Hello my name is Axeth Asriel and I’m an in-valid or “god child”. I don’t look it but never the less I am. When I was born in that hospital twenty-three years ago I weighed a feeble three pounds, now I weigh about one ninety-five. My parents thought that it would be ok to have a “natural” birth, “everything would be fine” they thought. They were terribly wrong. Now I pay for their choice every single day, you see in this day and age being born without having been altered is as good as being born without a head. My mom was white and my dad Italian, so I came out kind of in the middle as far as my complexion is concerned. I have short black hair, like my father. Blue-green eyes like my mother. My father had a “strong” chin, a classic super hero chin, cleft and all, but not me, nope, that was one of my fathers reasons for “not giving a crap whether or not I died in my sleep”. Even after I hit puberty I never had much body hair to speak of, yet another thing to deserve my fathers scorn. When I turned eighteen I walked out and never looked back.
The first thing that I had to do was get a job. Easy right?, wrong. Being that I was an in-valid I was pretty much stuck with all the jobs that no-one wanted. So from job to job I hopped; janitor, plumber, sidewalk cleaner, you name a job that you would never do and I did it. When I saved up enough money I got my first and only tattoo, a black snake that wraps around my entire left arm, symbolizing the “snake” that I have to carry within me every day. Next on my list of things to do was get a place of my own to stay, not the various benches that I had called home for the past year. So I saved up the little money that I had earned over a seven month period before I had enough money to pay the down payment on a dingy apartment on the outskirts of the city.
I’m exactly six feet tall, all the physical labor had left me with a rather athletic looking build. If you never did a blood test you would have no reason to think of me as an in-valid, but I was. The doctors had warned my parents of what would happen to me, they were horrified. So when I turned twelve and started hearing voices they weren’t nearly as surprised as I was. At first it was only a small whisper, a fleeting wisp of unexpected laughter, a phantom scream in the night, but things changed as I grew older, the voices stopped being whispers, they became shouts, defining screams, horrified sobs. As I suffered my parents refused to notice, when I would start to cry at the dinner table, because the voices wouldn’t stop, I was beat. They wouldn’t listen when I tried to explain to them what was wrong. The truly sad thing is that they knew exactly what was happening and still they would hurt me for something as small as muttering a plea of divine help at church.
One thing that I had no signs of until I turned twenty was chronic obsessive compulsive disorder, or OCD. By this time I had already been living in my apartment for about two and a half years, that is when I first started to notice that something was beginning to change in the way that I looked at things. It really kind of snuck up on me when I was in the shower one evening after work. I reached for the soap, picked it up, sat it down, then picked it up again and started to work the soap into a lather, I froze, something was defiantly wrong. When I was ready to turn off the water I reached for the cold water handle but my hand never quite made it, instead it veered to the right, straight to the hot water handle. I tried to reach for the cold water handle again, but all I got were the same results, and a severe case of the shakes. I managed to get out of the shower and go to bed that night without anymore incidents. When I awoke the next morning I sat up in bed and stood, then sat, I looked around and couldn’t figure out why I was still sitting. I tried again, and nothing happened, I walked out of my little bedroom and hurried to the bathroom. I reached down and lifted the toilet seat, then closed it, than lifted it again. I suddenly lost the urge to use the toilet. I turned and bolted out of the bathroom. I ran into the “living area” and sat on the floor, and stood, and sat.
Getting dressed was a completely different matter. I soon found that I couldn’t just randomly pick clothes anymore, no that would have been simple, I had to pick each and every thing out and it all had to match. I would then place every thing out in the order in which they would be put on. So I would stand there stark naked, starting with my left sock, then my right, fallowed by my left leg in my boxers, then my right, undershirt head hole, left arm, right arm, pants right leg, left leg, pant button, over shirt left arm, head, right arm, zip pants half way, put on left shoe, zip pants rest of the way, right shoe, put on necklace, tie left shoe, take necklace off, tie right shoe, put necklace back on. After all that I have to brush each tooth for thirty-three seconds, one at a time. Then I could go out and start my day.
When I was just a little kid I remember watching a surgeon on the television save a woman’s life. Ever since that day I have wanted to know what it is like to be responsible for the life of another person, to have the knowledge and training to do what he had done. When I told this to my mother she only laughed and told me that I would never make it. I was determined to prove her wrong. I studied diligently all through elementary and high school. When the time came to apply to a collage I knew that with a four point zero grade point average I would get into any collage of my choice, or at least I should have been able too. I received many relies and was offered many interviews, I was ecstatic, I just knew that I was going to be accepted into one of the college that I had selected. At the first interview I was totally prepared, calm, and the voices weren’t even bothering me. I entered the Deans office, sat down and waited for the questioning to begin, only it didn’t, instead I was asked to enter the small laboratory like room connected to the office. All my hopes slowly sank and died, I knew what my interview would consist of, not a in-depth series of thought provoking questions, no, my blood would be the real judge, not my mind or my charisma. I gave a sample of my blood. The little screen flashed red and the words, “In-Valid, non applicable, sever defects.” scrolled across the screen. I was escorted out of the building and thrown onto the side walk. Discarded like a useless piece of trash.
So now I live in this crappy apartment, slowly becoming a prisoner in my own body. The voices have started to speak to me directly, and now my life is totally consumed by my OCD. Last week I went to a “doctor” and tried to find something, anything, that could help me to lead a normal life. He took a sample of my urine and tested it. Again the screen flashed red and again the message scrolled across the screen, just like all those years ago. The doctor told me to get out of his office at once, “you In-Valid freak”, were his exact words. I slowly walked home, hands in my pockets, head hung low. When I got home I went through the now usual routines crawled into bed and went to sleep.
That night I dreamed of a world free from genetic discrimination, where people were not chosen for a job because of their genes but rather for their talent alone. In this dream I was free from the never ending voices in my head, free from the torturous rituals that have become a never-ending source of unbridled hatred. I was a surgeon, an airplane pilot, artist, author, Valid. In this dream I was able to experience the joy of saving an injured person from sure death. In the dream to end all dreams I was for the first time in my dark life happy, I was filled with joy. The best part of the entire dream was that I had two little children of my own, two little spirits that were made by me. But like all good things it had to end.
I awoke with a new and driven attitude. I would fight with everything I had to have at least one child of my own. I would find the right woman, a woman that can love me even with all my defects, my flaws. A woman that I could love for the rest of my life and beyond. I don’t care how long it takes, no matter the strain, the obstacle, or the opposition. When I make up my mind about something I plan to see it through to the very end. I did all that I could when I tried to get into the school, but unlike that I will not fail. I went through the many rituals that I had to in order to go out for the day, I didn’t have to work, it was a Saturday, they only let me work for a couple of hours now anyways. I stepped out the front door locked it, unlocked it, and locked it, stepped out onto the side walk, and plowed into a beautiful young woman with light red hair and hazel eyes. It was love at first sight.
The End
