Childhood (Prologue)
His first memory was an inconsequential one. An old spaghetti western where the nameless protagonist rode a stallion into the sunset after winning a fierce battle with an evil stranger. A wayward girl who’d been robbed of her family, and life, rode with him. Her arms wrapped tightly around his waist; her face pressed to the curve of his back. What he would have considered true love at the time, but his experience with love had been very minimal for a child.
Gently, an acoustic tune snuck in as the credits overtook the backdrop. The sun began to set against a barren desert. Even for the time, the movie was old, but the boy watched whatever his father wanted to watch.
There was a sharp rattle behind the boy. He whipped around, half-expecting to see the buckle of his father’s belt, but instead, he was greeted by the glimmering steel of his father’s switchblade. It erected from the wooden tray-table beside the recliner, still wobbling in place.
His father had his hand wrapped around the handle of the knife, but his eyes were affixed to the boy. There was a familiar glare in those eyes. Not one of hatred but disgust. Unfathomable repulsion for the thing that was his son.
The boy contemplated running away. The more exhausted his father was, the less punishment there’d be to receive. This time was different though as those fiery eyes drifted from the boy to the foldout table.
“Think the damn thing pricked me,” his father said, bemused and despondent about such a fate. Drunk men often believed themselves invincible, untouchable. Until the day they weren’t.
The boy craned his neck to get a better view. He saw a small scorpion pinned beneath his father’s blade, bloody body still twitching with a semblance of life. If not life, then instinct. Soon to be dead.
He was five then, and twenty-two years later, he could still remember this moment with incredible clarity. Like recalling the answer to a test question. A memory seared into the grooves of his brain.
