"You shouldn't apologise." He sniffed, finally shaking himself free of the position he had been in for
over half an hour. "It should be you who loses it, you have just seen the guy that most likely killed
your grandfather. And his son is sitting right here. Any normal person woul..."
"But we're not normal, are we?" I interrupted, sliding his feet onto the floor so I could sit.
"Fair point." He mused. "Have you ever wondered whether in fact we are the normal people? And
they are the abnormal? They are stuck in their own world of complete ignorance and arrogance,
whereas we are free... in the metaphorical sense."
"Ignorance is bliss." I said calmly.
"Bliss?! Bliss?! Are you kidding? Bliss is killing people just because they are homophobic?!"
"It was a quote! Calm!" I placed my hand on his arm,
He froze, his eyes filled with fear.
I quickly let go. "Phil? ... Phil?"
He shook his head, like clearing a memory. "Nothing. It was nothing."
"No. Tell me." It came out with more demand than I meant it to, he gulped and began to talk.
"My dad..." He cleared his throat. "My father used to tell me I was never good enough, I would
never become who he wanted me to become. I had to be the best, not simply better. I had to be the
best. I had to be a winner. Not just win once or twice. He pushed me at everything. He pushed me
with school and homework, he used to make me guess what the homework would be, or the next
topic would be so I could do the homework early and hand it in minutes after it was even set -
because I had done it the night before. He used to ring the teachers for a list of the subjects that I
would tudy over a year and force me to learn every single one over two weeks. Stupid pop quizzes
and ridiculous tests. To an outsider he would just seem as an over eager and over proud father. But
to me, he was a monster. Not only would he preach to me that homosexuality was wrong every
minute possible, he would preach to me the importance of their extermination. He made me learn
facts and figures of the first execution leading right to the most present. I can real of names and
numbers of people killed in the month of August in 1986 or the number of whippings that took
place on the 23rd of March 2000." He took a deep breath, as if to give him a breath of confidence.
"And then if I was not good enough, which was pretty much all the time, he would punish me. He, as
a renowned executioner and the fact he carried out punishments for homosexuals, would punish
me beyond the realms of what you would believe. He would lock me in the basement surrounded
by pictures of the dead, decapitated and all, which supposedly would teach me that I must be
superior to such vermin. Or he would test the whips or the knives on me, the least painful would be
a good belt around the head. I would go into school with bruises and welts, I would have to do gym
in just my shorts which revealed the cuts and lashes, but no one would say a word. Not one single
word, not to save my skin. They were clouded by the fact my father cleaned up the streets and
brought peace to the city; not even my closest friends even mentioned my wounds."
He began to shake, but I could not move, I was frozen in shock and in a state of disbelief.
"The news reported said his job was challenging." He spat. "I often used to wonder whether he had
any remorse over any atrocity he had committed, but I realise that if he can do all of that to his own
son, he would not hesitate to kill a stranger. I would have thought he would erase me from his
memory, force everyone to forget I even existed. Or maybe, someday, he will manipulate this to
show that he is dedicated and that nothing can stop him."
"What did he do when you came out?"
"He had this routine of coming into my room at any time in the morning, when I was asleep, usually
ranging from 1 to 4, and would shout at me "ARE YOU GAY?" to wake me up. He didn't do this
because he thought I was, it was merely a method of 'character building' or whatever else he liked
to call it. One morning I had finally got fed up, I seem to recall it was the morning after we had had a
row over me being friends with a homosexual and not handed him over to be killed; I mean, come
on, who did he think I was? He was too blind to even see he wasn't just a friend, he was my
boyfriend. The first guy I could trust. The first guy I ever loved. Anyway, he had said in the row that
he would kill this guy, or better still make me kill him, he called it a way of initiation. So,
overwhelmed with emotion, I screamed "YES" in his face. His eyes filled with something terrible,
something way beyond normal hatred or disgust. His face was full of malevolence, his body rigid.
The next thing I knew he had thrown me down the stars and was kicking me as I lay on the floor.
Then, giving me less than 5 minutes to pack, he threw me out. I managed to pack my credit cards
and papers, and began a new life. Though nothing can be completely started over, especially with
this last name."
"Do you think he killed my grandfather publicly?" I asked after a silence grew and grew until I could bear it no longer.
"Most likely. But if not, he would have suffered a greater deal more."
