Vagabond Chronicles: The Diary of Charles Xavier

Entry Two

Like the doting hostess, my mother called for whiskey and offered one to our esteemed guest. He turned it down with a wave of the hand, as if it weren't the finest from the cellar, but a glass of water from the rotting well.

"Will you tell me why you've come, sir?" She'd ponderously prompted.

And that was when it all ended.

"Missus Xavier-" I remember the cold-set demeanour he radiated. "I regret to inform you, your husband... He died in an incident out in Alamogordo in New Mexico..."

And from that second, my future skewed off at some unprecedented tangent and the events that have unfolded over the last six months are a direct result of those words.

And at first you're almost not sure how to react.

You're stunned into silence with armies of combating emotions converging on you, rampaging cavalries of anger, despair and confusion making siege on your unguarded heart.

Your mind is torn into a battlefield.

Confliction, that's the first thing you feel, if I was to try and put my finger on it. Fight or flight.

Though your legs have the urge the pick you up, turn you and carry you to the horizon, something within you wants to do quite the opposite. Your fists curl and you feel weighted to the spot like someone's tied you at the ankles and thrown you in a river (with a sack of rocks tangled around your legs).

By god, it feels like you're drowning.

And all of this is internalised. Selfish thoughts of what it means for you hits you next. And it hits you like a freight train.

Fear, that's what follows the revelation that the future isn't bright and a dark tunnel draws into focus ahead of you. That's when the wave of emotion finally overtakes you.

Then you snap out of the tempest in your own mind and the tears begin to fall.

All of this happens in an instant, a blur and words escape you.

When I finally returned to reality, I heard a blubber to the side of me. It was a sudden blurt, followed by some reserved sniffling. I saw my mother's face crumple. Someone who was a paradigm of such strength, honour and beauty had been reduced to a contradiction of that.

Marko was unfazed. I hated him.

Flight. That was the reaction I eventually elected for.

I burst out of the room, barely able to see where I was going because my eyes were so bleary with tears. I tripped up the stairs and pattered all the way to my room without stopping. I threw myself on the bed, rolling in the bedclothes until I had buried my head.

I cried. I cried until it physically pained me.

My mother, too wrapped up in her own grief to check on me, left me alone to suffer that evening. And for that, I'll never forgive her. For that fact she made me feel completely alone.

I fell asleep with red raw eyes, a twitching heaving chest and tear-slick cheeks.

The next passing days were indistinguishable. My existence became nothing but survival. I went into complete shutdown. Wake up, eat, drink, study, sleep. It was a pitiful existence, but I wouldn't let myself think. I wouldn't let myself hope.

I was in denial. But I was seven years old.

At the age of seven, the world snatched my father from me, I'll let that sink in.

Is that something anyone of that age should have to suffer?

It was cruel chaos that wiped him off the face of the planet.