Family is… forever?

 To understand me.. I guess we have to go back to the beginning… It all started when I was a child, I was like most children, really. Or, at least children with happy families. My parents loved each other, it was obvious with the way my dad would dance my mom around the kitchen or how she’d smile and laugh even when my father’s jokes weren’t funny. And my mom looked like every mom from fifties, always wearing dresses or housecoats as some would, she’d have dinner on the table every night at five o’clock sharp, anyone who late would get a stern talking to but she’d still dote on you. My dad was handsome, a lawyer, made good money, came home and played with me, helped my mom in the kitchen, never smoked or drank much but the occasional glass of wine. It was perfect. It was all.. beautiful.. it made me long for those moments. Those moments of… fantasy. I didn’t remember my parents. I didn’t have memories of my father dancing my mother around the kitchen or her cooking pot roast for family dinner. There wasn’t much I remembered from my childhood, or my “past life” as I preferred to call it. I fabricated fantasies to keep me from the nightmares that kept me up at night. 

But there was one day I remembered, one day I could never forget, the day was a week after my fourth birthday, I’d come down the stairs from playing with my… I’d like to say it was a rabbit? I liked bunnies. I hadn’t heard anything or nothing that I could remember, my memory was.. sketchy to say the least, my older brother Dante thinks I blocked a lot of things out to hide from the pain of it. But truthfully, I just wondered if I was too little to remember..  however this was something I’d never forget, coming downstairs and the living room smelling like… blood, I know that’s what it is now, I know it’s blood, but as a child, I didn’t know, I thought it smelled funny, maybe a little gross to me.  So, what did I do? I crept closer, my short brown hair was illuminated by the dim lights, almost making my hair appear a lighter brown than usual, my brown eyes were darker and focused on the scene before me… mommy, at least I think that’s mommy, she looked funny, her eyes wide and distant, her skin paler than usual, and her long blonde hair… coated in red paint…? No, no, it was blood. My mother’s blood was all over the floor, all over her. I didn’t see my father, I couldn’t. I couldn’t stop staring at my mother. Maybe, it was then that I realized I was different, stronger… maybe this is why I was spared. I didn’t cry, I didn’t scream. I just stared at the lifeless form of this woman, (whom I wouldn’t recognize if I saw her on the street, approaching me.) I dropped my rabbit, it fell into the blood and I still didn’t stop. I didn’t stop until there was a man there, he didn’t look… friendly. At the time friendly was a relative term, to me, friendly was Barney or Steve from Blue’s Clues. No, this man didn’t look human… he stared at me, and despite my small form, the fear that clutched my chest, (and haunted my dreams to this day, the feeling I couldn’t forget no many bottles of booze I went through.) I stared back, I don’t know if I was touched in the head or just fascinated by this man… 

Ezio Falco stared at me, it seemed he couldn’t decide whether to make me join my mother or be impressed that a child my age wouldn’t yell or cry. “Child, come here.” At the time, I’m not sure what my response was, or if I even had one, I don’t remember if I said “no” or anything. But next thing I remember is one moment, I was looking at my dead mother, the next I was being carried away from the scene, and I think I was in shock, I think I was unable to speak or reach for my mother at the time, I think it was my response to my murdered family that set me on the course for my life. “Come now. You don’t need to see that.” But it wasn’t kindly in the way he spoke, it was matter of fact, still, I looked up at him and he smiled. “Don’t worry. Everything will be alright. I will make sure of it.” 

I didn’t understand, maybe, some days I still don’t, given how my life turned out and the boarding school.. and my big brother Dante rescuing me from that hell.. but one thing was for sure. My life was never the same. My name wasn’t the same. I don’t remember my name before but I don’t think it was “Jace”. And it certainly wasn’t “Falco.” That was the day my father, Ezio Falco murdered my family, stole my name and adopted me, and I still saw him as the only father I had, gave him Father’s Day cards, well, the only father I had and then there was Dante, my older brother, but he was also like a second father to me. Serafina, my sister who only discovered my existence through Dante’s discovery and the twins, who, like me, were adopted, but that was our one big dysfunctional family. And how I became Jace Falco.