Silence can be so loud.

  It didn't last long... it never did. The pain stayed with him just long enough to remind Kindred  that he was not alone. The watchful eyes of the souls that had felt the sting of his whip were never far away. Unseen fingers reached out from an Abyss and ripped at his skin. His chest bled as the souls tried desperately to tear his heart from his body. His screams of pain went unheard by most. Perhaps they were more un-noticed than unseen. Either way, it mattered very little to him. The only thing that Did mean anything to him was freeing his soul from the ones he had hurt. Each cut, each shredding of his skin, brought him closer to that reality. But how much more did he owe? When would enough truly be Enough!?!?!?
 The walls, white as the purest first snowfall, surrounded him on all sides. The voices echoed in his brain like the sound of a huge church bell, ringing in the new day.  Kindred held his hands over his ears but the sounds came from inside, not outside. His hands did little more than warm his ears. They blocked nothing out. Not the bells, not the voices, not even the screams of the souls, waiting for their release to their final resting place. He had to escape from this place that held him hostage. He had to find the woman that could make this all go away. She had been the only one that had ever truly loved him. His Father dead before Kindred was nine and his mother... oh how she hated Kindred. She would have rather stayed with a man that beat her daily and smelled of whiskey and urine than to have seen him dead at the hands of her only son.
 Kindred was only eight years old when he slipped into his mother and fathers bedroom, that terrible night. His father was too busy tossing his mother across the room to notice him enter the bedroom. Too fixed on causing Kindred's mother to hurt in ways one could not imagine without going a little bit insane to see him walk up behind his father and take aim at him. His father only noticed Kindred in the room after the second shot rang out. He turned and looked at his son, both anger and pain burning in his eyes. His father, in his last moments of life, grabbed Kindred and threw him across the room. His mother, the woman he had just killed to save, threw herself onto his fathers dead body. She cried out as she held his lifeless form in her arms. Kindred, laying crumpled against the bedroom wall, heard his mothers words of hatred. They were burned into his young mind forever. Words that would set his feet on a path of destruction that would touched every soul that came into contact with Kindred.
  "You horrible boy!!!!!! You just killed the man I Love!! You shot your own father!!!!!!! I hope you rot in Hell!!!"
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  "I have to get out of here! I need to find Clarise. She will help me escape this insane world that reaches out to destroy me. She understood I wasn't a bad man. She knows I had to do what I did."
  The door to his room opened. The intern was new, unfamiliar with the patients locked behind the doors. Kindred seized the opportunity and over powered the young man. Tossing him by his foot and arm into the far wall, Kindred watched the young man fall to the floor. His mind spun, and for a moment, he saw himself laying where the young man was. He heard his own crying, listened to himself pleading with his mother. "I love you Mother! I did it for You! Please love me Mother... Please, please forgive me! I Love you!" And he saw his mother stand and walk over to him. He knew she understood. How could she not. He had just killed the man that had hurt her since long before Kindred was born. Kindred saw himself reaching his arms out to her, ready to be held and loved. And for the millionth time... Kindred felt the sting of her hand on his face. Oh how it hurt.
  "I hate you!!" were the last words Kindred would ever hear from his Mother.
He walked out the door and made his way outside. He had not seen the outdoors in a very long time. The intern had $18.00 dollars in his pocket. Kindred would pay him back as soon as he could. He hailed a taxi and went straight to Clarise's house.  Her car was parked in the driveway so he knew she was there. Kindred paid the driver and walked up to the door, ringing the bell as he watched the taxi pull away. Clarise opened the door and Kindred saw first fear in her eyes. The fear was quickly replaced by confusion.
  "Kindred, how... what, what are you doing here? I thought..."
 "I had to get away, Clarise. Please, I beg of you, don't turn me away."
Clarise touched his cheek with her tiny hand. She opened the door wider to let him inside. "I would never turn away from you, Kindred. I love you. Come in and tell me what happened. no one would tell me where you went to. I truly thought you were dead." She hugged him tight.