Enjoy this FREE SNEAK PEEK EXCERPT from My LIfe in Pieces by CJ Schaeffer!
PROLOGUE
Are monsters real?
Definitely. Absolutely. Positively. Yes! A monster has many names: gremlin, goblin, ogre, phantom, specter, wraith, and bogeyman. I know one personally—my father. Perhaps that sounds a little dramatic, but I will introduce you to him and you can decide for yourself.
My name is Alice. Alice Iris Fisher. Everything I tell you about my journey is the way I remember it. Some details may be missing due to my shattered mind, my broken spirit, and my devastated soul. As horrific events unfolded in my young life, I could not bear them all, so I tucked away pieces of myself into locked compartments.
Years later, therapies revealed that my mind had fragmented into twenty-one different personalities. All Alice. All me. Each personality expressed different facets of me. Each one viewed life from a different perspective and served a specialized, individual purpose in order to survive childhood experiences too overwhelming for one human to bear. Shame floods me even now as I write out my story.
We can all relate to life’s many disappointments, tragedies, and sorrows. We are all broken in some way. It’s the human condition. We start out on solid ground and end up in unexpected places wondering how we got there.
Whether you feel hopeless, helpless, or are hurting in any way, I pray my story helps you see that God created you for a divine and holy purpose. The Bible tells us that God’s plan for our lives is one filled with hope and a future. He creates a beautiful masterpiece from the shattered pieces of our lives with His gentle and patient hands. He banishes all the bogeymen and monsters that threaten our peace and wraps us in His loving arms. In Him there is light. We need not fear the dark.
In the following pages, I open my heart and soul in utmost transparency and share my story. I invite you along on my journey.
Are monsters real?
Definitely. Absolutely. Positively. Yes! A monster has many names: gremlin, goblin, ogre, phantom, specter, wraith, and bogeyman. I know one personally—my father. Perhaps that sounds a little dramatic, but I will introduce you to him and you can decide for yourself.
My name is Alice. Alice Iris Fisher. Everything I tell you about my journey is the way I remember it. Some details may be missing due to my shattered mind, my broken spirit, and my devastated soul. As horrific events unfolded in my young life, I could not bear them all, so I tucked away pieces of myself into locked compartments.
Years later, therapies revealed that my mind had fragmented into twenty-one different personalities. All Alice. All me. Each personality expressed different facets of me. Each one viewed life from a different perspective and served a specialized, individual purpose in order to survive childhood experiences too overwhelming for one human to bear. Shame floods me even now as I write out my story.
We can all relate to life’s many disappointments, tragedies, and sorrows. We are all broken in some way. It’s the human condition. We start out on solid ground and end up in unexpected places wondering how we got there.
Whether you feel hopeless, helpless, or are hurting in any way, I pray my story helps you see that God created you for a divine and holy purpose. The Bible tells us that God’s plan for our lives is one filled with hope and a future. He creates a beautiful masterpiece from the shattered pieces of our lives with His gentle and patient hands. He banishes all the bogeymen and monsters that threaten our peace and wraps us in His loving arms. In Him there is light. We need not fear the dark.
In the following pages, I open my heart and soul in utmost transparency and share my story. I invite you along on my journey.
CHAPTER 1 ~ Monsters Are Real
For such people are false apostles, deceitful workers,
masquerading as apostles of Christ.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
2 Corinthians 11:13-14 NIV
masquerading as apostles of Christ.
And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
2 Corinthians 11:13-14 NIV
My father’s given name was William. He used this name in everyday life—with stress on the word day. He was a physically imposing man with a six-foot, two-inch-tall frame. You had to look up to this man—even if you didn’t want to. I didn’t want to. He weighed in at a solid 250 pounds. Working on our small, but productive farm naturally left him with hefty muscles, adding to his beefy, burly look. I likened him to one of our sturdy oak trees, hard and unforgiving.
Since his dark wavy hair matched his penetrating eyes, it was hard to say exactly what color they were. I never looked directly into them. If I had, he would’ve read every thought in my head—including the constant fear I tried to hide. Those eyes. Determined. Scary. Commanding. Just a quick glance at them caused me to quiver. His calloused hands, rough from field work, felt like sandpaper when he touched me. But that rarely happened in the daylight.
Yes. My father. William by day. Everyone liked him. He had a friendly demeanor and kind manner in speaking to strangers. He was known at the Hillford Church and Cemetery for his good deeds and generous giving. William had a way of getting along with all kinds of folks, which is why the church leaders asked him to be a deacon.
Deacons. Men of integrity. Men who value life. Men who keep the commandments. Men who treat people kindly—especially his own family members. Those church leaders should have asked me about his qualifications if they had wanted an honest opinion.
William by day. He married my mother, Josephine, when they were both twenty-one, straight out of college. He coveted Josie from the first time he set those piercing eyes on her in Economics 101. It may have been her soft curly brown chin length hair, her best feature, that attracted him. She resisted his advances for a while, but no one said “NO” to William.
Josie didn’t realize until after she said, “I do,” that she’d married someone completely opposite of the gentle, patient man who courted her. My mother always seemed frail, weighing a mere 110 pounds. If a hurricane came through our area, it would blow her out to sea, even though the sea was hundreds of miles away. Her tortoise-shell glasses hid the depth of her kind, gentle green eyes, but if you looked closely enough, you’d see fear hovered just at the edge.
After their brief honeymoon at Niagara Falls, New York, in the fall of 1953, they settled down on the Central Pennsylvania farm. This 200-acre parcel, named Shivering Acres, passed down from my father’s father, Reynard Fisher. Family history whispered through the years said that Reynard gave my grandmother Ada syphilis with his philandering ways, leaving her confined to an insane asylum for sixteen years.
Ironically, Reynard preceded Ada in death by a tragic and bloody farm accident that involved a plow and a tractor. No one was ever supposed to talk about Granny and Grandpa Fisher. I asked about them once and was told to never ask again. Mystery shrouded my family’s history. We were supposed to be grateful that we had a decent place to live in at Shivering Acres.
What a strange name for a farm. It’s the shivering part of the name that’s creepy. The name came from the sound the leaves made when the wind whistled through the hardwood trees that bordered the property. Oak, maple, and walnut trees created a thick, dense, dark canopy. The land in between the borders, gardens and fields, yielded hay, straw, and corn to feed our animal population. I had other reasons to agree with the name, Shivering, but that had nothing to do with the trees.
The farm animals numbered more than 1,165 to be exact. The chicken coops held 998 laying hens, minus two eaten by a fox. One-hundred-fifty steers grazed in the pasture just over the hill from the big red barn, along with two guinea fowl, fourteen outdoor cats, and one lovable dog, Pepper, who roamed around outside with a freedom I envied.
Just after my parents celebrated their first wedding anniversary, my brother William, Jr. made his appearance into this world. From day one, he’d been known as Billy and was the spitting image of our father except that his eyes were grayish-blue and gentle like Mom’s. Trained at a young age to feed and water all the cattle, he worked hard. Even so, he got off easy. I collected the eggs every morning from the 998 hens and placed them in yellow wire baskets. I stored them in the wash house to be cleaned and sorted after school. The egg collection van came once a week for pick up, and the six crates had better be packed up and ready or else!
Sandra, my baby sister, had it the easiest of all of us. Sandy did nothing. She was supposed to feed the cats and dog, but she never did. She knew I would do it if she didn’t. She had no love for anyone but herself and her stuffed animals. She never got into trouble, even when a problem was her fault. She was Daddy’s Little Girl—a title she was proud to bear. She made sure she never got in trouble like me. Trouble can be tricky. Even when you do things right, trouble finds you. I know. It always found me.
Now you know a little bit about my family, and it sounds so normal. By day, we were a nice, normal, flag-waving family of five from Central Pennsylvania, who attended the Hillford Church and Cemetery faithfully every Sunday and most Wednesdays.
But at night, things changed.
At the dreaded time when the sun went down, the beauty of the farm disappeared. All those beautiful, leafy trees surrounding the property made eerie shadows reach over the house as the sun set. Everything felt closed in, oppressive, dark, claustrophobic. The darkness made me shiver.
William, the monster lurked.
William. My father. The Monster.
Since his dark wavy hair matched his penetrating eyes, it was hard to say exactly what color they were. I never looked directly into them. If I had, he would’ve read every thought in my head—including the constant fear I tried to hide. Those eyes. Determined. Scary. Commanding. Just a quick glance at them caused me to quiver. His calloused hands, rough from field work, felt like sandpaper when he touched me. But that rarely happened in the daylight.
Yes. My father. William by day. Everyone liked him. He had a friendly demeanor and kind manner in speaking to strangers. He was known at the Hillford Church and Cemetery for his good deeds and generous giving. William had a way of getting along with all kinds of folks, which is why the church leaders asked him to be a deacon.
Deacons. Men of integrity. Men who value life. Men who keep the commandments. Men who treat people kindly—especially his own family members. Those church leaders should have asked me about his qualifications if they had wanted an honest opinion.
William by day. He married my mother, Josephine, when they were both twenty-one, straight out of college. He coveted Josie from the first time he set those piercing eyes on her in Economics 101. It may have been her soft curly brown chin length hair, her best feature, that attracted him. She resisted his advances for a while, but no one said “NO” to William.
Josie didn’t realize until after she said, “I do,” that she’d married someone completely opposite of the gentle, patient man who courted her. My mother always seemed frail, weighing a mere 110 pounds. If a hurricane came through our area, it would blow her out to sea, even though the sea was hundreds of miles away. Her tortoise-shell glasses hid the depth of her kind, gentle green eyes, but if you looked closely enough, you’d see fear hovered just at the edge.
After their brief honeymoon at Niagara Falls, New York, in the fall of 1953, they settled down on the Central Pennsylvania farm. This 200-acre parcel, named Shivering Acres, passed down from my father’s father, Reynard Fisher. Family history whispered through the years said that Reynard gave my grandmother Ada syphilis with his philandering ways, leaving her confined to an insane asylum for sixteen years.
Ironically, Reynard preceded Ada in death by a tragic and bloody farm accident that involved a plow and a tractor. No one was ever supposed to talk about Granny and Grandpa Fisher. I asked about them once and was told to never ask again. Mystery shrouded my family’s history. We were supposed to be grateful that we had a decent place to live in at Shivering Acres.
What a strange name for a farm. It’s the shivering part of the name that’s creepy. The name came from the sound the leaves made when the wind whistled through the hardwood trees that bordered the property. Oak, maple, and walnut trees created a thick, dense, dark canopy. The land in between the borders, gardens and fields, yielded hay, straw, and corn to feed our animal population. I had other reasons to agree with the name, Shivering, but that had nothing to do with the trees.
The farm animals numbered more than 1,165 to be exact. The chicken coops held 998 laying hens, minus two eaten by a fox. One-hundred-fifty steers grazed in the pasture just over the hill from the big red barn, along with two guinea fowl, fourteen outdoor cats, and one lovable dog, Pepper, who roamed around outside with a freedom I envied.
Just after my parents celebrated their first wedding anniversary, my brother William, Jr. made his appearance into this world. From day one, he’d been known as Billy and was the spitting image of our father except that his eyes were grayish-blue and gentle like Mom’s. Trained at a young age to feed and water all the cattle, he worked hard. Even so, he got off easy. I collected the eggs every morning from the 998 hens and placed them in yellow wire baskets. I stored them in the wash house to be cleaned and sorted after school. The egg collection van came once a week for pick up, and the six crates had better be packed up and ready or else!
Sandra, my baby sister, had it the easiest of all of us. Sandy did nothing. She was supposed to feed the cats and dog, but she never did. She knew I would do it if she didn’t. She had no love for anyone but herself and her stuffed animals. She never got into trouble, even when a problem was her fault. She was Daddy’s Little Girl—a title she was proud to bear. She made sure she never got in trouble like me. Trouble can be tricky. Even when you do things right, trouble finds you. I know. It always found me.
Now you know a little bit about my family, and it sounds so normal. By day, we were a nice, normal, flag-waving family of five from Central Pennsylvania, who attended the Hillford Church and Cemetery faithfully every Sunday and most Wednesdays.
But at night, things changed.
At the dreaded time when the sun went down, the beauty of the farm disappeared. All those beautiful, leafy trees surrounding the property made eerie shadows reach over the house as the sun set. Everything felt closed in, oppressive, dark, claustrophobic. The darkness made me shiver.
William, the monster lurked.
William. My father. The Monster.
Read the rest of Alice's story!
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