Ouroboros

Chapter 1

My name is May Harper, I am married to Adrian Harper and have been for about a year now. To be honest at first I hated it and him, our marriage was set up by my parents. Apparently Adrian's father was a friend of theirs and the marriage was used to "unite our families". Our wedding used to be the most miserable day of my life but then he took me home. He showed me around, brought me to his library, and cooked me a home cooked meal. I've never had that before. My parents wouldn't even have our servants do that for me. "It's a waste of manpower" they said. As if what they had their servants do was any better. As the night went on I learned more about him. He liked a few of the same authors I did, he had a huge library filled with books I haven't read before. We ended up sitting down to talk about our favorite books. The subject changed a lot of time, it went from books to our relationships with our parents to the slits on his mouth that kept him in a permanent smile.

"It's . . . I served in the military for a time." He seemed to trail off for a moment.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have asked."

"No, No, it's fine but I don't think I'm ready to talk about that yet."

It was perfectly understandable that he didn't want to talk about it so I let it go and haven't brought it up since. It's not that I don't want to know but the looks he had in his eyes made me feel awful. I changed the subject and talked to him more about my parents and my life.

"I used to have a friend, her name was Anna" It's been awhile since I talked to anyone about her.

"We met at the private school I went to, I always thought she was so pretty. So did all the guys at our school especially after we grew older."

"What was she like?"

"Oh she was so energetic! We'd run around town after school going on all sorts of adventures."

Adrian just smiled at me, it made me feel warm. It made me feel safe. I couldn't help but sit a little closer to him as I continued to talk about Anna. I told him about how one time during freshman year of High School we ran around town trying to find our other friend's kitten who ran away. We ended up finding him in a junkyard and got chased around by some stray dogs. I ended up ruining my uniform and got yelled at for hours by my parents but they couldn't ruin my mood. I felt alive around her and that ended up with people going around spreading rumors about us. We never had feelings for each other like that but that sure as hell didn't stop people from talking about us like we did. I didn't want to talk more about her. I didn't want to even think about the last time I saw her so I just looked up to Adrian.

"What about you? What was your childhood like?"

"It used to be nice, I used to live on a nice farm with loving parents. We didn't have much but we were still happy." He pauses for a moment smiling as he thinks about his old farm.

"Then they struck oil and got rich, we moved away from our old farm to a big ol mansion where my parents left me so they could run off to parties."

"They weren't abusive or cruel or anything like that, they just weren't around as much. Only got worse when my mom got knocked up by a friend from one of those parties."

"How'd your dad react?"

"He didn't seem to care, he raised my brother like his own. I don't think my brother or I met his real dad, never asked my mom about it either". I found that part a little odd, if my mom suddenly got pregnant from another man my dad and I would have A LOT of questions. I started to have an idea as to what happened but . . . I didn't want to say it out loud.

"So . . . What do you think happened?"

"My parents and their friends threw a lot of "parties" so I think it's fair to assume that's where he came from."