transcendental
I remember my father had been a proud man, but he had also been a fool, who had believed he could face the world head on and win. I'm inclined to believe otherwise – the world is an evil place, there are always going to be something out there to best you. It was just unfortunate luck that what betrayed him in the end was his own body.
So there I stood on the hilltop, my heart beating heavily in my chest, watching a girl the picture of my mother stand on my father's grave. I doubt she even knew that our mother was a drug junkie, choosing to spend most of her time in a world not her own. I felt the wind stirring around me, raising goosebumps on my arms and the back of my neck. My hair tossed about my face, flying into my eyes.
Inside my heart beat, outside I wore a mask. I'd always been good at masks, you see, and pretending that I didn't care was just another trick of my trade. Pretending to care wasn't hard – this man had left my mother and I when I was two, so I'd never really had a chance to know him, but my run ins with him in later life had been purely business and had given me the chance to stomp on and kill off any of my childish wishes of what-ifs.
We carried the same traitorous genes, the same illness that had claimed him was also trying to claim me, but I'd be damned if I let it.
The same blood ran through our veins and I saw part of him in me, and like that old fool and yet unlike him, this illness would not beat me.