Candy:

Chapter One

If you're of age seven, and you want to kill yourself, you must understand that it's going to be particularly hard to do so. There are certain big limitations to what children have access to, and it's not just that. At that age, as I was, I would have never been able to hang myself with the garden hose. Not even standing on a chair could I get close enough to the exposed roof beam in my room. I was getting impatient by mid-April, some weeks before my birthday. Halfway through my seventh year I'd made it my goal to get myself killed one way or another before I turned eight - a kind of self-imposed challenge -, but May 5th was just in the horizon and still there I was. Miserably alive.

My mother laughed once, when she found me measuring my height with the measuring tape that dad kept in his toolbox. She didn't seem to suspect the true reason for my irritability at my height. She could never really know the true cause for most of my extreme moods, actually.

I was a difficult child, I should say. My changes in mood were like the hummingbirds' wings. Up and down, so fast that you'd need a special camera to record the movement. But to the naked eye those wings are just a blur. I would leave myself exhausted some days, going from happy face to sad clown in the blink of an eye. For me, the transition between states of being was hard to delineate. There were no boundaries - no checkin or checkout point. I felt myself dance erratically between several intense places in the mood spectrum.

I should have known something was wrong. If it wasn't the suicide plans or the erratic behavior, it should have been Grima that told me. There was a near palpable presence that accompanied me everywhere. Like my shadow. Even the intensity of this presence seemed to be affected by the weather. Under certain intensities of light and at certain angles, one's shadow changes. The same happened with this presence; Grima, as I called it.

I very much detested the rainy days, for example. Too slow, I would think. Nobody did anything. The streets were empty and even the drops of water that fell seemed to want to take their sweet time before splashing on the ground. It was like living at a completely different rhythm than the rest. When my mother, or even my father, could sit and read a book by a warm-looking light, I raged throughout the house - naked, because even the barest touch of fabric on my skin could sometimes turn me into an irritated, shrieking, wriggling little worm.

Making me try on new clothes at the mall could be a nightmare for my mother.

Laying on my bed and looking up at that out-of-reach roof beam - this now way past the fifth -, I could listen to every water drop that fell marking the passage of time: Nature's clock.

That's when I started dissecting frogs. If only to console myself after my failed suicide attempts - jumping from the second floor had only given me a broken leg and an earful, and I never found the whereabouts of the key to the kitchen cabinets to grab a knife either - and to feel like I was doing something well worth my time. This also helped me put aside the thoughts of suicide for a while. I was now more interested in being a mad scientist.

Gotta let my arms loose, my father would say very often. That was all the explanation he gave before heading for the garage, where he kept most of his carving tools.

He was good at handling wood. A master woodcarver with thick, callused fingers and sharp eyes to notice the smallest details on wood and quality. The best at custom precision. It was no surprise to find him hunched over a table, drawing new designs. Friday nights he'd take us out to the nearby Cook Out that I liked because they had the best burgers and milkshakes, and while mom and I ate from our Cook Out Tray he sometimes left his food untouched in favor of sketching furniture on the napkins.

I thought that maybe I'd gotten my restlessness from him. There was, of course, a major difference between the way my father chose to relieve himself and mine; he built things. Beautiful figurines and furniture that my mother was proud to show off when we had visitors. On my part, I'd get an earful for the mess I caused. One time my mother found me on the bathroom floor and my hands were covered in blood (some of it my own) and between my fingers dangled the guts of no less than five frogs I'd found in the backyard and brought in for vivisecting.

There were a lot of frogs during the rainy season. They came out from under the back deck (which my father built) to cool off in the puddles that formed.

My mother's eyes - wide and horrified. I can just imagine the way I'd looked to her. Crazy. My nose had gotten itchy during the process of opening the frogs - and I'd opened them all at once, very ungracefully too, with one of my father's shaving blades -, and I hadn't even bothered covering my hands, so I got my face pretty bloody too when I scratched at it to relieve the annoying ache.

I heard her recounting to my father later that day what I'd done.

You won't believe what your son did today, Lon'qu.

Of course he didn't. He had to ask me himself to really start believing that I'd done something like that. It wasn't the cruelness of the act that took him by surprise most, I believe. Children are supposed to be a bit insensitive, after all. Childhood can hold a healthy amount of brutality.

What he really wanted to know was why I'd hurt my mother. I'd refused to let go of the blade, you see, and she had tried giving me a bath. I struggled in her grasp, tried biting her, and ultimately cut her. It had felt good to do so. Satisfying. Like a part of my brain was lighting up - fireworks inside my head.

Video games function like that, I think. Their sounds. There is a certain gratification caused by the sounds a game makes when you 'accomplish' something. And when my mother yelped in surprise and pain - that combined with the new blood staining the white tiles in the bathroom - I felt like I'd discovered something new. I'd 'accomplished' something.

You understand what you did, don't you? my father asked me after he finished inspecting my fingers. When he retired his warm hands I shuddered, as if a chill had wrecked me from the inside. I missed his hands, but I also knew he was mad at me, so he wouldn't give me the comfort of his touch. Not when I'd done something as unforgivable as hurting my mother.

I understood what I'd done. But the act felt so very distant. All I'd known the moment I cut my mother was the buzz in my head. The effervescent presence that surfaced at the sight of red. Grima had liked that.

I know, I told my father. I won't do it again.

I was such a liar. All I wanted was to have that feeling of accomplishment again, but I couldn't very well go around cutting people up. I wasn't dumb enough. The next best thrill came from deceit. It was a bit more challenging too - a skill that took some effort and practice to master. But that only made success all the sweeter.

It was candy, for the multi-faced monster living in my shadow.

I don't think I was very good fooling my father though. He knew a thing or two of liars. And he knew me exceptionally well, as is normal for a father.

My father has always had those dark eyes that, when they land on you, you can feel yourself being flitted through. His pupils on me made me wince, they felt sharp on me, like the blade had felt on my mother's skin no doubt.

You know who you hurt?

I had been confused by this question. I knew, I thought. She was standing at the entrance of my room and she was holding a plate with my dinner. She was waiting for my father to finish talking to me to bring in my food. I was grounded, so I wouldn't be dining with them in the kitchen that night. My mother thought this was perhaps too harsh, but she was always biased when it came to me. In sight of this, my father would have to put his foot down and deliver punishments that got harsher whenever my mother acted more tender with me.

And that's why I really regretted cutting her. She was my forgiving angel.

Mom, I muttered. I'd hurt mom.

Then look at her, he told me with a hard voice.

I saw the piece of gauze wrapped around her forearm. The arm I'd cut was limp at her side. This was the moment I felt the foreign tingle - a current of electricity in my veins. It felt like waking up, in the mornings. You know that moment when you stretch your limbs and yawn - the muscles of your face and the rest of your body flexing and it's like somebody injects you with a rush of undiluted early morning awareness. It takes a moment for the sensation to settle. A wave that crashes and foams on your skin. Leaves you all tingly.

This wasn't me waking up, though. Something else was stirring. This was Grima's venom.

I want you to apologize to her, my father said. And you have to promise me you won't do something like that ever again.

I used to think that I could negotiate with Grima. I came to realize though, that the presence I felt, that uncontrollable surge of pure and extreme emotion, wasn't something reason could touch. It was a thing beyond comprehension for me, like clouds or storms. I knew them, but I didn't know what caused them or how they worked. Grima, same as heat or cold, was like a force of nature that I couldn't control. All my regret was buried in a wave of Grima's exhilarating poison.

C'mon. Let me feel this. I need it right now. I need to feel guilty. Let me feel guilty. Let me apologize to her. Let me do it honestly. Come on. C'mon, c'mon, c'mon...

The answer could be positive sometimes, but I knew that this wasn't mercy. Grima knew no mercy. But Grima wasn't cruel either. Grima was without purpose - it was just a beast. Why I was stuck with it, I didn't know.

In the end I apologized and made the promise that my father wanted to hear, but deep inside I knew I had no control over what I did, and I felt a crushing impotence at having so much out of my hands.

My mother left me with a kiss on the tip of every finger I'd accidentally cut after my father got up from the edge of my bed. He looked at her strangely, a little disgusted. He was probably thinking that if she kept coddling me, I would never learn. But to me - Oh, how wonderful was the love of my mother. I'd had every intention of slicing her up even more and still she managed to show me some scrap of tender affection. Either of us could have been the messed up one.

But you couldn't tell that something dark was brewing if you'd gone on a stroll and passed by our house. On the outside everything looked fine, if slightly uncared for. The paint was chipping and the sun had scorched the grass at the front. My father was mourning the loss of the tree at the front that he'd hung a swing on for me; it got struck by lightning during a round of severe storms and burned up. Firefighters showed up and all.

It was a big tree, blazing in the night.

Shame, I thought. Some of the branches had seemed low enough for even me to reach, specially considering if I could climb the rope of my swing. I had never really considered that a viable plan, though. Too public. What if a neighbor saw me and intervened? Ours was a tightly knit neighborhood, with neatly trimmed bushes and people that dressed as the perfect dolls to play house with. No way these people would let anything like suicide stain their lives. Death - what a bummer it would be. If my plan was to succeed I needed to be smart about it. I was very determined for a while, you know? It wasn't simply a matter of doing it because I'd challenged myself. I had felt a need.

As I've explained, there was a contrast between the things my father and I did. He made things. I looked at his hands often, trying to find the magic hidden in the ridges of his palms that had allowed him to carve the blackbird, along with the rest of its winged friends in the collection, that sat on top of the fireplace in our house. Compared to his palms mine were pristine. After the incident in the bathtub with my father's shaving blade, I'd gotten a few shallow cuts as well, but those healed quickly enough. My mother got a scar though.

I would compare her scar to my father's carvings - the craftsmanship, if you will.

I was only deceiving myself though. What craftsmanship? My mother's scar, which for a time I'd admired the curvature and ruggedness of - as if it was abstract art -, was nothing more than the testament to an irascible brat's mind - something still too young and feeble, yet wild. I'd had this need though, as I say. There is something about a hyperactive mind - a manic mind -, the mind of a smart kid - too smart for my own good, I should clarify -, that had made me obsessed with the passage of time, and the difference I made in the world around me.

These are not the thoughts a normal child should be concerned with. At eight though, I was an unstable, manic mess. I had envied all the things my father could do, and felt a crushing shame at how little I affected anything. This jealousy of me towards him made me throw his figurines into the fireplace, once. I broke a chair also and let the pieces burn. I got grounded again.

And yet with all that envy, I also felt an empowering derision for how content with their simple lives the normal people around me seemed. I should say though, even on a dim level, I knew something with me wasn't quite right.

Dangerous thoughts at times would lead me to think that I was this invincible higher being - those same thoughts had given me the courage to jump out of my room's window; that's how I tried killing myself first and how I broke my leg -, and to me it seemed everything happened with the slowness of a pen in the hands of a child just learning to write and read, and he'd been charged with the task of writing down the plot of the universe's life!

I needed life to be faster than that. More interesting, more dangerous.

Sometimes, Grima stole my mouth. Said things that I had barely a second to think about before they tumbled from my mouth, and later I would feel guilty and ashamed I'd let myself be controlled like that.

What am I saying? Why do you do you do this to yourself? What's wrong with you? Stop it. Stop it now. Never speak again. No, I say. Quiet. Keep silent. Stop, stop, stop…

I also used to have episodes of boundless, hysteric energy that lasted for days, and I'd call mom and dad - when they failed to pick up I called any other person willing to at least fake that they were listening. This during my college days. These calls I made could happen at any hour, mostly when I was feeling frighteningly lonely, and they could last hours. I would wake them up sometimes, way past the toll of midnight, ask my mother to sing to me like she used to when she brought me to bed, or I'd be the one singing or rambling off till the crack of dawn. When my parents asked me if something was the matter, I couldn't very well tell them it was Grima.

Though, I think they were beginning to suspect something by then. They'd always been, relatively, very forgiving, but things were stacking up.

Weirder still would have been to tell girls, times that I stopped moving on top of them, still buried deep in the dark and wet of them, that Grima wouldn't let me finish. That I'd lost interest and all I wanted was to hide under my bed, hard-on or no. It wasn't like I'd ever been able to derive any kind of significant emotional fulfillment from any type of sexual act, in any case. Since young - and I started to develop sexualy, mentally speaking, very young - I'd realized that I was near unsatisfiable.

First I started hesitant, about age ten, but only because nobody had educated me on how one goes about masturbation - the time hadn't come, though I was highly aware of desire fluttering all around me.

Once while doing my homework I saw two flies having sex on the white sheet of paper of my notebook. Don't ask me how I knew what I was seeing. Perhaps I knew from documentaries about animals. The point is, this was my big moment of realization; sex was all around me. Even the tiniest beings were at it; maybe even the particles of dust that danced in the light that poured in through my window - maybe they too were doing it and I hadn't even realized. Suddenly I was thinking of pairs of fireflies that I'd seen flying in a strange manner - joined and inseparable.

I was so envious. They did it flying. How would that feel?

The winged animals finger fucking in mid-air... I almost wanted to unzip my pants to touch myself and jump out the window again, but thinking about it hard, it really wouldn't be a very dignified way to off myself. I had some pride, some sense of aesthetics, and a dim wish to at least look good for my parents' sake. I cared at least that much. And besides, my father had screwed a lock in the window and I didn't know where he kept the key either.

So, as nothing exciting was happening in my life I educated myself in this new sensations. These new delights muffled everything else in the world. By the time I got the hang of things, I was still too green. At my age life was an artificial garden, all props and kids dressed up as fairies or elves or trees that picked their noses.

I was the only devil in this play.

When the rest of the kids of my generation caught up with me, this strange and completely abnormal hypersexuality gave me an advantage of sorts.

The girls wanted me alright. So did some boys. And I saw no reason to deny either. Of course I would end up freaking most of my, how should I call them… my partners. That sounds good enough...

Sex was never personal, to me at least. Just an ache I needed to get rid of without caring for time, place, or the number of people. I was into pretty 'advanced' stuff, and the people I used to consider all still seemed to just be learning to ride without training wheels. I, in comparison, went on an off-road Enduro, and I was asking my partners to do wicked mid-air acrobatics at thirteen of age.

And now that we speak of motorcycles, sex wasn't my only source of cheap thrill. Any type of 'sport' that demanded of me to wear a device to keep my neck or spine from breaking in half, I was all for.

No - that was the first word my father uttered after I told him that, instead of a car, I wanted a motorcycle as congratulatory gift. Some weeks before high school graduation.

No, he told me, resolute. You'll give your mother a heart attack. No way I'm buying you a motorcycle. I might as well buy you a casket with wheels.

With more sarcasm than I'd expected from him, such a stoic man, he also told me he'd even help me make it sound like the real thing. Like when I was younger and I'd used the plastic from storage bins and zip ties so my bicycle sounded more aggressive. Like a real motorcycle. On the road to my grave.

Would I be happy then?

I could have told him that it wasn't about being happy. It was just about this ongoing plan I'd had since childhood. Oh yeah. I never gave up on killing myself. The persistent thought of suicide was as that uncontrollable nagging worry one gets when leaving the house and suddenly thinks, Wait, did I lock the door? or maybe, Did I turn off all the lights? Except, for me it was like planning a vacation.

Maybe I'll do it today? Maybe I'll go with the original design. Or maybe something more exciting. Maybe, today I'll kill myself.

You can all agree with me that this is no way to go about living. I could have justified it at one point, thinking that I was living by the motto of 'Live every single day like it'll be your last'. However, the encapsulated intention behind all that I did wasn't hopeful in the least. The only comforting thing about it, if I can call it that, was just thinking of going to rest and maybe never waking up. Never having to live under Grima's will again.

But.

I just gotta get through today, I used to think. Not that bad. I just gotta get home. Get under the blankets. Everything will be fresher when I wake up.

Sometimes it worked, but this was only because of another happiness attack, as I used to think of them. These episodes of hysteric energy or illogical happiness.

When is happiness violent?

Around the time that I left home and went off to college, something began to change in the way my father looked at me. My mother too had started to give me curious, worried looks. I think I've already said that my father had piercing eyes, and that coupled with his unlikely sensibility gave him vantage over me. I didn't mind his eyes as much as I used to though. Their familiar piercing was just a prick by the time I entered senior year and I didn't care much anymore if my parents thought something was up. I guessed I could play it off as a stage of a prolonged puberty, and then I'd move away and nobody would bother me anymore.

Nobody. Not the teachers, and not the counselor who tried convincing my mother that I was depressed even though my scores were exemplary. My mother was an accountant, so to her it was the numbers that really mattered. Hard facts. Grades. She didn't believe in shrinks or ghosts or beasts like Grima. She just smiled whenever she received my report cards and nothing - not my father or dinner or the bills -, nothing mattered to her when her eyes met all the A-plusses.

I liked making her smile.

I want to be an accountant too, mom, I told her once and I doubted even my father could have made her as happy with just words, even though she had bigger plans for me. She told me that somebody like me shouldn't settle for following another's way of life, though she was flattered that I'd said that.

I had so much to give, didn't I know? I was her perfect little man.

But I'm sure she was exaggerating. While I was smarter than the norm, cunning and devious (nobody knew this last thing), I was no future president. I wasn't a leader, though I could pretend and joined the student council for my mother's sake.

She was a sad person, I knew.

There was a secret photo album that I found hidden in my mother's closet once while she bathed and my father was out. This was during a period in our family history in which my father went out a lot. I wouldn't say that my parents fought constantly. There wasn't much to fight about, except a mysterious person named Marc. I used to think there were actually two mystery names; Marc and Marcia. But then I realized that Marc was just short for Marcia. Who was this person? This is where that secret photo album shed light.

At age nine, I found photos of my parents looking much younger. Some photos where simply tucked between the pages, so they fell when I opened the album, like petals fell helplessly at the approach of cold seasons. Grima, the obsessive beast, wanted me to put them in order immediately, so I took everything to my room and spent a good time trying to figure out what pictures where oldest and which ones were more recent. I wanted it all to be in perfect chronological order, but it was hard to determine age based only on the presence or lack of wrinkles on my parents' faces. There was something that helped though. My mother looked slightly fat in some pictures. But I was wrong. She wasn't fat, she was just pregnant.

That was me inside her, I thought. But again, I was wrong. She was holding me in a picture. I was just a baby, at least two years old, and she still had that pregnant belly.

I examined the pictures and watched her stomach swell to the point where she had to place both hands on her back, as if she were somewhat in pain.

I knew that pregnancy could be painful because whenever I managed to truly irritate my mother ( a feat, that) she would tell me how much grief I'd already caused her while she carried me, and that I owed her a moment of peace from time to time.

Go, you miserable child, she'd tell me. Play with your toys or do whatever. Leave me alone.

She would regret her words soon after, though. And I'd extract every bit of affection and snacks I could get from her. I had her in my hands. I didn't like it when she was angry at me, but soon I learned that this would always lead to her spoiling me due to her motherly guilt.

When she came out of the bathroom and went to check on me, and found me with those pictures, I knew the kind of face I had to put on to lessen whatever punishment was coming. But none came. I should have been the one crying, pleading for clemency, instead it was my mother who broke down and snatched the pictures from my naughty fingers. She ran to her room to hide everything again, and I ran after her.

She closed the door before I could follow her inside, but I just banged on the door, determined to make her tell me why the name Marcia was written on the back of some pictures.

Robin and Marcia. Or, Robin, Morgan, and Marcia. Sometimes, Robin, Lon'qu and Marcia.

I wanted to know, did I have a sister? Where were they keeping her? Why was she hidden? Was she bad? What did she do?

I voiced my questions so fast, I wasn't sure she could even understand me. At some point I stopped asking questions and just kept repeating, Mom, mom, mom, mom, mooooooom…!

That's how my father found me when he returned home. Terrorizing my mother. Pounding on her door with my tiny fists, like a demon child.

What's all this? he asked. Where is your mother?

She's hiding inside, I told my father, pointing at the door of their room. She wouldn't tell me where my sister was hidden.

For a moment my father began to look sick, pale. Whenever Marcia was involved though, I found that he was the calmer person. He stooped down and rested on his knees. He held my head between his hands, with his palms covering my ears, so I almost didn't hear him when he spoke again. His voice was different now, not angry or cold, just raw.

Who told you that you have a sister?

Nobody, I told him proudly. I figured it out.

How? he wanted to know.

I was always eager to brag. I told him about the photos I'd found, and how I'd deduced, with my genius abilities, that I must have a sister named Marcia, or Marc for short.

They are the same person, right? I asked my father. Marc and Marcia. I hear you and mom fighting about her.

If my father wasn't looking sick enough, this last bit really afflicted him. My hands flew to my mouth. I wasn't supposed to let either of them know that I could hear them when they fought. There was a reason they chose to do that in private, or mere seconds after I left the room they happened to be in. They could have been more subtle, I suppose, but perhaps they underestimated me as well. Despite them wanting me to believe that nothing was ever wrong with them, I could see a fissure between them. Something dark and deep that ran for miles, and there was no bridge allowing for a meeting of conciliation. They sometimes had to yell at each other to get their messages across the enormous gap.

You don't have a sister, my father told me coldly. She was never born.

Oh, I said. I didn't really know what this meant, but I didn't want to seem not smart after how much I'd bragged about my detective skills. Then I asked, Is that why she cries?

My father let there be silence for a few moments to listen. The sound was muffled by the door, but my mother was definitely crying inside.

He gave me a clipped answer. Yes, he said. Go to your room now.

I started whining, screeching like a dying animal.

What? he snapped.

I want a story.

He gave me another of those exasperated looks of disgust. Not tonight, he said. Get to bed, you have school tomorrow.

He had to get me under the covers himself. He dragged me all the way while I kicked and shrieked.

Morgan! he finally yelled at me. For the love of… Stay quiet!

He had taken hold of my shoulders and shook me twice, effectively scaring me into silence. There was regret obvious in his eyes and he pulled the covers up to my neck, forgetting that I wasn't wearing my pajamas, and left me with a harsh kiss on my cheek. He even left the lights on.

Useless father, I thought heatedly as I stood up and got changed and turned off the lights all by myself. I could hear him trying to coax my mother to open the door and let him in. I don't know if he succeeded later, when I was asleep.

Now, I want to say sorry. I'm sorry, mom and dad. It wasn't me, it was Grima. I have been sick for a long time. I'm sorry for all the things the beast made me do. I never meant to torture you so much.

From the bottom of my heart, I'm really sorry.

A/N:

Personal Reasons: Although the story is mostly fictional, some things described are based on my own experiences with depression and other issues I have gone through and still continue struggling with. This is by far the most personal story I've ever written, but I think I needed to get it out. And, if perhaps there is someone who might feel identified with some things in this story, all the better.

Grima The Shadow: The fact that Morgan refers to his illness as a presence with a name is meant to emphasize the fact that he didn't know what to make of his own abnormal behavior. To him, it seemed there was an outside thing influencing him. He couldn't see it as something within himself, because he was aware that this 'presence' was not something he could control. Therefore, he separated himself from his illness by giving it a name, which allowed him a certain degree of comfort, thinking that he wasn't really a bad person. There was just something controlling him.

The Weather: Morgan experiences an anxiety that spikes to high points when the world moves slowly. This is caused not by normal anxiety, but it's a symptom of mania. This might also be Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Animal Cruelty and Overall Violence: In my story Morgan is very destructive. This, because of his personality. Such a passive facade, as the one I believe Morgan has, made me think that something very extreme may be brewing inside, and I showed that here. Also, dangerously inpatient behavior is linked to a manic state. The violence Morgan presents isn't a result of a sever childhood discipline or trauma though. His behavior's fueled by his depression.

Begging: When Morgan begs of 'Grima' to let him feel guilt, I hoped to express that Morgan knew he was doing something wrong, but he wasn't in control of his moods, so he tries reasoning with himself, but ultimately he can't just will away bipolarity with the power of logic. That's not how it works in real life. I have tried to rid myself of some crippling obsessions of my own with the power of logic as well, but it's not easy. Anybody that tells you it is, is somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about.

Jealousy: The contrasts between Lon'qu and Morgan are pretty clear. When Morgan felt he didn't have what it took to make something like his father did, and he wanted to affect things around him, he resorted to destructive behavior. Same thing with his life; when he felt it was worthless, suicide felt like the thing that could bring a spotlight on it.

The Blackbird: Birds robed in black do not surrender their secrets easily. Symbolically, they're linked to the battle of 'light vs. dark', in reference to the phases of the moon. Nocturnal awareness, which requires a different use of the senses. This isn't particularly meaningful, except I wanted to sprinkle a bit of symbolism for the sake of emphasizing the fact that Morgan is a very secretive person (a liar).

Dangerous behavior is somewhat common in people suffering from bipolarity (more so for bipolar manics), and Morgan received a sense of exhilaration from the lies he told. Lying was his drug as a kid, basically. That was his high risk activity during childhood, aside from jumping out a window.

Suicide thoughts: They might be soothing. For Morgan, it was like planning a vacation. And though he knew he probably wouldn't follow through with his original plans, the thought that there was an easy way out acted as a sedative of sorts. That's how it is for me, at least. Don't know if it makes much sense.

High Expectations and Following Mother's steps: Now I feel slightly terrible because I always call Morgan my MVP. Kind of as a cruel joke, Morgan is Robin's perfect little man. He's good in the game. He has to be good in real life. He's gotta ace everything. That's what I expect of him in the game, and how Robin sees him in real life. Although, she has reasons of her own to coddle Morgan so. Stick around to find out more about that and about Marc (Female Morgan).

P. S. : I'd say something about hyper-sexuality, but these notes are already way too long. Next part, maybe. Don't hold your breath though.