The Beginning

It was never completely quiet at the adăpost. Or dark. I lay in the half-light of my room, longing for total silence, for utter darkness. Even in the deepest hours of the night you could always hear someone screaming, or crying, long mournful wails that echoed up and down the long halls. We were too damaged to rest; listening for the step of the Drăghici, who we never called doctor.

I was seven years old when I first met the Drăghici, at the small stair house where I lived with my mother. The stair house was always dark, we could not afford the electric bill. Narrow space, dank and cold, a long staircase dividing it up the center. I lived beneath the stairs where my small sleeping mat was unrolled. I lay there shaking and whispering when the pale face of the Drăghici appeared.

"Bună ziua Dahlia," he murmured to me, reaching out to stroke my face. I bit him, hard - I could taste blood, but he only smiled. "You are going to come with us now." My mother would not look at me, she would not meet my eyes, I think even then, I knew she was afraid of me.

I fought them, the men that came for me, dragged me screaming from beneath the stairs. I clawed and bit, I screamed for my mother. "Mamă!" I cried again and again, "mamă!" But she wouldn't come to me, she wept in the corner, her face turned to the wall... coward, bitch. I clawed at her in passing, I strained against the hands that held me, panting for blood, roaring my fury, but she never looked at me.

I never saw her face again.