• I suppose you could say that my life has been rather eventful – indeed, ever since that autumn, my experiences have been far from usual. But, of course, before I tell you of the more exciting affairs, I must first begin with the beginning.
    The life I had before seems distant and dream-like, as if it were a fantasy conjured up by my imagination to escape the truth and reality. Back then, things were relatively ‘normal’ and mundane, although looking back in hindsight it seems like a heaven compared to the experiences I suffered on my unfortunate misadventures. I attended school, found a group I could relate to, fitted in and kept my head down. Essays and exams were the evil in that life; our knowledge the weapons to fight against them.
    After another simple day of school, I would return to my beautiful home in the countryside, out of the way and completely surrounded by meadows that were green most of the year round, farms that looked amazing but smelt foul, and rows of trees that stretched along fields of crops for acres. When the wind blew from the direction of the farms, the sour smell of manure and farm animals occupied the space where fresh, clean air once existed, but the peaceful sounds of birds and the serenity of the atmosphere more than made up for the smell. No matter how stressful my schoolwork, no matter how noisy my little brother decided to be, I could always take a long walk along the fields, and be in my own private, personal little world. In my younger days, I would always play make-believe and play amongst the trees, defending my beloved home and helpless family from the evils invented by my imagination.
    The weather was very typical – in glorious spring and sweltering summer, the sun shone and the birds sung all through the day, then in autumn and winter, the freezing winds brought hail and snow. The sloping lands around us provided plenty of hills to sled down through snow and roll down through long grass and flowers. It was as something from a child’s storybook. Yet, when the summer storms came, the relatively level ground, which stretched far around our area, caused the storms to be much more intense than the storm would have been in a more urban area, and trees were often struck down by fierce lightning.
    Just like the rest of my life, my family was somewhat average; I lived with both my mother and father, and had a younger brother by the name of James (though we always called him Jimmy – James was a far too sophisticated name for such a boy). Jimmy was a little terror, and he was the typical school bully of his primary school. He’d watch the regular, stereotypical high-school programmes, where bullies gave ‘nerds’ wedgies and dunked their heads down toilets, then he’d practise these new discoveries on his unfortunate peers. Mum was always the one to travel out to school after a furious headmaster once again dialled her number (I always imagined him having her number on speed-dial), as my father worked several miles away in the nearby city, fixing the cars of those who polluted the air just to get to their destination just down the road. He’d stay in the city during the week, so we only saw him at the weekends, where he’d return, covered in oil and smelling of car exhausts, take a swift shower, then clamber into bed and sleep the weekend away.
    As my father spent the majority of his time away from home, my mother was the one who abandoned any hope of work to raise James and I. But she held no resentment for our situation - I believe she mostly enjoyed the random excursions she used to take us on. Of course, she and my father had their arguments; I’d disappear into my room while they fought, and sometimes I’d be forced to leave the house while the two quarrelled. But their problems would always get resolved, one way or another. Afterwards, the house’s atmosphere would be thick with silence, but it was silence nonetheless.
    Now, on to the event itself. I remember the autumn of that particular year was abnormally humid. We’d had another late summer, wherein the months of June and July were just as cold and dull as March, and it took until August for the sun to appear. The sun was too much to bear indoors, so we all took a family trip down to the beach. My father had taken a week or so off work, to enjoy a portion of the summer with his wife and children. As Jimmy took his aggression out on the ocean, and as I settled down to read my newest book, my mother and father snuggled together on a beach towel, to finally enjoy a carefree day together. But once the day was over, and we were asleep, exhausted, in our beds, the life that I knew then was snatched from me forever.