Staring down at her grave, I remembered my mother had been the finest storyteller. I could remember night after night spent curled up within her lap listening to the most grandiose tales. Stories of a world full of daemons. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean daemons as in angels cast down into Hell, that’s religious garbage. These daemons lived the same as humans, all able to choose their own paths be it good or evil, living day to day under the sun and moon. Some changed form, some hunted for blood, and some were even able to cast magickal spells. They were my favorite. I remember hoping every night for a new tale about the casters. My mother would tell me about them and I could just picture them in my head, just as alive as those that lived around me. I remember throughout grade school I would imagine I was one, picturing myself in the adventures my mother spun.

My teachers had learned to despise my imagination. They even asked to speak with my mother once, for fear that her stories were much too wild for a child of my age. My mother had smiled politely and asked them to leave the house. The teachers had been disgusted that she was willing to fill an innocent child’s mind with such garbage and nonsense. And the violence, they had whispered to her, thinking I couldn’t hear them, but I could. They claimed it was inappropriate for a mother to teach her daughter of such things. One had even been so bold to suggest they involve the social system. My mother had laughed, stated that she had done nothing wrong before reinforcing that it was perhaps time they left.

For some reason I had always remembered that day even though it had happened in grade two. But my memory had always been fantastic. My grades were only further evidence of that.

My mother and I decided after that day that our stories would stay between us. Our special little secret, she had said. I had loved it. It made me feel important.

My mother, however, died when I was in middle school. I had been sent to live within plenty of foster homes, having never met my father. I remember the lady who ran one house I had lived in. It had been the last one I stayed in. She had been an unforgiving cantankerous old bat of a woman who absolutely abhorred me. Part of me had always wondered where the hate came from. It wasn’t as though I had done anything personally to her to warrant such hate, and yet, it was there nonetheless. I remembered times when she had been at least somewhat caring to all the other children, but whenever I was in the room, she would scowl, scold, anything to put me down. There had been once when a comment slipped past her lips that I was the reason my mother had died and for that I should die a thousand deaths, but when I asked her to explain, she wouldn’t. She merely said a prayer right before me, performed the Holy Cross across her chest, and turned away, her cross clutched faithfully within her fist. Apparently, she had no time in her life for what she considered an evil child. Some say you can never have too much religion in your life, but I think she may have been the exception.

Still, throughout high school, I kept the stories my mother used to whisper to me at night close to my heart. It was all I had left of her; all I had to remember the happiest time of my life. I knew the characters and their lives like the back of my hand. I held onto them like the special little secret we had promised one another years before. They were simply tiny little adventures used to entertain my mundane life.

Of course, that was before I changed. Afterwards, I realized they hadn’t been stories at all.