Iesha Hollis - SuspireWiki

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Once Upon A Time

This is not your typical Cinderella story. I am not Sleeping Beauty or Princess Jasmin or any of other Disney fairy tale women. My Prince Charming didn't save me from anything but mediocrity. He didn't sweep me off my feet with a kiss or steal my heart with a dance. He killed me. He killed me then brought me back and introduced me to the monster that I am now.

And I am a monster, there's no mistaking that. Not now, not after what I've done.

This is starting at the middle though, so we'll go back to the beginning.

My mom was 16 when she gave birth to me. We lived in the projects almost all my life. She raised me good enough, as best she could at least. There was usually food on the table, and most of the time we had electricity and hot water. I think my dad's locked up but she wouldn't tell me and my grandparents have never wanted anything to do with me.

Momma kept me on the straight and narrow though, putting me in Girl Scouts and other activities which was most her way of getting free after school care for me because she didn't always get home on time. I learned a lot there though, like how to function outside of the ghetto which was more important than I realized at the time.

High school was high school. I watched a lot of friends make the same mistakes every other asshole in the neighborhood made. Babies having babies, getting into drugs, gangs, locked up, dead. I wasn't having it so I kept my head up and got out. I went to college, got myself a nice little apartment in Oceanside and finally moved out of the projects. Things were good.

And then my momma died.

She had cancer and we didn't know until it was too late. She was already too far gone by the time she got to a doctor and there wasn't anything that could be done but drug her up and try to make her comfortable while she withered away. I opened up the Hollis House shortly after she died. The hope was to help kids learn the lessons that my momma taught me. That you don't have to stay stuck where you are, that if you work hard and stay out of trouble then you can pull yourself up.

It was hard work and I wish I could say it was more rewarding than it was. Really it was a bitch. Always having no money, having to beg people just to pay the bills for the place. Some kids made it through OK, but most didn't. It's really easy to say that if you work hard and do well in school that it'll pay off and you can move on to bigger and better things. But the truth is that if you don't work to get noticed and you don't work to make yourself worth noticing then you're never moving anywhere but the middle.

I got noticed. But not in a way I'd ever expected to get noticed.

Mr. Harman Scofield, he introduced himself as. He was with some political organization or another and wanted to talk to me about the Hollis House. So we talked. It was weird because he didn't ask much about the place itself but instead he asked much more about me. I was planning on following up on him, trying to find out how legit he was but never got the chance. Which turned out alright because a few weeks later I see him again. I'm at a nonprofit shindig which the politicians throw sometimes to make themselves feel good about themselves.

Mr. Scofield was talking to one of the aides to the Governor. One of the ones who would never give me the time of day. We're not funded by one of the big charities or a church so we don't matter in the long run. But when Mr. Scofield introduced us the aide was all flattery and platitude. The rest of the night was like that. People who wouldn't normally look at me were filled with promised generosity. After the party was over Mr. Scofield asked me out for drinks. We talked about the house, we talked about how things work. He told me that half of the people I met tonight were bought and paid for. That I was working on the wrong side of a corrupt system and that if I wanted to effect any real change I needed to see beyond the veil.

I went with him to a friend's house. There was some one he wanted me to meet. But she wasn't there and she wasn't coming by. She was dead and it became clear very soon that he had no intention of letting me leave alive. I had a choice between dying or letting him kill me and show me what's on the other side.

So here I am, on the other side.