Part I:
The Beginning

Chapter One

“You’re never coming home?” my mother shouted in the communicator. It wasn’t the first time I had seen my mother cry. My father would leave my mother for several weeks at a time, leaving her in grief and despair. At times she would just crack under pressure due to raising my older brother, Renji, and myself, having her job as an assassin. But this time, by the sound of her cracking dry, tear-filled voice, I knew at that very moment my mother lost herself in her own insanity from not have my father around.

I had watched my mother from the entrance of my room. I heard her cry her heart out over my deadbeat father over the communicator. She had screamed for him to come back, she screamed in an annoying language that I didn’t bother to master. My mother collapsed onto the floor, landing on her knees shouting and screaming for him to come back home, to come back to her. My mother had always had an obsession with my father, because he was one of the few that was native to a land called Tespia, because he was a professional at his job, and also because he was a Chief Bandit that everyone respected around these parts of El Nath. I believe that in her eyes, that was her true love. But I doubt my father felt the same for her. She loved him as the flowers love the rain, but he loved her only to create us and leave once we were of right age.

“There’s another woman isn’t there Kraven?” My mother shouted with her speech now slurred due to crying so roughly. I stood still, standing at the entrance of my room, feeling no remorse over my mother’s pain. My mother looked towards me and walked to where I stood. Her eyes were red from crying, and her face was covered with tears. Her nose and cheeks were as red as blood, and her lips were of a dark pale pink color.

My mother was the most beautiful woman I had ever known. Of course children may think of their mother as a diva or a goddess; but not I. I thought of my mother as simple a beautiful woman that has been wasting her life waiting for my father, and giving a confession a love to him that is often never returned. I could never recall a moment where my father and mother sat down and talked. Not even hug or kiss. Sometimes I think that I was a mistake, or even a love child. Sometimes I would think of that for my own brother.

My mother stood before me, her eyes parched from crying and her face as red as blood from forcing herself to cry. Or so it seems. She raised her moist tear-filled hand high as she looked at me with distain. The hatred in her eyes was visible; I knew she hated me because I happened to become what my father was, a Bandit. She cursed me for looking so much like my father. She rushed her hand recklessly towards my face as she cried and screamed at me. She continued to curse me and hit me and she cried about it.

I just stood there, not feeling any remorse for her reckless emotions of her pathetic love. I watched her meaningless tears fall from her dark brown eyes.
“Kraven!!! WHY?! WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME!! YOU BASTARD!!!” She shouted as she continued to beat me for no reason. It had worsened to the point that she revealed her red whip.

My mother tightly gripped my shoulder and shoved me onto the floor and gave me the first whip on my back. The red whip ripped through my shirt, scaring my back. And she cried for my father, and in that moment; my mother had driven herself mad once more. It was because I look so much like my father; sometimes she believes that I am my father. The first slash drew blood from my back and the second slash came fast. I happened to turn to the side and it hit my chest and arm region. She continued to whip me as she shouted aloud in her annoying language.

“Why did you have to look like you god damn father? WHY!?!?!”

My older brother, Renji, walked through the front door. He saw her raise her hand, the hand that held the whip, and he quickly rushed over to stop her. He pushed my mother to the side, in her madden state. She raised her hand at him as well, striking him on the face. Renji rushed over to my mother and grabbed her by the wrist and knocked her down onto the floor, pulling the bloody red whip from her hand and tossed it to the side. He then grabbed my mother by the shoulders and shook her a few times and yelled at her.

“Mother!! Calm down!! Get a f*cking damn grip” he shouted at her and she just cried and cried over and over again. “Get a f*cking grip” Renji said to my mother once more.

Renji then looked at me and the injuries on my chest and arm. He looked back at my mother and shook her once more yelling at her in that language that had always annoyed me.

“Mother!!! Look what you did to Jr. He’s not Kraven!!! He’s not dad!! Calm the f*ck down please!”

I was use to being beaten because I looked so much like my father. I had gotten used to it and it was all right because I would never raise my hand on a person.

Renji was the same way. He was gentle when it came to women, even my mother. However, he was just as notorious at my father. Renji had the appearance of my mother, almost, and the job of my father. Renji had once said that he’d find our father and fight him for his title. My older brother looked so much like my mother, Blonde hair, light tan skin, dark brown eyes, everything but the thing was that he was a male. Thank god.

Renji once told me that he would fight for what was right, but he never knew what was right or wrong. It didn’t really matter what he said, because he never did it. But he’s a soldier in the sense of walking through dad’s shoes. Going through what he went through. But what I went through has no measure what my father and his father and his father went through. I was the only kid in the village that fought a werewolf at a young age. I nearly lost my life that moment. It was because I tried to prove myself to my father, but he only looked up at my brother Renji.

It was also Renji this or Renji that, it was all right; I have my goals set.

“Go to your room now Jr. and stay there all right?” Renji said to me. He kind of knocked me out of my little daydream. I rose from the floor and walked towards my door. Before I opened my door, I saw Renji drag my mother into the living room. I opened the door and I heard my brother shout towards my mother.

“Mother, he’s not coming back, that’s something you got to f*cking deal with. Do you understand?”

I stood in front of a tall mirror and looked at my wounds. I slowly passed my fingers over the bloody wound and smirked a little. I found it funny that I got whipped for no reason, and it was some sort of a little pleasure that I enjoyed. I didn’t bother to say stop but it still hurt. It’s funny because I’m getting my assed whipped because I look like my father.

I heard my mothers cries of how everything was so unfair and why everything bad always happening to her. I laughed under my breath and I gripped my wound slightly; thinking; How f*cking ironic. I didn’t care much about my mother’s cries, or her very existence for that matter. She was just there that bore me life and that supposedly loved me, just as much as she hated me. All I could really think about was my father making promises to me and the dysfunctional family and him breaking them. I could never really find myself to love him, or my family for that matter. I could never really find myself to forgive anyone either. I never actually cared about his empty promises or his hallow declarations of love. I never loved him neither did I hated him. I’ve only seen my father in segments of my life and I now know why my mother both loves me and hates me oh so very much.

“He’s never coming back home Mom!” Renji had shouted in his harsh deep English voice. Shortly after he said what he wanted to say, there was a loud crash, or a thud, followed by a loud scream. That could only mean that my mother had now entered in her psychotic state. She yelled in slang, both in English and in her annoying language. From what I could gather, her slangs made me laugh in a way that she was a real psycho b*tch. I heard Renji walk down the hallway shouting in slang, yelling at my mother in return.

I remained as calm as before. I laid down on my bed thinking to myself ‘I need to get away’.

-R