Prologue

            There is a burning in my blood.  It courses through my veins, searing my flesh from the inside out.  I cannot stop it.  I can only feed the fire, taming it for those few, euphoric seconds before it flares back to life, more fierce and consuming than before.

            I bear the scares from this internal flame.  Its evidence lingers in the trembling of my hands, the unsteadiness of my gaze, the over-reaction of my brain.  Work is near impossible.  The obvious symptoms of my inner hell label me as one of them.

            Yes, I am from the lower rungs of what you naïve, perfect people call “civilized society.”

            Though, what I’ve seen of society makes me think it never was, never will and never can be civilized.

 

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            Everyone advocates change.  “We NEED change!” they cry en masse.  Raise the banner high; wage war against the traditionalists, the conservatives!  Our position holds to change – we need it in order to maintain this nation, this way of life!

            Yes, we do.  But perhaps, the change has to begin with us.  Not the high and mighty political figureheads that claim they will fix the world all by themselves.  You know the ones I’m talking about.  The ones that point their finger at a nation’s problems and blame everyone except the people truly responsible.  The ones who believe that there is one way to deal with everything, a way that pleases one party and dissuades another.  Eventually, the people who rule us will need to be changed, but all of that nonsense about changing things is exactly that.  Nonsense.  It isn’t the brilliant man, working in a position of power, who can begin the change we so desire.  It’s the everyday people. 

            The “us” that goes to work everyday, thinking that no matter how hard we work, nothing can change.  Us as in people like me.  The people that you blame society’s faults on.  We are the poor, the lowly, the debauched.  We roam the streets at all hours, flaunting our moral inconsistencies to the world in the light, hiding our criminal lives in the dark.

            Every now and then, I get the chance to watch the television.  It’s interesting, the way the newscasters butcher the people in control of this country for not doing anything right.  They broadcast the horrors of the streets without showing the true horrors of the street.  But then again, to see the true horrors of the street, you must be one of them. 

            As I said; interesting.

 

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            Maybe, before I tell you my story, I should tell you a little about myself.  My past, my personality, blood type, you know.  All the important things for determining the worth of the protagonist.  Though I suppose I could also be the antagonist of sorts.  After all, my tragic flaw is entirely of my own construction.

            We’ll begin with my mother.

            My mom’s parents weren’t that great of role models.  Her mom worked as an accountant at Wachovia while her dad had some nondescript, replaceable job in some nondescript, replaceable business.  She grew up rebellious, wild and careless.  If there was something she wanted to do, she didn’t bother to ask; she just did it.  It didn’t matter that she undermined their authority.  They let her do pretty much everything she wanted to do.  She skipped school, got mixed up with what society calls the wrong people and did everything wrong.  When she was in high school, she got knocked up.  The guy never found out because he wound up in prison about the same time.  So, she dropped out of school and had me.

            Her parents supported her until she got a job, but that was it.  Once she had a job and an apartment, they said their goodbyes.  As far as I know, that was the last time she ever saw them.

            I will give my mother some credit here.  She went from wild and crazy teenager to a hard-working single mother.  She kicked her drug habits as soon as she found out she was pregnant with me.  The whole nine months she went without alcohol.  I don’t think she even thought about getting an abortion, a pro-life hold over from her childhood as a Christian.

            I’m thankful for that.  As messed up as my life is, I still like it most of the time.

            Well, back to my mother.

            Once I was born, she picked up alcohol again, but not as bad as she used to be.  A beer after work, that was it.  She took pretty good care of me when I was little.  Since I was expensive, she got two more jobs.  An older Mexican lady watched me while mom was at work.  Seniora had a son a year older than me that I played with.  Clovis and I grew up like a brother and sister, always fighting each other but teaming up against our mothers.  He didn’t have a father either.  I don’t know what happened to his dad.

            And now we come to me.

            I was a crazy little kid.

            Most kids ran around the neighborhood getting up to no good.  I ran around with Clovis getting up to worse than no good.  I stole my first wallet when I was six.  Eventually, petty theft became a past-time of mine.  I never get caught, although I don’t steal as much as I used to.

            No, I got involved in worse things, but before I get to that, I need to go back to my schooling.  Though school was never that important to me.

            I went to primary school and elementary school.  I started getting into fights in middle school.  That’s when things got out of control.  I had always hung out with the older kids because of Clovis.  He was pretty much my only friend, and I was his kid neighbor who looked cute and could pick pockets for cigarette money without getting caught.  I started smoking cigarettes when I was twelve.  Just because I was a kid smoker doesn’t mean I lit up every 20 seconds.  See, I never smoked a ton of them; my mother would freak out and threaten to throw me out on the streets if I did.  I may be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.  I’d seen the kids on the streets.  It wasn’t attractive.

            Well, the smoking thing became an addiction, but it wasn’t satisfying.  So, when I entered high school, I started trying my hand at a few other things.  Clovis pulled the plug on that little stint when he caught me trying to lift a druggie’s purse.  It was too expensive to buy my experiments, so I stole them.  A hold-over from my petty-thief days.  Anyway, he kept trying to talk me out of it.  Experimenting, stealing, smoking, everything.  When he figured out I wasn’t giving in, well, that’s where my tragic flaw comes in.  I’m lucky to have him, I guess.  He looks out for me, trying to keep me low level.  When I think about it, it’s like he’s my fallen angel.  Unable to save himself, but determined not to let me make the same mistakes.

            Personality-wise, I’m a little bit of everything.  I can be happy, sad, depressed, psycho; you name it.  It really just depends on how my day is going.  I will admit that I am pretty cynical and just a tad bit sarcastic.  Only a little.  I don’t like spending time with my mother, or even my coworkers.  Clovis is really the only person I like to be around, and he’s always busy with his girl or his guys.  So I hang out alone if I’m not working.  I’m not that big into reading or writing or music or crap like that.  Sometimes, if I feel lonely, I’ll head down to the court and watch the guys shoot hoops.  It’s better than sitting inside all day long anyway.

            Oh.  I guess I left out the quick and dirty physical bits.  I’m white, I have black hair but blue eyes, and I tan pretty easy.  Height-wise I’m a perfectly average 5’5”.  Weight-wise; well, I’m not fat, but not skinny either and we’ll leave it at that.  I wear a size 6 shoe.  Blood type is O positive.  I don’t know if that’s relevant, but there it is.

            So, that’s about where we’ll pick up with my life.  I’ll try to tell this as best I can, but forgive me if I screw up a lot.  We can’t all be perfect, now can we?