All I saw was the crimson stain of blood.
The skillet hit his face as he reached for me. I couldn’t let him hurt mama anymore. The cast iron swung, hitting his nose with acrunch. I kept bringing the skillet down on Harold’s head until he stopped moving. Tossing it aside, I crawled over to my mama, exhausted and out of breath.
“My sweet boy,” she mumbled, pain etched into her face. “I’m so sorry.”
“Mama,” I cried, my eyes closing outside of my will, unable to stop the pictures that rushed through my mind. So many images. Too many memories. Mama. Harold. Mine.
“I love you, Jesiah. Remember that when I’m gone. I love you,” she choked through pain. “I love you, baby. I always will, even when I’m not here to tell you.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but Harold had come home from the bar drunk and beaten mama, forcing her to the living room floor. He punched her in the head to subdue her and caused a bleed on her brain. She wouldn’t recover from it.
“I love you, mama. You’re my rainbow,” I blubbered, laying my head on her shoulder.
Sirens outside the house alerted me that rescue had come far too late. Mama’s cold hand rested in mine.
I would never hear her voice again.
PRESENT TIME—
The Reaper skipped the funeral. I didn’t have to relive that horrid day, and I felt relief that he spared me the pain.
Ten years were all I had with my mother. The most traumatizing of my life and yet the happiest at the same time. My past consisted of a twisted, fucked up wreck.
My mama did the best she could. She raised me on her own for a long while before she met Harold. Lonely, struggling to make ends meet, she thought marrying him would make her life easier. She didn’t know his true nature that he hid until too late.
I killed a man the night my mother died—the first but not the last. I wouldn’t take another life for many years, but when I did, the Reaper showed me he deserved the death I gave him. Another rapist like Harold.
I couldn’t say if the Reaper had always been with me, helping to guide my hand and my art. Maybe.
But blood was a constant in my life from the time I was old enough to skin my knees. And in the present, nothing had changed.
Because of my mother, I pursued my art. She was the reason I had the business, talent, skill, and passion. She made it happen. Even when Harold said I was a piece of shit kid who would never succeed, I didn’t listen.
Now, all these years later, I knew I’d made the right decision.
I could have let that asshole stepfather of mine dictate my path in life. I could have pushed aside my love of drawing and art, discarding that talent because of the cruelty of a man who enjoyed inflicting pain and sorrow, who received pleasure from watching others linger in misery.
But I did the exact opposite.
I cultivated my love of art, practiced, took classes, and enhanced my skill until my love of it became a job. The job grew into a career. I bought my first building and remodeled it into a tattoo shop at only eighteen. That business became my future. My stability.
And it’s how I met the most important people who would ever walk into my life.
Grim. The Royal Bastards MC. Ani and Thunder.
Blood always brought me home.