My childhood was never a happy one. My mother died giving me life, and my father always resented me for being the one to live. He sank into depression and became a very devoted drunk. Every Monday without fail, he’d come home drunk. Never wine or rum. All to expensive for my drunken centaur father. No, he drank cheap ale, whiskey, and moonshine.
My entire young life, I saw him, watched him, cowered from him. Whenever he was drunk, I always tried to hide. He was a mean drunk. He’d shout at me, throw things at me. I have always thanked the good Lord that he was a horrible shot.
The worst day was when I was 10. My father threw a dark green bottle at me as I cowered next to a wall. The bottle missed me and shattered, throwing glass everywhere. Some of the glass cut my exposed left flank, sinking deep into the flesh. I whimpered, trying to stay silent and allow him to forget me. To move was to rekindle the white-hot anger that flared whenever he was drunk. I waited until he went into his room, the only bedroom in our tiny cottage, and collapsed on his bed. I limped down to the apothecary. He was an old man, stooped with age. His eyes were pale blue, seemingly covered with cataracts. But he was sharp in mind and even sharper of hearing. When I got to the door of his small shop, even though it was nearly midnight, he opened the door. “Hullo, lad,” he said kindly. “Something you need”
I looked up at him, wondering how he could have known. I told him that I had managed to get some glass in my flank, sobbing the entire time. He frowned at me, but said nothing, asked nothing. I was grateful. I hated having to explain the fact that it was my own father who had injured me. The apothecary reached out a hand, gently touching my injured flank. As soon as his fingers touched the wound, I unintentionally cried out. The flank has a lot of nerve endings in it, making it very sensitive.
The old man tsked, then set to work pulling the glass from my flesh and sewing up the wounds. “Take care to keep those clean,” he said when he was done. “Don’t want an infection.” He sent me home, wishing me well. I slipped into the house and slept in the main room of our small cottage, trying to keep my flank off of the floor as I laid there. The next morning, my father didn’t seem to notice that anything had happened. He simply had a nasty hangover and an even worse mood. He looked at me, snarled a curse, and asked me what I was doing, not being ready for “work.
“Work” was how my father referred to his thievery. He had taught me to be a pickpocket. I was good at it, possessing swift, nimble fingers, but I hated it. I only did it because I knew that it was either do that which I hated or risk his anger, which meant more than just a lashing with a leather switch. Him being mad was something that was best to avoid at all costs.

It was his stealing that killed him. I was 14, I think, when it happened. He had decided to stealing a golden jewel-encrusted goblet from the town mayor. The morning he got ready to try, I had a very bad feeling swirling around in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t dare tell my father though. He would have skinned me alive for “jinxing” the job. He always was too superstitious for his own good. We did the job that night, as soon as the sun had full set. My father did all of the actual work; I was just the lookout. He was so set on his goal that he paid no attention to the danger that lurked just outside the door. I could hear the sound of guards. I warned him in the man he had taught me to use: a sound not unlike a pigeon’s coo. But he didn’t listen to me. The guards dashed up and grabbed me by the arms. I knew better than to cry out. Four guards stood watch over me, one armed with a crossbow. If I tried to run, which I wasn’t dumb enough to try, he’d put a bolt through my heart. Only a few moments later, the remaining guards came out, pulling my father with them. He spat and cursed , but his feet were shackled together. They took the two of us before the visiting magistrate and told him of our crimes of trespass and theft. As soon as the mayor, who had been sitting at dinner with the magistrate, heard this, he turned beet red and began shouting at us, flinging vile curses as well as saliva and bits of unchewed food. I lifted my face and shut my eyes, trying to block the smell of the wine that floated on his breath. One of the guards saw that as a sign of impertinence and slapped me across the face. My father whinnied quietly. Not a word of comfort, but a rebuke for allowing myself to be slapped.
I waited in silence for the magistrate’s decision. He took a deep breath and said slowly, “For such a crime as stealing from the mayor of such a respectable town, a just punishment would indeed be the death of said criminals.” I stared at him in horror. I didn’t want to die. All that I might have looked forward to was being hungry, more beatings and broken bones, but at least I would be alive.