The Stranger Who Raised Me

As the only child of a man from a broken home, I lavished in my father’s attention. As the only child of a shipping magnate, my father’s attention was lavish. I wasn’t purple-blood wealthy, but I thought paper money was fake until primary school. Growing up, I remember my father being one of the kindest and most generous men I knew. He was the light of my life for as much as I was his reason for living. I never would’ve guessed a cheap plastic curtain was the only thing holding our lives together.

My mother died when I was an infant, but my childhood was still happy. My father always went above and beyond. He was my hero. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t have as long as I asked my dad. We rarely left the house because his wealth brought us anything we wanted. Games, food, live entertainment- nothing was out of his reach. He even arranged a circus for one birthday because I mentioned it the previous year. My father loved me, and I knew it because he showed it as much as he said it.

Growing up, I thought everyone had a home like mine. Hundreds of acres overlooking the city and harbor, steel-reinforced walls fifteen feet high, guard towers, a pig farm, watchdogs, things I considered basic home necessities. My father said men like him loved their families and wanted to protect them as best they could. Back then, that was all the proof I needed. In primary school, I realized things were different for other children.

It was the expression on every friend’s face when I invited them over. The awe and disbelief made me tremendously uncomfortable, a new sensation in my life. I soon got confirmation of my life’s abnormality when I visited my friends’ homes. It wasn’t even my fault. My father’s wealth made us different, but he owned a successful shipping company, so we were wealthy. He worked hard and reaped the benefits of his labor. Unlike greedy underworld affiliates or even greedier politicians, my father was kind and charitable with his money. Who could hate that?

My solution to loneliness was inviting people over. My father always seemed to be doing it, so it made sense. Whether he was there or not, we always had black-suited men loitering on the grounds, usually near the house but sometimes near the pig farm. I always assumed these men were associated with my father’s pig farming hobby, but these black suits never stated their business. I tried to ask around, but it was always the same answer, ‘they work with your father.’

Eventually, I learned all of them were from the city’s roughest district, and suddenly, it made sense. These men in suits were charity cases, the benefactors of a foundation my father owned or helped. My father financed hundreds of organizations, so it only made sense that a kind man like him would take an interest in some individuals. It explained their presence near my home, and this explanation fit with who I knew my father to be. In secondary school, my friends gave me a perspective I would never have been able to conceive.

‘What if your dad is an affiliate?’

It was a stupid thought, and we all started laughing. Cyrus Aiolus, a member of the Underworld? My father was a gray-haired man with a back bent from decades of leaning over a desk. He was a hard worker who got promotions until he was the man running the company. He was a weirdo, always making hit-or-miss dad jokes and priding himself on the ones that made us groan. He threw philanthropic parties and raised pigs as a hobby. What kind of criminal raises pigs for fun? What kind of criminal was beloved by all his neighbors and his community? What kind of criminal spends millions to give away presents at non-profit events thrown at his expense? And he kept it up every year, ensuring the entire city knew anyone who asked got an invitation. That’s who my father was, not some criminal who robbed women and killed men for no reason. He was a man who gave blessings, not curses.

My father was most himself during his parties. These exclusive affairs pulled people from all walks of life. Anyone who came was allowed in, but the VIPs were on the upper floors. The VVIPs held court near the study, and my father’s generosity was brightest here. I remember seeing pristine white rectangles flickering from pocket to pocket. The Mayor, the Police Commissioner, the head of the City Council, the Superintendent, everyone was given an envelope, and everyone walked away happy. The unacknowledged pouches were always thick, the paper taut with whatever stuffed it. Due to the size, I assumed it was cash for workers, but I was always curious. It was this curiosity that brought about one of my most distinct memories.

My father’s New Year celebration was always the largest of his parties and had the thickest envelopes. In my final year of secondary school, I decided it was time to solve this mystery. So, being my father’s son and these envelopes being my father’s gift, I figured I’d ask for one. I recognized one of the charity workers and asked him for an envelope. He froze at the question. My heart started thumping as the black-suited man glared at me. I didn’t back down. The fact that this man’s answer wasn’t an immediate yes was a problem, and how he stared frightened me. I wasn’t sure what he was about to do, but I began reaching. He snatched the bundle away before my fingers could touch the paper, and I was officially scandalized.

This memory is so distinct because it was one of the few times I was denied anything in my home. I demanded one again and almost made a scene when Uncle Teddy, one of my father’s best friends, scooped me up and delivered me to my dad. He was in the midst of men I vaguely recognized, and they surrounded him like he was holding court. I cried, telling him about the horror of refusal, and they all just laughed, my father hugging me apologetically. He scolded me and called me greedy for asking. ‘Son, you must remember people need to eat, and the Divine has blessed us with enough to share.’

That stuck with me because that was my father, a man so full of life he needed to give to others. Those parties were always a drag, but the donations to the city officials took on a different light after that talk. I was so proud to be my father’s son and never more than seeing his generosity feed families.

Then, there was the night before the autumn celebration gala in my second year of secondary school. I was in my rebellious phase and wanted to see if a man like my father had any secrets. So I chose the night before the party to ‘break into’ my father’s study because I knew he’d be busy trying to get things ready. I remember searching the entire study for the slightest clue. I was hoping to find some alcohol or drugs, maybe even an explicit movie, if I was lucky. Instead, I found a half-sword hidden under his desk.

I was so shocked I just stood there holding it for a while. My father materialized and snatched the weapon from my hands. As scared as I was of being caught, the sword terrified me. My father must have seen my fear because he wasn’t angry. Thinking about it, he saw the look on my face because he was laughing at me. I asked him why he needed it, and he said ‘protection.’ That answer wasn’t enough for me. My father was a businessman. Who could he need protection from? And why would he need personal protection with all these guards around? I asked him, and he got quiet. It was brief, but there was a look in my father’s eyes, a distant stare centered on me but viewed something else entirely.

‘The Mistress of Death has a low bar for acolytes.’

His reply was grave, and I felt my face drop. I’d never heard my father talk like that, and I thought we were all about to die. My cheeks heated when his laughter filled my ears, and he pinched my chin. He laughed as though nothing mattered except embarrassing me with teases of being a good son who loved his father. I furiously hugged him, trying to expel my rage while covering up my fear. I could never stay mad at him, so I was soon swept up in my hero’s delight. It was easier to enjoy the moment than to acknowledge that look of bone-crushing weariness.

After tertiary school, I majored in law during college. As my knowledge of the law grew, so did my distance from my father because I found it difficult to return home during breaks. There was always something that required me to remain on campus. Extra classes, special tutoring, interning opportunities, one time I had no excuse, but my nervousness made me so sick I couldn’t travel. My father visited as often as possible but couldn’t always make it during the holidays. I know the distance hurt him, which hurt me, but it had to be that way. It was the only way to protect my image and love for my father.

After six long years away from home, he finally wore me down. He’d been begging me to come home during the winter breaks so we could drink hot chocolate and watch the fireworks from his year-end extravaganza. I knew he’d been missing his only child, and I ached to go home. I knew listening to his voicemails would flare up my pangs of homesickness. I knew my homesickness would eventually drive me home. I knew my home was gone as soon as I returned. And yet, I still capitulated. I decided to graduate early before flying home to surprise my father with my Criminal Law degree.

That first week home was the greatest tragedy of my life. Everything was as I remembered it. All the charity workers wandering the grounds, the guards roaming the estate, even the pig barn looked the same. I was sure my childhood façade would be snatched away, but to my complete and undiluted pleasure, my suspicions were baseless. My father was delighted to see me, and we spent all our time together. As the final seven days of that year came and went, my apprehensions about my father dispelled, and I felt guilty for doubting him in the first place.

I couldn’t sleep the night following the New Year celebration ball, so I watched television in the pre-sun morning. I was flipping through the channels, dunking some cookies in milk, and munching when I passed a breaking news bulletin. After changing two channels, I realized I had seen something weird. I felt I shouldn’t return to that channel, but I did and nearly fainted.

It was Uncle Teddy. This man was one of the most honorable men I knew, the kind of man who always had a piece of advice and a piece of peppermint. I wasn’t sure of his place in my father’s company, but I knew he’d been with my father for a long time and was one of his two best friends. He was the one who took me to my father the night I demanded an envelope. His kids were like my cousins, and none were terrible people. Yet, as I finally heard what the person was saying, I dropped my late-night medicine and turned up the volume.

The news claimed that for the past three decades, Theodore Ricardus the third, known as Teddy Three Times, had been a high-ranking member of the Mountain Swords Association, one of the central criminal associations of the Syndicate of the Eight. From what the report said, Teddy Three Times had personally killed nearly fifty men and linked to some two hundred other murders among the litany of crimes he’s been accused of and tried for but never convicted. He’d been in police custody after a massage parlor takedown in Haava a few weeks ago and implicated in a human trafficking ring. The police spoke to him but couldn’t interrogate him until he was in Sextus. He reached the mainland last night, but a few hours ago, Teddy Three Times escaped police custody with the aid of numbers unknown. Nine officers were dead, and four more were on life support, while eight of the attackers died in the ambush.

I shut off the television, stewing in my anger. How could the media lie about one of my father’s most trusted friends? I knew this was some smear job from one of my father’s competitors, but I had no way of knowing who. Although it was an extreme smear job, what else was I supposed to believe? There was no way Uncle Teddy did any of those things, but if he did, I knew he could lie and implicate my powerful father in making a deal with the police. There was no way I could allow my innocent father to be implicated in something just because he trusted the wrong person. I was fresh from completing my law degree and filled with righteous zeal. I knew the first step was getting a team of lawyers with various specialties around my father. I wasn’t sure if he knew about this yet, and I wasn’t about to let him get blindsided.

I scoured the main house, but I didn’t see him anywhere. I searched the grounds but still couldn’t find any trace of his whereabouts. I asked a few passing charity workers, and everyone just shook their heads. Then I remembered there was only one place my father would be, if not the house. Two charity workers posted on the barn doors, which was odd, but I was happy to see them. Their presence meant that my father had to be inside. When I approached the doors, they put their hands on me, but I swiped them off, lightning in my eyes as I thundered into the barn.

The interior of the barn smelled as awful as always, but I was distracted by the two additional men inside. There were never men posted inside the barn. This was my father’s sanctuary. He didn’t like people clogging the space. The only people allowed to be here were people working with the pigs, but my mind wasn’t registering the oddities. They looked between each other and the barn entrance, inert as I stormed past them. I slowed as I approached the heart of my father’s sanctuary, his championship pig pens. He had names like Gregory and Matthew for each of the pigs back here, and he loved nothing more than to come back here and talk about his problems. A cheap plastic curtain obscured what lay past it, but the lights were on, and the pigs were grunting. I don’t know what I expected when I pulled back the plastic, but it wasn’t the seven-fingered hand of reality.

Uncle Teddy’s cloudy gray eyes stared at me while his red-streaked tongue lolled from his open mouth. His decapitated head rested atop a bloody table in the middle of the room, jaw askew in a sanguine ‘harrumph.’ Standing over the remainder of his body, I saw my kind, quirky father wearing a butcher’s apron with red and purple bits sliding down rivulets of blood on the leather. As my father aimed the bloody machete, his brown eyes were as sharp as ever, but there wasn’t any warmth in them. My father hacked off Uncle Teddy’s forearm using one swing and didn’t spill a drop of blood. He then casually picked up the forearm and tossed it into one of the pens, revealing the abomination of a secret ingredient to his championship feeding routine.

That’s when I realized he’d been talking. I subsequently realized charity workers surrounded him. All of them were listening with rapt attention as he butchered one of the first adults he ever introduced me to. My father was calm as he spoke, but he swung with a level of violence that could only come from anger. I listened to him eulogize Uncle Teddy’s virtues and his downfalls. He emphasized the greatness of gravitas and renown but upheld the importance of loyalty and honor. He compared the moves a man must make with the cuts he was making to Uncle Teddy’s body, likening his late friend’s flesh to the strife of life. The morbid precision of the words made me puke.

The trauma of losing a beloved father is something I don’t think anyone can truly be ready for. Losing mine was the most painful experience of my life. Losing him and watching a stranger walk around with his face was a torture I didn’t know I earned. I want to be angry, but that stranger looks and sounds like my dad. Even if it’s an imitation, I still love him. One day, I’ll get used to the snowball of his memory in the desert of my love.