Behind Time

Prologue

    Perhaps it all started in a small village, located somewhere far away from civilization, hidden on the outskirts of the country, old and nearly forgotten, or at least, that's what I think.

    In there, an equally little boy was running around aimlessly, picking out flowers, playing in the field for the lack of better environment, and doing all the things a person so small could manage in a place like that. That boy was me.

    I miss that time, really, when you didn't have to accept a hard reality you would later endure and all the pain that's yet to come. It was simple, lovely even, when you could let yourself be a little child, with two alive and functioning parents, who would be able to take care of you, not the other way around, that was far too soon. Not that it really matters anymore.

    Perhaps it made me into the person I am today, even though that's not really saying much, seeing as, to this day, I remained to be no one, with nothing to provide for myself and all that's left of my family.

    Even the few people around me got used to seeing me as a walking failure, that no working environment or lover could stand. I, myself, got used to seeing the reflection of their words and assumptions in the mirror. All up until it no longer were meaningless assumptions. All up until I haven't had the time to realize that the truth was eating me alive, sucking out every and all the faith in myself and in the world surrounding me.

     It was the time that I accepted a 21 year old nobody that I've become. Surely, it sounds foolish. 21 years of life. At one hand, not a lot of us have it all together, more like little actually do, but other ambitious individuals like me have had the opportunity to take a step toward a dream, a future. Meanwhile, for me, even such little thing has become totally unattainable, unreachable, unreal. Not with all the responsibility that I have to carry on my shoulders anyway.

    To not get carried away with no context, I was born in a small city on the east coast called Cottonville. Together with my parents, we occupied a small cottage that we could barely afford, if not for my father's mind and crafty hands, us all being somewhat properly fed and dressed, with almost no worries of losing the last piece of living we had. My father was a small shop owner then. One of his favorite things to do was make his own personal scent candles, and, thankfully, he's had the opportunity to make a living out of it.

    Apart from candles with usual smells like lavender, mint or vanilla, many people came to him with scents of meaning to them for recreation. They would describe or show samples and he skillfully made their own aroma of memory come to life.

    I loved to visit him at work, looking at the way he carefully and accurately mixed the ingredients together, putting the wax in differently shaped jars, sealing them and writing an individual note to put on top of every single one. I never had the chance to read them nor would I ever want to intrude in someone's privacy like that. I knew that some of them were extremely personal.

    My father, Frederick, was and still is a good man. A good man with a bad destiny. After the death of my mother ten years ago, he's never been the same. Their love was something to look up to, their dedication to each other throughout the 30 years of their marriage. They stayed by one another's side through good and bad, thick and thin, sad and joyful. They were happy, up until that wicked day that my mother's, Maria's, life was taken. And everything changed. The turning point of my entire life happened.

    We never found out the details, but she was found by my father while coming back home from work. The image of the love of his life beaten to death and thrown out close enough to the woods for the wolves to finish the job traumatized him for the rest of his life. Ever since that day, he's not gotten a good night's sleep, and his condition took a drastic turn to the worse. And not long after that, he could no longer tend to his business, leaving the job to the apprentice that he gave tutelage to for the last couple of months.