Rain, rain, rain, fucking rain, pouring like God's piss onto the London streets. Its not even bloody cold, it's muggy here all the time, like the pollution mixed in with all the moisture and just seeps into everything. At least in Canada it was cold and crisp when it rained. I tell you, this city is a downright pisspot. But nonetheless, it's been my home for ten years now. I visit my mum in British Columbia once a year at least, and I stayed with her for two years when I was thirteen, a burgeoning teen, and apparently too much of a handful for my poor pop. Hes simple man, really, and adolescent girls aren't really his gig. He kept trying to take me out to shoot when I was mopey and brooding, and when I relayed to my mum that he was convinced killing something would make me feel better, she snatched me right back for a while. Even so, he's always been decent.

But my mum, now she's a saint. That woman knew how to live. And cook. She was native Canadian, and she passed down all her recipes to her, roasted salmon and pine nut butter with rosemary flatbread, the smells that make me irrevocably homesick. When she was twelve, she shot her pig of a father and fled, but I don't think anyone even reported it to the police. From what I had gleaned, her pa was a downright demon, raping her and her sisters, beating my grandmother and leaving them all to starve while he gambled away every cent of the combined paychecks.

But that's just what Ive overheard, my mum always kept real quiet about it. After she left Canada for while, she traveled around and always had her nose in some sort of trouble. Getting in the middle of a revolution in Iran, making thousands in Vegas only to lose it all on an underground 'business' venture in Chile, and then she made her way all the way over to Russia, where she met my pa. she was right in the middle of burning down the house of some bastards that tried to play grabass one too many times and was about to get shot, when he stumbled out of an alleyway, blind drunk, and fell in love as soon as he saw her. He says he knew it as soon as he gazed with bloodshot eyes at the wild woman before him, that he would love her for the rest of his life. He says he knew she would stop loving him down the road too, but that just made him love her more. I like to think someday Ill fall in love like that, that Ill know it as soon as I see him. Or her, I try to keep an open mind about these sorts of things.

I guess I inherited a wild streak from my mum, but Ive got my dads drinking and bad habits. He's dying of cancer of I speak, but hell be puffing on a cigarette when his dying breath leaves his blackened lungs. I've got more of a tendency for the lighter stuff. By lighter, Im implying powder. I mean cocaine does the trick now and again, but speed is my weakness. Egawds, just thinking it makes my mouth water for the sugary drip of orange pills in the back of my throat.

But that violence, I blame my mum for that. Its bad luck too, everyone in my familys got the damn poorest luck of anyone I've ever had the misfortune to cross. From one auntie or uncle to the next, theyre all drunk and dirt poor, drunk and sinking into dementia, blathering on about all the bastards that screwed them over.

But Im different. I got screwed over, big time. When I was eighteen, someone I was real close to, someone who I was good friends with screwed me over. Twelve times, to be exact. Ill speak plainly. The bastard tied me up in his closet, then beat and raped me for two days straight. Afterwards, he took off for America to live with his mum and never see anyone again. I kissed my fantasies of losing my virginity to a Grecian hunk goodbye, picked myself up and stumbled home. Three months later, my mum died in a car accident. My dad hasn't been quite the same since. I tried to comfort him, telling him he hadn't even seen her in years, they never spoke. But he just shrugged and took a sip of vodka, and said, "it don't matter. Enara, people like your mother don't just grace the earth every day. The whole world misses a beat when she is taken from it, whether they talk to her or not." His Russian accent is so thick when he drinks it's impenetrable to understand, but to me it sounds like home.

And he was right. Some people are different, and I'm one of those people. At some point around that time, I decided I wasn't going to lie down and take it. Maybe I was in a shitty position, and me and all my family were terribly misfortunate, but I was going to change that. I knew I wasn't going to start over and mess up generations of violent people by going to church and performing acts of charity, so I figured I'd start with what I knew best. I worked a whole summer and trained in running, martial arts and boxing while all my friends applied to colleges. At the end of the summer I bought a plane ticket to San Francisco and staked out, waiting for him. When he was alone in the house, I taught him a lesson he probably still gets nightmares about. I expected to feel remorse, or regret, as if it hadn't solved any problems, but at some point I came to the realization that he was never going to rape again. There was something there.

So I settled back into England, moving from my fathers house in the countryside to London, working and going to school for a while, but it didn't scratch the itch. I felt restless all the time. I ran ten miles every night, but I was still uncomfortable somehow, fidgety. One night, I went to a party with a few friends, cracked open a bottle and everyone got as rowdy as would be expected. Later, I heard screaming, muffled from the upstairs bedroom while taking a piss and I dared to investigate. Upon pressing my ear to the door, I heard the unmistakable sounds of some poor soul being taken advantage of. I kicked the door down, dragged the boy around by his hair and threw him down the stairs. That night, I realized my calling. At last, the craving was sated and I returned home and slept more soundly than I had in a year.

I like to think I'm avenging my mother too, and a few of my aunties. The streak of misfortune that runs in my veins isn't going to evaporate, Ill always wake up sweating, thinking Im still locked in a closet with my own panties stuffed in my mouth. But at the very least, I can prevent it from happening to others.

This is not for the faint or weak hearted, mind you. This is the story of how I saved London, met my best friends and fell in love. But this is not the story with a happy ending. Well, not for me at least.

But hey, chin up and all.