darkfield.
I put the pieces together and realised that the voices were real.
That somehow Angels from what must be the Heaven realm were in my head, wanting me to spy.
Initially, I passed a few things along willingly, like the names of guards, glimpses of the first task we did.
But the more I learnt, the more it soured my stomach to speak to the voices.
I stopped being compliant after a few days.
Especially after the most enigmatic woman I’d ever seen seemed to continue to show interest in me, started teaching me to sign and didn’t care that I couldn’t talk.
And Wyatt. I’d watched him since he arrived at Darkfield. He didn’t see me and that was fine. I was happy being invisible.
But he got me that notepad. It was the first present I’d received in years. It reminded me of my first laptop, how it was something that was solely mine.
The Angels were always demanding. Always wanting more, nothing I gave was ever good enough and they never thanked me for what I told them. They’d invade my head at random, expect me to drop everything to show them whatever they wanted.
I thought about telling Tacita, I really did.
But I scoured the library for any hint of mind magic, for some explanation of what I was experiencing.
It wasn’t like I had any proof, and having been disbelieved over so many things in my youth, I didn’t want her to laugh at me, or call me insane.
I don’t think she would’ve now but at the time I couldn't trust her.
My final mistake was trying to force the Angels out of my head myself.
I thought I could just block them. But they started to find ways around the mental shields I built.
They’d come when I was asleep. Access my mind when I wasn’t conscious to stop them.
For that I was embarrassed, I should’ve been strong enough.
I also didn’t want to lose the new family I’d found.
Because that’s what they both were, Wyatt and Tacita.
They were my new family. But it was fragile, and I didn’t want to be the cause of it breaking apart.
My secret would be my ticket to being alone once more.
I realise that was selfish but falling in love with them gave me something to fight for.
They’re the reason I stood harder against the Angels and didn’t cave when they tried to force my mind open.
I understand if I am to be punished now for my actions.
But it was worth it. They were worth it.
These last few months have been the best of my life, and I will go willingly to wherever is deemed suitable knowing that I have loved and been loved.
I realise the risk that I am and know that I would do anything to protect the man and woman that I love.
So please, keep them safe, and don’t punish them. They didn’t know.
I know the voices in my head have merely been muted because the Angels have been temporarily weakened. I still feel it, the connection.
I’m grateful for the time I’ve been granted, and I just want you, Tacita and Wyatt, to know that I love you with every ounce of my being, and that being loved by you made it all worthwhile.
I love you, and I will protect you.
Always.
Milo.