A Number (Part 1 of 2)

By Daniel K. Eichelberger

I am a number. I am one of many, a part of a selected few. Selected? Yes, but in reality, maybe we are not really few. If I am to believe experts in this matter, the number in this special group is more than most could believe.

Yet, among so many, I am just one. A number. One of the faceless amid the multitude that carry the dark secret, the unnamable burden, the smothering past. While it is certain that I am not alone, I am still just a number. Isolated. Disconnected. By my thoughts and emotions, separated from most.

To them I was just a number. Yes, I had a name and personality uniquely my own. They knew this. They called me by name. They gave me attention. They gave me their time. (Did I say gave me their time? I paid a high price for it). They taught me things. Things I should never have known at that age and under those circumstances. In teaching me, they robbed me of my identity and foisted on me a new one, for I could no longer be carefree and innocent. I could no longer view myself without abhorrence and shame. They distorted my self-knowledge and made me believe things about myself that were never true. To them, I might as well have been nameless.

I was only one of many. How many others like me did they use to satisfy their baser passions? Many before me. Who knows how many after me?

I can prove that I am just a number. I have the newspaper articles related to one of them. There were over two hundred like me. Over two hundred! Mine was the case that blew the whole thing wide open. Mine. The scope absolutely stunned the local authorities. Journal entries. Drawings. Photos. Spanning years. Years! I am positive that my photo was in there. Was there a journal entry in his diary about me, too? A drawing? One? Two? Eighty?

You see, I wasn’t special after all. Not to him, or to any of the others. I was one of many. A face. When it all boiled down to it, I was a body. That is all.