That’s the place Dobson created. Fear and persecution and a living angry legacy of the Satanic Panic. Hopefully now that that fucker is dead the Springs can actually heal.

When the student inquisition came, she denied any knowledge of witchcraft. She’d told me she was Wiccan and I felt like maybe, just maybe I could share with her. Wrong place, wrong time. I got ganged up on. The school threatened to expel me. I got force-moved to a different school.

It was necessary though because I learned, as a pre-teen, just why my parents wanted me to keep it silent. There was a cute girl at school in my class and I tried showing her a sigil I’d drawn on my leg. Other people in class saw it.

The environment that Dobson created there in CO Springs made my family more isolationist than we’d ever been before. I had no community. My parents never attempted to reach out to other practitioners locally. They were some of the loneliest years of my life.

I didn’t understand why we had to hide everything or why we couldn’t talk about it at first but I could tell my mother was scared. No neighbors were allowed over. I was the new kid again and no friends could ever come over. I could go there but not bring them home after school.

No clue where my community is at, but I'm starting to see familiar faces, so I figure if I start poking around and following them, I might find my way through the winding web to where they went. Maybe make some new community along the way.