Hi Guys!
First of all, I hope you enjoy this one shot about my favourite TWD character, Daryl Dixon. He is such an interesting person, with a sad back story, and there is a lot left to the imagination with his character. As Norman Reedus said, he planted all the little seeds and hoped they would grow into trees; the seed of his abusive childhood has definitely grown into a tree!
Also please review and let me know what you all thought. If people enjoy this I will consider writing more material for this piece. Thank you :)
Lx
Daryl remembered a lot of his childhood; he often thought to himself that he remembered too much. These weren't happy memories; days at the beach, holidays or friend's birthday parties. They were grey, miserable memories; the kind that flash back into your head in black and white. They were the fuzzy, horror film type memories that haunted folk's nightmares.
His first memory was his innocent five year old self, hiding under the front porch.
He had been under there a while, hands and knees pitted in mud and lord knows what else that was collecting under there. The back of his hands and his face itched as numerous creepy crawlies ran across his skin. He didn't let this bother him; he was safe under here, he was safe from his pa.
He could hear his own shaky breath and the little whimper he let out now and again. His stomach emitted a large growl in protest to the lack of food in it; Daryl realised just how hungry he was. He tried to remember the last time he ate properly, the last time he had a meal that didn't consist of just a packet of chips and the bottom scrapings of a jar of peanut butter if he was lucky. He decided he would have to come out sooner or later, he needed something to eat and surely his pa would have calmed down by now. After all, Daryl hadn't meant to knock his pa's beer bottle over; leaving it on the back door step was a dumb place to put it.
Daryl swallowed hard as he crawled out from under the porch; the sun nearly blinded him; he must have been under there longer than he thought. He hesitated before heading back in the house. He smiled weakly; pa will be happy again, he won't give him a spanking after all this time to cool off.
Oh how wrong the little Dixon boy had been.
TWD TWD TWD TWD TWD TWD...
Daryl shuddered, remembering every whip form that leather belt that afternoon. He remembered everything about that day, even though he hoped that with every passing day he would slowly forget. He didn't unfortunately, and he had come to terms with that memory, along with many more flashbacks of his neglected and abusive childhood, that would never ever leave his mind.
He sat on the front of his truck; sharpening and cleaning the arrows form his Horton. He wondered if the rest of the group thought he was mentally ill; the time he spent caring for his crossbow was ridiculous, he knew that. However, doing that seemed a lot more appealing than sitting around the camp fire, talking about happy memories and funny stories from before the world went to shit. What the hell would he tell these people anyway? "Oh yeh, my childhood was great; I got a beating every day and if I was lucky it would only be the one that day."
These people needed their memories to get them by in this new fucked up world, and Daryl wasn't going to deprive them of that. He just didn't want to join in.
He knew this made the group look at him like he was an evil, heartless red-neck pig. He didn't blame them from feeling that way, he didn't have much of a heart and feelings left in him; his pa had knocked seven shades of shit out of both of those things. His drunk, abusive bastard of a farther had left Daryl the empty shell he was today.
He had to thank his pa in some sick twisted way though; if it hadn't of been for the constant abuse and neglect in his early years and up to his teens, Daryl wouldn't have survived the apocalypse; that was a fact. His older brother Merle had got the youngster his crossbow for his tenth birthday; an unusual gift for a ten year old, but it was a gift all the same (and the only gift he got) and Daryl appreciated it. He soon taught himself to shoot it with brilliant precision; he was a pro in next to no time. Since his pa still didn't take interest in feeding the boy, or at least using some of his beer money to buy the food for Daryl to cook, he had taken it upon himself to hunt in the woods for food.
His stealth, along with his hunting and tracking skills, had landed him the job of hunter in the group.
Along with his hunting skills, his pa had made Daryl such a hollow person that he was sure this was one of the main reasons he was still alive. He had killed more walkers than he cared to count and he didn't flinch a bit when he brought them to their final deaths. Someone with feelings and who was emotionally equipped would have trouble being so raw and barbaric. This included most of the group Daryl lived with; it was a damn good job they had found him or they'd all be walker bait by now.
Even though he knew he played a big part in the group, he never acted on it and tried to be a higher authority than the rest of them. That was also down to his father, who had told Daryl he was a worthless bag of shit, since he was in diapers. He was a mistake, he should have been aborted, no-one loved him, and he was worthless. All those comments had given him the lowest self-esteem possible.
All of these factors were reasons why he now sat on his truck, away from the rest of the group, fiddling with the crossbow. It wasn't because he was a selfish, nasty hick at all.
It was because he was broken, and to himself, he was beyond repair.