Chapter the Second.

II.

As if I needed anything else to cement into my mind the fact that I was the center of the universe; the eye of the crazy hurricane we call life—my mom told me not three weeks after our conversation that we were having a baby. Whether it was going to be a boy or a girl, we still did not know, but I was happy. I had gotten what I wanted and now I was sure that God and I were on good terms, even if I didn't understand what that meant.

The excitement and anticipation grew exponentially as Mommy's tummy did. By the time my 4^th birthday rolled around, it was so large that Kevin and I had started making snide remarks about it. She was one of the big mamas now. I even suggested going on walks in the evenings “So that you don't get too fat”, as I told my mom. In reality I wanted to go so I could try out the new bike I has gotten for my birthday, but I thought I was more likely get the desired response if I suggested it coupled with a motive for the party on whose consent the proposed outings hung. I'm sure she saw right through it, but we started going that very evening—that's the kind of parent she was; the best of the best.

Our evening excursions became the focal point of the day of me. Sadly, they were also to become a defining point of my life. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the happy walks. I would ride about ten feet ahead of my parents, always telling them to hurry up because I wanted to go “really fast.” They would walk side by side holding hands, and occasionally when I looked back I saw them with their hands on Mommy's stomach, smiling the most serene of smiles. We lived in a quiet neighborhood and the streets were lined with maple trees. It was all so beautiful.

Everything changed on August 2, 2007. You might even say that it was the beginning of a new life. That night I was dragged into a nightmare. Oh, the walk had started so wonderfully and yet—and yet it seems heartbreak and tragedy nearly always pay their respects when one is at the height of one's familiarity with happiness. We had just finished our dessert and were walking it off. The sun was just lowering itself behind the skyline and it filled the air with a cozy sort of light. But it was all in mockery. I remember the maple leaves rustling in the breeze. I thought it so wonderful, but no, they were whispering ominously of things to come. And come they did.

We were not ten minutes into our walk when it all happened. You might say it was bad luck, simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but luck is a myth; it simply does not exist. I remember a tall man in dark clothing with awful pictures on his sweatshirt walking towards me. The pictures on his clothing were nothing on comparison with the picture of his face, though, for it was animate. And yet at the same time not so. I see it in my dreams to this day: bobbing up and down with its wispy black hair contrasting an inhuman whiteness of complexion. It was like a confrontation with lifeless life for he was torn between those two extremes; he was in agony. His eyes were opened so wide that I thought they may pop out and his mouth was making formless but audible sounds. Even at my young age I could see that a storm was raging inside of him and that it was about to break.

My parents had taught me to smile and say, “Hello” to everyone we met on the street, just as they did, but I couldn't do it this time. I was far too scared. He passed. And I then heard a, “Good evening” from my parents. I can almost hear the smiles, too. Then came the outburst of rage in the form of a stomach-churning yell, and a scream. Mommy's scream. It seems so unfair that a woman of such love, grace, and beauty—that her last utterances came in the way of a scream, but life is not about fairness, as I have come to learn. I turned my head to look around. Everything was a mass of confusion. My mother was down on the sidewalk, apparently tackled by the dark man, simply for wishing him a good evening. He was over her, and his hand was wrapped around a small, dark object. My dad tried to intervene, he jumped between the victim and the assailant, trying to shield the victim and thwart the aggressor. The hand went down. The the hand went up. The hand repeated it's horrid actions for what seemed an age...down...up...down...up. One cannot blame the hand, it was simply doing its job; one cannot blame even the head inside that gruesome face for it was following its heart; a heart so warped by the world and humanity, one could hardly call it human anymore--the heart is a paradox, as is humanity. Once the hand had performed its commands, it returned the object to a pocket and the man ran off into the night, leaving all that was left of my family: three corpses.

I was in shock. As the realization of what had happened started to fill my mind, so did a dark and empty feeling surround my soul. Much like the pools of red darkness that surrounded the now lifeless shapes that, only moments ago, had been my family. You may have expected that I ran to them and buried my tears in their lifelessness, but I couldn't move; I couldn't cry. I was numbed. And, in a sense, left more lifeless than the remains of my family.

By the time my ability for perceiving reality slowly started to come back there was a crowd of shapes on the scene. Then sounds, then lights, then important looking shapes. They came to my family of corpses and I, and backed the rest of the shapes off. What happened before this I can recall only in a vague sense. I remember a car stopping, I remember another scream, eerily like that of my mother. I remember a phone call, and a well-intentioned woman trying to comfort me. That is all. The important looking people—who I, as my perception increased, recognized to be emergency personnel—asked me who I was, but I couldn't find words. They pointed at my mom and dad, “Are these your parents?” I nodded. They proceeded check me for injuries, wrap me in a strange blanket, and take me off to somewhere with a soft mattress, where I slept in a state of semi-consciousness for a long while.

I never saw even the bodies my family again. I was told later that the reason being that they were quite mangled. I will not go into details, both because it pains me and because I think your imagination is up to the task. Imagine as you will. I was also told the dark man was apprehended and convicted of three counts of first degree murder, assault, and possession of an illegal substance. He pleaded insanity and I hope with all my heart that he was. How a human being could do such a thing to a fellow human has been a cause of mystification for me. It is all just so backwards. And the man was barely a legal adult. In later years, I ascertained that he was an orphan who had been brought up by abusive foster parents. Once he was old enough to stand up for himself, at age fifteen, they booted him from their house and he was left to fend for himself.

The description, “Aged fifteen, male.” is not one that pops the words, “mature,” “independent,” or “responsible.” into most people’s minds. Rather, its much more likely that the opposite happens. Especially when the person being described has been forced to lead the gut-wrenching life my family's murderer did. He was in and out of correctional facilities until he was seventeen, at which point he joined a 'real' gang that kept him away from trouble with Cops, but got him into real trouble in the form of drugs, etc. Again, I will not go into details, but you can imagine as you wish.

I guess all this led him to be jealous of my parents serene happiness. In his torment he couldn't bear to see the peace and goodness conveyed by that simple kind gesture. It burst the storm inside him and he became the animal that mercilessly and mechanically carried out a truly monstrous deed. This all may make sense—even add up –to you on this page, but I saw it in action, and no words or thoughts will make sense of those actions for me. How? Just how can one get to that point? That point which is so incomprehensibly beneath the natural state of human nature; the state in which we are born.

And fate.

Fate left me an orphan, by the hands of an orphan who, as a result of being orphaned carried out the deed that left me an orphaned. Was I to share in the fate of that orphan? Was I to be abused and brought up under pitiful circumstances? Was I—could I possibly find myself, years later, burdened with the blood-weight of human life? That, only time told me, and that, only a smaller lapse of time and these literary formulations will tell you.