Natsby

Prelude

For the longest time I felt that I was alone. A simple man following the ticks of life and wandering aimlessly through the motions. My father and his father and his father before all fought in wars, and when the time came, I did as well. By all means, I was destined to survive, arrive home, wed a woman, have a son who would carry on this tradition, and then I would quietly perish of old age.

But that is hardly what I did.

I instead found myself suffocating once I returned home from the traumas and hardships of war, and so I elected to travel east, where I met the one person I have since attributed everything that has changed in my life to. I believe, to an extent, he knew what he was doing. A man that accomplished all he had done would have the intelligence to warp my mind to his whim. All the luxuries of the world were his, and people like me were nothing more than simple background cast members of his play. His story began the moment I reconnected with my cousin, an event that cascaded into the whirlwind of a Summer that I then experienced. His story should have ended that late August as the leaves turned brown, and in some renditions it does. I still find it hard to begin where everything else does, because to be frank, that is not where the true story lies. Their romance was not the one that was destined to be, and, in a twisted, sickening way, the true pairing had far more to tell.

I suppose that is why I have decided to write myself into the narrative against the moralities and ideologies I was raised with. This is no longer a story about a man that had it all, to only perish from the same disappointment we all have. Rather, this is a story about the man who lived next door.