Chapter 1: What Hell is Like

I was born on the hottest month on the hottest day of the summer in a place that could only be described as hell.

From the very moment, I took my first breath my struggles began.

The air burned like fire scorching my lungs and roasting my sinuses.

Every breath I took caused me excruciating pain and somehow the sunlight was even more torturous than the air.

The mud house I was in had no ceiling so the sun hit my newborn body directly causing tremendous amounts of pain.

It felt like getting stabbed by millions of shearing hot needles over and over again across every square inch of my soft baby skin.

It hit me all at once overwhelming me in that instant I was convinced I had been set on fire.

At the time I thought there could be no other explanation for the burning anguish I was experiencing.

I wailed at the top of my lungs for someone to come and help me but no one answered my cries except for her.

It was my mother I can still remember her so clearly.

Her skin was tan and rough like leather but her voice was soft like a silken breeze.

My mother would hold me so gently in her tough callused hands and rock me back and forth in her thin arms till I adjusted to the pain.

I recall how feeble she was no taller than five feet weighing no more than a couple of pounds with her bald head and the cuts all over her body.

I also remember the first words she spoke to me, they haunt me to this day.

"I'm sorry I am so sorry!"

She had to choke out those few words in between gasping sobs.

If only back then I knew the context behind her words maybe then I would have known to just give up and die.

The entire day my mother and I cried while she feed me and wrapped me up tight in a wet rag to protect me from the sun.

Then the night came and I foolishly thought that when the sun went down things would get better but I was wrong so very, very wrong.

My mother got frantic when night came and the moon arrived.

The panic was noticeable on her face, particularly because of her gaunt facial features.

I watched as she switched the thin water-soaked rags for thick dry ones that she made sure were wrapped tightly around me.

Oh, how beautiful the moonlight was, it swept over the land illuminating everything like it was the middle of the day,

the moon was so full it covered the entire night sky and the stars were so clear that night it was awe-inspiring.

That fleeting moment of wonder was short-lived.

It got cold immediately and I mean immediately. It went from being scorching to freezing in a matter of seconds.

The temperature was so low that frost began to form on every surface from the ground to the cloth I was wrapped in.

Even the air froze turning what little moisture that was in the air into razor-sharp pieces of ice that both burned and shredded my insides.

The saddest part about the night was I couldn't even cry, my lips would be frozen together until morning.

My mother would try her hardest to keep me warm threw out the night and cool during the day rarely resting all the while.

She did this all by herself no father ever showed up she was all alone.

Thankfully someone would provide her rations of some kind that was just enough to keep her alive and therefore, me feed.

Mother would dutifully perform her role as a caretaker until I spoke my first words and learned how to walk.

It was only when I took my first steps that my mother finally decided to name me.

"You have survived so you deserve a name. Listen closely your name is now Porphyrios."

On that very same day, my mother said she had to leave to go back to work.

I never saw her again.