Warming Michael's Heart.

Chapter Two: Survival l

Chapter Two- Survival l

Six Years Earlier

Growing up I had many doctors.

 Like a lot of doctors. A new one every month—and they all liked to ask me the same boring questions about “Why are you fighting so much in school?” and “how do you feel about it?” When I replied with a sincere “nothing” they would give me a weird look and pull my mom aside.

This went on for years until I was eight. Then I met Dan Waltz, a notorious psychiatrist who specialized in children with Callous Unemotional traits- or in other words, little psychos like myself.

Dan Waltz was a German psychiatrist who was tall with thin gray hair and seemed very charismatic.

My parents thought he was the nicest man in the world, but I always got the vibe that Dan Waltz just wanted to experiment on us. He was fascinated with our sick urges, and our disturbing dreams.

Normally I hated doctors, but there was something about Dan Waltz that made him the exception to this rule. Maybe it was his weird fascination with us that made me like him. I felt like I could relate to him. 

In his file of papers I was Patient 43

And that same summer, Dan Waltz had come up with the “brilliant idea” of setting up CU camp. A summer camp program for kids like me with behavior problems—he said group sessions and daily supervision would help us in our “therapy” and encourage emotional growth.

 Ha!  This makes me laugh now.

Before I get into the details of summer camp I just have to point out that Dan Waltz was incredibly stupid and naïve to think that putting a whole bunch of psycho kids together in a camp was ever a good idea. It was a price he would pay very heavily someday, but I’ll tell you more about that later on.

The kids of Summer Camp 2001 were hyper, angry and just plain annoying. Most of them wouldn’t shut the hell up the majority of the time, and fights broke out nearly every hour. “A lot of them have ADHD” Dan Waltz leaned into my parent’s ears as he gave us the tour.

“The children are separated by age, we have a lot of staff members here that will make sure the children are safe at all times.”

It was important that Dan Waltz said this; it was exactly what my parents (and all the other parents) needed to hear to feel okay about what they were doing. But this was just a sugar coated lie. 

When it’s dark out and you’re sleeping in a room full of little serial killers, no staff member and no supervision meant you were safe.  On the contrary, the more they watched us, the smarter we got and the more harm we did.

In a psychopathic camp, it’s all about Survival of the Fittest: and there are only two ways to make it out of there unharmed.

One: You had to be the worst of the worst.

I was only ten, and I had much to learn. I was up against kids that drowned family pets and smothered baby brothers with pillows while they slept. Some of these kids had done some serious wrong.

On my first day there I was welcomed by a whole lot of “look at this little faggot” muttered out voices. As shocked as I was, there was something terribly funny about it all—that all these kids were trying prove themselves to be the toughest, baddest kid in the group.

The game of Whose King had just begun.

But before I continue, I’d like to point out that not all of the kids there were crazy. Dan Waltz was right when he told my parents that some of them just had ADHD and couldn’t sit the fuck down for a second.

 It was easy to spot out the ADHD kids because they were the ones who either cried the most, or fought the most. The psychopaths like me never cried—we didn’t have emotions to cry about.

In other words, there were no feelings to be hurt. So good try, little Jimmy (who loved calling me a little girl)

The ADHD kids were also the ones who got into the most trouble. They were in constant detention and you always see them having to write down 100 words on why “yelling is bad.” This taught me that if I were going to be King, I had to go about things differently.

It was Week 2, and the Three Kings were already established.

 David, who was by far the biggest and heaviest 10 year old I had ever seen in my life, was among these Kings. He had tackled Matthew into the ground so badly that they had to send Matthew home with an arm brace. After that, everyone was doing all these favors for David and trying to suck up to him.

There was Jimmy (who still called me a little girl). He was loud, and as far as bad words went, he was fluent in all of them. If rumors were true, Jimmy lived with 6 older brothers back home who used to beat the shit out of him when he was younger. One day Jimmy woke up and decided to set two of them on fire while they slept. They survived, but none of them ever fucked with Jimmy anymore.

And neither did we.

And last, there was Eric.

Eric was nothing but a mean kid who wasn’t afraid of anybody. He was the type of kid to get fucked up in a fight and keep fighting. He didn’t care how hurt he was, or how much he was bleeding—he was like a Pit-bull, once he bit you…there was no pulling him away unless it meant ripping a shred of your flesh off. Because of this, everyone was careful to not sit too close to him.

I didn’t know it back then, but this Three King system would become a tradition.

There was only one problem with the Three King list that year: I wasn’t in it.

And if you weren’t a king, it meant you were a peasant. And peasants got beat up a lot. Prepare for hell, because if you weren’t a king—chances are that you wouldn’t make it home without a broken bone, or a hell lot of bruises. And that’s if you made it home at all.

One morning after group session, Jimmy decided that it was “fuck with Michael day”. I was sitting by the lake when I watched him and his gang of followers walking in my direction. Any other ten year old would have swelled up with fear at the sight of his red freckled face.

Me? I instantly looked around for the nearest sharpest object.

But the staff members did well to lock up any knives and forks. They even managed to pick up any dangerous looking rocks from the ground, and I sighed to see that I would probably have to take a beating today.

“How’s the little faggot doing?” Jimmy’s voice uttered out in a screeching tone. It sounded like cats playing with chalkboard in my ears.

“Leave me alone, Jimmy.”

“Leave me alone, Jimmy.” He mocked me, and I saw his followers laughing.

Before I knew it, two of them had held me by the elbows and Jimmy was throwing punches into my stomach. After a few throws, I found myself being flung into the air and submerging head-first into the lake—the water hit me like a ton of cold brinks to my chest.  When I swam to the top (and gasped for air), I saw Jimmy and his followers laughing while they walked away in satisfaction.

So much for the “wait thirty minutes after a meal before swimming” rule.

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