The sound of a woman screaming in pain.  

It sounded like someone was skinning her ... alive.  The screams were unlike anything I had ever heard.

I was a member of a cult.  That is, sufficed to say, I had been born into a cult.  My parents were members.  Instead of God, they worshipped the devil.  I was forced to do (and witness) unthinkable things.  I was a member of this cult until someone reported it and arrested those who were a part of it, including my parents.  I was then put into foster care.

I was six years old.  Nobody wanted me: they said I was uncontrollable, very wild in my moods, and had severe emotional problems.  Well, somehow that didn't surprise me: if people saw or did what I had done as a child, then they would probably understand why I acted the way I did.

It took quite a few years of intense behavioral and mental therapy sessions to bring me out from the damage that the cult had inflicted on my psyche, but even now, at the age of 15, I still have ongoing nightmares or flashbacks.

Flashbacks of seeing a woman, nude, lashed to a table, thick leather straps binding her arms and legs, so she couldn't move, and people cutting her skin, then peeling it back like a banana; all the while, the woman bucked underneath the straps, trying desperately to get away, screaming until I thought something inside of her would burst.  I am surprised that nothing did, but it didn't take long for her screams to wane as the woman (mercifully?) passed out.

The woman was not even a woman yet:  it was a teenager.  A girl.  And the person in question was my big sister.  

They more or less flayed her alive ... and without anesthetic.  All because she had said that she wanted to get out of the cult.  The leaders decided to have a public flaying to teach her a lesson; and she was the victim.

My sister died before police could discover some of the horrific events that the members of the cult were involved in.  

The kids who were there were then gathered up and taken to different hospitals or foster homes.  I was one of the "luckier" ones: I got sent to foster care.  I am now in a foster home, but the memories still remain to this day.  They are slowly starting to lessen, but I still hear the cries of my big sister being skinned alive.  I don't think I will ever forget it; it's going to take more of a miracle to make me forget of the horrors that I had been exposed to when I was such a young child.

`To be continued.~