“I felt ancient and exhausted. I felt like a prisoner within myself and as if I was just watching a movie that was playing before my eyes. I just wanted all of it to end and disappear; I wanted to disappear.”
“I was surprised hearing my own ragged voice. I sounded so hateful and angry. My voice didn’t resemble any part of what I knew of myself.”
“I wouldn’t let the old voices dictate me; I wouldn’t let anyone dictate who I was anymore. I was strong enough to know who I was and I wasn’t going to be beaten down again.”
“Perhaps I really was disillusioned; unable to see myself for who, and what, I really was. Maybe I really was an ungrateful wretch who just refused to take responsibility for my own actions. Maybe I was lying to myself because I didn’t want to admit to being a bad person. Maybe…”
“My step-dad’s rendition of events was uncontested even by me and therefore, it became our truth. Truth I’d never be able to prove or change; truth that protected him from suspicion and penalty. Truth that I now knew was a lie.”
“There was that part of me that thought if I was already been accused of it and punished for it, then I should just do it. Of course, I didn’t want to be that person. Did I?”
“Sitting there, I wasn’t convinced I’d survive until that day let alone beyond it. I felt the struggle intensifying between my mom and me no matter what I did to try to stop it. I couldn’t imagine a future where she’d just let me walk away from her. As it was, I felt like she was breaking me down a little more each day.”
“As I lay in the late hours of night or perhaps the wee hours of morning, I felt content. I’d been right to keep faith and trust when I had no reason to. I didn’t expect any grand gestures or magical solutions to things, but my hope was fueled.”
“She’s erasing me bit by bit and it’s painfully obvious that no one can stop her.”
“Why did I even try then? Of course, in asking the question, I’d already known the answer; faith. I hoped; I couldn’t help it.”
“I'm beginning to wonder," said Kent, sitting down now on an overturned wooden tub. "Who do I serve? Why am I here?"
You are here, because, in the expanding ethical ambiguity of our situation, you are steadfast in your righteousness. It is to you, our banished friend, that we all turn—a light amid the dark dealings of family and politics. You are the moral backbone on which the rest of us hang our bloody bits. Without you we are merely wiggly masses of desire writhing in our own devious bile."
Really?" asked the old knight.
Aye," said I.
I'm not sure I want to keep company with you lot, then.”
“But Lucius was staring at the beamed ceiling of the barn, pacing around, hands clasped behind
his back, muttering to himself. "This is not going well. Not going well at all. I advised the Elders
that you should have been summoned back to Romania years ago, that you would never be a
suitable bride . . ."
Whoa, there. "Bride?”
“Al brought his attention back down from the ceiling. “You really don’t want to have sex with him? Why? What’s wrong with him?”
“Once upon a time, each of us was somebody's kid.
Everyone had a father, even if he never provided anything more than his seed.
Everyone had a mother, even if she had to leave us on a stranger's doorstep.
No matter how we're eventually raised, all of our stories begin the exact same way.
They all end the same, too.”
“Yet ruled he not long, so great had been his suffering, and so bitter the fire of his testing, for after the space of three years he died. And he who came after him ruled evilly.”
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