Amos Wakefield - Foreseen and Forlorn

Amos Gideon Wakefield

  People always try to compare how they grew up to how you grow up, and I just don’t understand it. Mostly because those same people always say that everyone is unique. I mean just pick a side people, seriously. Because my teen years were definitely unique and difficult. No I’m not going to tell you because I want you to feel bad for me, but because I think you should know where I come from.

                   ~

  I grew up in an eighteenth-century Victorian home. My father came from old money, so did my mother. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t snobby rich people, just wealthy. I learned every nook and cranny of that house as I grew up, several hidden passages included, and a few favorite hiding places. I was scared of everything growing up so those hiding spots were used often. My childhood was always fun. My mother stayed home and was always baking or cooking something, and my father was an art appraiser. So I saw them both most of the time, when I wasn’t in school. And I never much liked school because kids always treated me like I was some freak. I didn’t think I was freaky, I had my mothers long,  bright red hair and my father’s bright green eyes. They looked almost fake. I was very pale , a gift from both of them, and I was always taller than most of the other kids. My mother always said that they were just jealous of me. And maybe she was right.

  As soon as I entered high school the teasing grew into full-fledged bullying. Yeah I was a bit out there, I had a curly red pompadour, big bone gauges that looked like french filigree, and I was always wearing dark clothes. I suppose that’s why I was constantly getting called “fag”, “sissy”, through the whole gamut of gay slurs they could fling at me. I mean it never really bothered me; why should I be bothered by the truth? My parents already knew without my saying so. So there wasn’t really a problem. Well, aside from whatever problem the people in my school had.

  It was around this time that I started to have strange dreams, dreams of events that hadn’t occurred yet. I just thought that they were oddly realistic dreams, but my mother told me it was something else I got from her. Future sight. I was a bit baffled by this. I mean, honestly, how many people on any given day get told that they can see the future? That news hit me strangely. It felt right, yet impossible. My mother had never lied to me before, so why would she now? I decided to trust her.

  She told me that my dreams would tell me what might happen, but that you could refine the vision using Tarot Cards. Now I was never very religious, so this new found realization didn’t bother me. But it made me realize how much I didn’t really know about my parents.

  So my mother gave me my first deck of Tarot Cards, a very old original italian deck, and showed me how to use them to refine my visions. At the same time she began to show me rituals that her family used. Pagan rituals and spells that were meant to heal and help, never to harm. She told me real magic wasn’t anything like the movies and that it took time. Nothing was instantaneous and nothing was free.

  But when my whole world turned on its head was in my Junior Year of high school. I got a vision of both of my parents being murdered. I used the cards, but I kept getting the same answer. They were both going to die. When I told them, my mother just smiled. I was so confused, how could she be smiling when her death was fast approaching? I asked her why she wasn’t scared, or worried. And her answer has stuck with me ever since.

“Son, there’s nothing that can be done. The future approaches whether you like it or not. You can either greet it with open arms, knowing what will come and willingly surrender, or attempt to fight it and bring yourself only misery. You may lose us physically, but we’ll always be here for you. Always,”

  The next week was when our home was robbed and they were murdered. Over what little my parents hadn’t stored away for me, which wasn’t much. I simply slept as it happened. But when I woke up, I knew. I just knew they were gone. So I called the police, crying, and reported it.

  After the coroner took them away and the police were through with talking to me, the quiet in the house unsettled me. I couldn’t take it, but I was ready for it.

  The next week I emancipated myself, as I didn’t have any extended family I was close to, and planned their funerals. I made sure they would be in the family mausoleum next to each other. They showed me what true love was and I would always carry that with me.

  Through the rest of my schooling I threw myself into art and literature. It provided a distraction and I was good at it.

  I graduated early, on my own, and as a present to myself got a few tattoos. I got an owl in a broken cage on my left shoulder, to symbolize me and my mothers gift. A large willow tree on my back for my father, and dark filigree over my whole right arm, even on my fingers. And until I was nineteen I just stayed home, painting and drinking to drown my sorrows. No one bothered me and I liked the solitude. But on my twentieth birthday I had had enough. I put all of my parents belongings into storage and moved into the big city. My dark, strange style was accepted, as was my artistic ability. People empathized with my story and I got some help. But I was still haunted by what had happened, and I kind of blamed myself.

  Right when I hit my lowest point, at twenty-three, was when I met Sonny and Trevvor, they saved me. I was losing money left and right and I couldn’t get a job. It seemed no one wanted to hire artists anymore, or I wasn’t good enough. I met Trevvor first when I was on my way to a bookstore for an interview when I realized I was out of cigarettes again and I was getting antsy, yeah smoking is bad but it keeps me calm. I saw him smoking, leaning against the a wall outside of the bookstore. I walked up to him nervously and asked if I could borrow a cigarette, he just flipped open the pack in my direction. I grabbed one and thanked him.

  As we smoked we started talking about our lives, I don’t know why. I guess we both hated the awkward silence. But I got to know him and he got to know me. But I had my interview, so I said goodbye to him. After the interview, which I think went well, I found him in the music section. I said hi again, and we started to talk more. He told me to call him Revv, and I said that you couldn’t really shorten my name. We shared a laugh and I invited him to coffee. He knew a place close by.

  So we walked to a nice looking coffee joint, and a friend of his named Sonny met us there. We became fast friends that day, sharing our histories and our hopes and dreams. Even some secrets were shared. I felt I had made friends, finally.

                           ~
  Well, that was a few months ago and we’ve all only become closer. Revv convinced me to get my lip pierced, Sonny told me to get my nose pierced. I did, and now they’re taking me to get another tattoo for my twenty-fourth birthday. Yes, my life isn’t perfect. But I think it’s all turned out for the better. And I’ve gotten some amazing friends out of it that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Sometimes, I think that this is what my mother was talking about. "We'll always be with you. Always,"