Honestly, my life wasn't all that great but being a chosen was way worse.
What do I mean by that you ask well it's simple really I am classified as a special one, so to the rest of you out there who think are like me, listen to me very carefully: run away as far away as you can or hide I don't care just do it.
What's wrong being a chosen? Being a chosen is very dangerous. It can lead to a life of secrecy if not death. In most cases, it gets you taken to where, no one really knows.
If you think you might be a chosen like me, and you are reading this please close this book and burn it till nothing remains, because once you know the truth it's game over for you. But if you are an ordinary kid well then I invite you to read along. Who knows maybe this story can make one hell of a class presentation about unstable kids who think they are superheroes, because believe me it's like that.
But if you think you might know about us or you know someone like us - curious about who or what they are - just make up a lie like they are being haunted by their imaginary friends or something. That's sure to keep them away from the truth. But if that doesn't work find a new way to keep them from discovering the truth, protect them cause once they get awakened they are erased and forgotten. So heed my warning.
My name is Phoenix Shaw formerly known as Daniel Irons.
I just turned thirteen. Just a month ago, I was just a normal summer school kid at Crystal Parks Reform School, a school for delinquents in Calton City, Crystal View.
Am I a delinquent?
Well, it depends on how you put it.
I could begin at the point in time everything in my worse than a nightmare unbelievable so called life to show you where it all started, but the real nightmare began last August, the day of my birthday, when our seventh - grade class took a field trip Strange City - twenty troublesome kids and two assistant teachers on a dead-ass school bus to Death Row Correctional Facility to learn more about the world's notorious criminally and insane prison.
I know right - who in their right state of mind would take a bunch of seven-graders to one of the most dangerous prisons ever built. That's Crystal Parks for you always taking us to the most disturbing places.
But at least Ms. Martinez, our History teacher was leading this trip, so I guess it wasn't that bad.
Ms. Martinez was in her late 40s with a hard steel walking stick. She had ponytail hair and a Babyface and a leather black military vet jacket, which she always told us where she got it from. You wouldn't think of her to be cool because of her blindness, but she told us history stories and collected historic items and let us act scenes from historical moments in class. She also had this collection of Secretive Government gadges and weapons, so she was the only teacher who made school bearable.
So I prayed for this trip to be a little bit fun. At least, I tried that for once I wouldn't get sleepy.
But man, was I wrong.
You see, bad things tend to happen to me when I get sleepy. Like in sixth-grade, when we went to the Gravefield Museum. I had this incident with a mummy's tomb. I wasn't planning on sleeping, but of course I woke up inside the mummy's tomb. Before that, fourth-grade, when we took a trip in the mines tour, I kinda sorta triggered the dynamites and our class experience mine fireworks at first hand. And before that... You get the gist.
On this trip I was so sure I wouldn't get sleepy and cause any kind of trouble.
All the way from the school, I put up with Donald Clearfield, the skinny crooked teeth, brown haired boy, hitting me with nuts, at the back of my head.
Donald must have been the only student in our class at the age of sixteen and still in seventh-grade. He must have failed several times, because he was the only seventh-grader with acne and the start of wispy mustache on his face. On top of all that his brother Booker was the PE class teacher, so Donald had it easy and the rest of us were tortured and tormented by him. But when it came to class representations. You should have seen him struggling to pronounce the word Responsibility, for someone without lisp those days you'd swear he had them his entire life.
Anyway, Donald Clearfield was busy playing with the cell gate where he'd take a helpless kid and throw him in the cell then close the cell, and he was looking at me as if he was planning on trapping me in one of these cells, and he knew there was nothing I can do to him because I was already the most troubled kid at school anyway, one more strike and I'll be sent to juvenile. Booker had already promised me that if I dare touch or even look at his brother I was going to go to end up here in this same prison we are are touring.
"How I wish I could throw him somewhere no one can find him" I mumbled.
"Easy there champ" Ms. Martinez calmed me down.
He shoved another kid in another cell.
"That's it" I started to walk towards him, but Ms. Martinez blocked me with her stick.
"Calm down Irons his time will come and he'll end up there or even somewhere far away"
Looking back, I realized that the only person who never saw me as the troubled kid everyone painted me to be. Was Ms. Martinez she always saw me as this special kid.
Ms. Martinez continued to lead the tour.
She walked in front or us barely using her stick, guiding us through the big prison cafeteria, pass the court and where the prisoners were hanged for treason.
I still didn't understand why would anyone love history this much like Ms. Martinez, I mean this is the past nothing but wars, exploitation and corrupt government officials and worst of all innocent people paid with their lives.
She gathered us around a two-metre-tall tiny concrete prison cell with no windows and barely enough room to breathe, and started telling us how it was created and why it was concrete, and a guard still in his youth came. And he told us about the hard concrete scratch marks on the walls, I was trying to keep awake the whole time, but everyone else around me didn't make it so easy, and I fell and landed on top of Donald's friends, the other chaperone came to check up on me, Booker, was already giving me the stink eye.
Greta Hoosel, was the other chaperone and Booker's girlfriend who was actually kinda sweet, so why would she go for a guy like Booker. She looked a little bit older than Booker enough to be his sister. She looked sweet and innocent, she came to Crystal Parks as a recommendation, when our last school teacher assistant said he saw somethings crawling out of the dark.
From the very first day, Booker declared her his girlfriend and since she was kinda sweet to me that's when Booker also declared war to me and figured I must pay everyday of my life. Whenever he came to me and say, "Listen up, freak, and listen to me carefully" I knew I was going to end up running laps after-school until he gets satisfaction.
One time he made me separate sticky gym socks and sniff them, and tell him which one smelled better, I told Ms. Martinez how much I hated Booker and his brother Donald. She looked at me and said, " They do not know nor understand what they are doing, so forgive them".
Ms. Martinez kept talking about imprisoning something called the anchor, whatever that was.
"Boo!" Donald snickered, and I turned and said, "You should lead by example after all this is your home you've been in seventh-grade since it was built".
I really thought I said that inside my head with my inner voice.
The whole group laughed. Ms. Martinez stopped her story.
"Did you say something, "Mr. Irons?"
I was embarrassed. I said, "No, ma'am."
Ms. Martinez pointed at me. ", Maybe you'll be able to tell us when was this built and what was it's purpose?"
I touched the walls of concrete, and felt them, and felt a little bit relieved because I could now tell the whole story about this cell the real story.
"It was built in 1965, two years after the prison was built, it was believed that the prisoners would hear voices of their victims screaming and wailing".