The woman, who, at the age of a few days went and left me on the door step of Karl and Sophie Kimblee, who had only a grown daughter, and for some god-unknown reason decided they wished to raise the screaming foundling they found on a freezing November morning, and for another truly unknown urge, named it Zolf Jork. I wonder if that is what made me so different… does the name make the man? Really, Karl and Sophie were never meant to raise children. Karl was a dairy and sheep farmer, and thought he was the head of his house.
Really, he was, and he was not a bad man… only a very gruff one. Perhaps when my ancient sister had been a girl, he would have been a fine man; maybe he was patient, and fun. However, by the time I came around, he was a short-tempered creature, and I soon learned the bulls liked having their ascension to ox-hood, far better than my father liked anything I could say to him. So I avoided him, and spent my time watching the people who came through our sleepy town… most of all, I watched the Renard girls, Trisha and her twin sister Cassidy. They were both very beautiful, but I didn't care about that…. I liked that their mother and father were kind to me. Dimitri Renard, despite having about the lamest last name I knew of, was a laughing, joking man, and all I had to do to get an invitation to accompany him on anything he did was stand long enough. Now, this story could get worse for me… if my father had been jealous of Dimitri… but no, they had been childhood friends, and I suppose the old man was grateful to have me off his own hands… if I finished my chores, I was free to do anything I wanted.
Therefore, I would milk the cows, run the milk down into the cellar, and run to accompany Dimitri to his chores, which had to do with horses usually… then he would walk me back to the path that ran between our farm and his, and look at our house for a long while. Then he would ask me if I wanted to have dinner with his family. I would always say I would like that very much, and off we'd go. I suppose had I been older, I would have felt I was intruding, but the Renards never acted as if I was anything but part of the family, and I was always glad to spend time away from my drunken mother and distant father. And the girls treated me like a brother… the only people to talk to me at school until I passed puberty.
I decided I wanted to raise horses for a living, and went home and told that to my mother, who laughed, and took another drink. She had already been quite drunk by that time in the evening, and so was in the mood I like her best in, drunk enough to talk to, but not enough to get angry and hit me for no reason.
"Fine, Zolf… you do that if you wish." She had said, as she smoked and cooked dinner. All food to me in that house tasted of cigarette ashes… and for that reason, I never did like smokers. She had been pleased, I knew, to hear that… and later that night as I slept in the dark, low celinged room I spent my childhood in, I could hear her talking to my father… pleased about something.
"He's found something normal to be interested in." My mother whispered, I couldn't hear my father's response, but soon my mother went on. "I know… I hoped he'd out grow those things… they make me uneasy to look at… Its amazing he can move his fingers." I looked at my hands, with their strange geometric scars, and wondered once more about a woman with black hair and amber eyes, and why she left me.
Maybe I would have been a fine horse farmer… but then one day my point of view changed when a state alchemist passed through, and I caught sight of him, in a resplendent uniform and shinning watch. I ran to get him water when he asked, and when he saw my hands, he told me what I had always wanted to know… what those signs were… that they were alchemy seals. I had no idea what he meant, but decided I wanted to know more… but how to find out in my little backwater town?
The splinter suddenly pulls me out of my old memories and I growl, pulling my arms with some difficulty higher, the heavy stocks painfully weighing my hands, and I bite the skin until it breaks. I pull back, and see the splinter, so I lean in again, my mouth already bloody and neatly bit off the skin, spitting it out. Now my mouth is quite red, but I'm content.
Back to the past… I had learned a great secret that day, and at the age of eight, I broke my father's heart, by going and asking him flat out, where did I come from. Sophie had always been honest, I was not her birth son, but she assured me I belonged where I was… sometimes lovingly and sometimes while screaming and throwing a pail of wash water out the window at my head. But I had never asked a question… and now I went to Karl, turned my hands up, and asked.
"Why do I have these?" his eyes darkened, and he took a drink out of the jar of moonshine he was nursing.
"'ell if I know." He said, and turned back to the radio, on it a man was talking about the best days to go fishing… something my father had never taken me along to do. I persisted a little too long though, asking the same question just a little differently, and finally he growled, and smacked me hard enough to cloud my vision.
"Damn Devil gave 'em to yeh." He said, slurring, "So yeh'd ask yer questions." He finished. I didn't know at the time he was just trying to get me to go away, and left very unsure, and slightly limping, since I still couldn't see quite straight. I decided that this devil must be very dim-witted, since it had taken me eight years to ask such a question, and lay on my bed. I slept for four days, and when I awoke, my mother was crying beside the bed… apparently I had been hit harder than even old Karl knew. She was wailing, maybe she had said something or another, but I couldn't hear her, and I stared at the oil lamp on the table beside my bed, the flame was singing to me, and its voice sounded like the strange talk the dark boy at school said before he ate lunch. I closed my eyes and slept; unaware that my mother was sure I was dying.
By the next week, though, I was up and moving again, but Karl had started to get distant from me, and would ignore me at length, then one day I'd look up to find him staring at me with a mixture of worry and blatant fear. I tried not to see him, and went about growing. Years passed, and he became more and more worried… at first I thought he was worried I'd ruin him… but now, here, I can realize he probably knew that I'd turn out wrong.
Within a few years, I had started to get dreams… now I know they showed me the future, although never in a way I could, or still can, understand… I saw then, Ishbal, and many, many explosions… but now… I see men with sharp edged teeth and grins that seem to devour me… I wonder if that is what awaits me in hell. I sigh and lick the blood on my hand so it doesn't stain this ugly uniform.
Suddenly, my first kiss comes to me… I misremember the name of her, although she is the ruler of my life now… It's sad when you have only one love of your life… she was so plain, but I had learned she liked me, and was charming to her. She was a daughter of a farmer who had many fields, and when Karl saw me with her, I knew it did his heart good, hoping she and I would be sweethearts, and someday give him grandchildren… something my ancient sister never had… despite being married to a brash young farmer, who insulted me when he saw me, and I sometimes imagined meeting awful accidents.
But, although I was nearly fourteen then, plenty old enough to start courting in the town's eyes, I didn't care for marriage, and I led her on for months, before one day, beneath a peach tree in her garden, I kissed her. It was a damp kiss, even if it was my first, I was almost sure of what to do, and he mouth tasted like a mix of dust and cold lemonade. I pulled back, and she looked at me through love filled eyes.
I ran.
The next day, at school, I ignored her… but within a week, I was back… she had made me her sweetheart, despite myself, and I would do anything to again kiss her… and I did… beneath trees, behind barns are corn husking bees, and finally, one day she and I shared the loss of our virginities behind her house. The next day I asked her father for his permission to marry his daughter.
But her parents wanted better for her than the crazy child of a drunk and a sheep farmer… so he told me never to see her again… nine months later my son, Andrew, came into the world… with a scream, and two smiles on his parents faces.
I stop thinking… the thought of my son, who I haven't seen since I went to Ishbal is stabbing at me, and for the first time, I'm a little afraid of my death… and I see why my father pushed me for a grandchild.
She and I…. EMILY! I suddenly can remember her name… despite marrying her; I still forget her name…. But never her face… plump and unusually wide eyed. She had dark hair, and crystal blue eyes…. Andrew had my eyes… but his grandparents wanted to raise him… They pushed her to give him up… then to give him to them… and then let me marry her, but she was already disgraced by his birth.
As for me, I didn't care. Andrew was such a difference from anyone I had known, trusting, and dependant… I sometimes held him for hours, only giving him up when his screams for a meal outweighed the pleasure of his very presence… he had my seals on his chubby infant hands, and his mother would whisper to him he'd learn alchemy… and I'd say he would when I did… maybe by the same teacher. We grew up together… my son and I. He drank in my words, and I drank in his trust… but the alchemist who had told me what my seals were still haunted me, and one day I left my budding family to go to the military base in the south and learn.
I joined up… and came back half a year later to the anger of my in-laws, and Emily's eyes, which clearly knew I'd come back to her, as I always had, and would ever time I could. She owned me… she knew this, and this made her confidant and strong… while it drained me like a sponge. I now could do several things with my alchemy… including my favorite… the change of a human into a bomb.
My Andrew had learned to walk… and after that would not allow my habit of holding him for long hours, wanting to see the world, even if it was just his grandparent's many fields, and the creek where I had created his life inside Emily-of-the-blue-eyes.
I mourned for this loss, but discovered that I loved showing him everything. I taught him to throw mud in precise missiles, and I taught him how to catch tadpoles in his chubby hands. I loved this time with him, and found myself able to smile and laugh, the same way Dimitri had when he taught me these things. Andrew was my lost youth, and he was both my son, and myself. My son was a spiritual experience for me… and when I prayed, sometimes I wondered if he wasn't a god in disguise. my problems left me when he was laughing and tugging my clothes with his grubby, sticky hands.
I knew Beth, my mother in law, hated me for leaving, and enjoyed saying how useless I was… but my military pay was enough for Emily and I, when Andrew was turning three, to buy our own land… and I built her the house she wanted… far from her parents.
Then I left…. I left her often… to go to base, sometimes just to be alone. But I came back when I couldn't stand being away… she was a drug to me, and one that my system could not live without… She knew this, of course… there wasn't, and probably still isn't, much that Emily didn't know. So she never worried when I left, because I always came back.
I stop thinking again, to sigh and wish Emily's warm arms were here to comfort me. But she is not here…. And I will never see her or my son again… Oh Andrew. I can almost see you growing, my son, and my youth. I can see you growing… see you learning the things I learned…. You are almost twenty, and I bet you're the handful I was… I bet you've got those who love you… those who envy you too…. Because despite my insanity, I was envied… I was considered handsome I suppose. As a young man, I was wiry and strong… and my hair was, as it is now, my pride, always long and in a ponytail or a braid. As I said before… most people ignored me in my childhood, but puberty was kind to me, and soon I was what I have been ever since., and soon I did have many girls… I blame it on the hair… I swear they couldn't leave it alone.
I was sent to Ishbal when my son was four… I haven't seen him since, but I got letters from Emily, describing his growth… and as I killed children and women, and men in Ishbal, as I helped in that massacre, I slept well, able to visit my family in my dreams. The Ishballians at that time just seemed to be another enemy, and it was easy for me to hate them… but I had not yet reached the point where my lust for killing was too much to bare.
But soon, the desert air began to make my eyes water, and I found my vision would become burry, then clear for no real reason. So I went to the healer's tent, and Cassidy… who now had married a young man from our town named Christopher Rockbell, looked into my eyes, dropped liquid in them, and shone lights from all angles, then handed me a vial of green pills.
"You have the Ishballian eye disease, Kimmie." She said, then blinked. "You must have Ishballian in you somewhere." But I didn't hear her, and didn't need to, I ran outside and threw up several times… not from guilt, but pure shame… I COULDN'T be one of these strange dark skinned creatures that I faced on the battlefield every day. I ran back to my tent and stared at myself in a shaving mirror a comrade of mine, Maes Hughes, loaned me… no… I was as pale as ever, lighter, in fact, than many of the other solders… my eyes were still amber, not red, and they didn't even look bloodshot from the drops.
I was a man on the edge… I felt like nothing was worth it anymore, and killed easily. I enjoyed it, much more than I had before… why, I'm not sure… but mind you, at that time it was not my comrades that I killed… I had not gone to that extreme yet, and my sense of honor was unaffected by this anger that I felt. I still only killed other, well armed, men… I had no fear of the Ishballians bullets, in fact I was shot many times, although never anywhere vital… and Cassidy always gave me the quizzical look she had offered when we were children, and I surprised her by doing something reckless and stupid.
She was still my best friend in that place… and had she told me to go and shoot myself in the head for my sins, I would have done so immediately… I suppose I've always been the type to allow someone to order me around… and both Cassidy and Emily fit that part well… I imagine most male adoptees are like that, searching for a powerful female figure in their lives. So I would fight, and I would be wounded, and I would come back to Cassidy to be put back together. And I soon learned many things… how to sew wounds shut for one, and how to treat many diseases, as Cassidy and her husband both treated anyone who needed it… Ishballian or solder. The Ishballians would look at me with fierce eyes, and I would smile back, and wave an inked hand… sometimes earning a hit from Cassidy for scaring the children.
But… as they say only the good die young (does that mean my execution is NEVER going to come up?) and one day, an order was given for Cassidy and Christopher to be executed… I wasn't there at the time… and when I came back that night, and went to the tent, absently pulling a bullet out of my wrist, there was nothing but a blood pool in the tent. I ran to find out what had happened, and found Maes standing beside a thin, puking private, who had tears streaming down his face… it didn't take me long to realize this was the executioner. I hit him as hard as I could, then went back to my bunk… determined to make their deaths worth something.
The next morning started my personal massacre. I killed everyone that I wanted to… women, children, men, and even my own comrades… what did I care? I didn't feel mortal… I was injured many times, but I would clean and sutre my own wounds, then get up and do it again… And so I went, until the end of the war when, to appease the families of my victims, I was dragged into a war crimes trial…
No, I feel no guilt… I need not feel it. Obviously the military does, since they put me here… sure I killed my comrades too, but didn't they wait until the war was won for them before they put me away for my "crime". I will die soon, and I am ready… I have left something wonderful… a boy who I hope will not be the man I am… but who is my blood, my flesh, and most importantly, will take care of my Emily-of-the-blue-eyes.
Oh Emily… I am a sentimental fool. Have you already found someone new to care for you? I stare at the ceiling of my cell and wonder what my victims would think of my distinctly sappy thoughts. Emily, my Emily, you are running through my mind again. Is it strange that I think for my wife the same way I do the explosions I love causing? I can become hard from the sound of an explosion in the distance… and I used to wonder if I would ever suddenly kill Emily in the throes of passion…. But she never shied away from my inked hands… she even licked the fresh lines, after I had them inked in to make my alchemy more powerful…. I fell onto my knees in front of her, and writhed when she did that to me. She laughed, and dragged me upstairs… now I wish I had her to control me again.
And that… oh voice that I hear in my head, is my autobiography, such as it is… I have had several stays of execution, but I await it still… My death is to be by firing squad, and having been shot several times, I wonder how long the death will take… long ago I learned to turn pain into pleasure… it was one of the things that made me such a faithful solder… and the sound of a gun is almost as euphoric as a strong explosion. I could almost hear… wait… that's not imagination. There are explosions outside… I can feel myself grinning… Such fun to come along…. Hope I get to help out.