I am Gideon: Chapter #1

The Couch.

I am Gideon. Ardenai Gideon Morning Star, Prince of the Great House of Equus and son of the Thirteenth Dragonhorse. 

This was not always the case.  My first sixteen years were hard.  I did not go to school.  I could not read or write, so I could not keep a journal, but I kept my memories.  They come in all shapes, sizes and colors.  Some are very dark, and some, when held up to the light, glow and become transparent.  I can walk through them.  I guess I should start at the beginning.

I was born on Declivis, and I slept behind the couch.  My mother’s name was Sonja.  If she had a last name, I never knew it.  She was a prostitute and I was an accident. The first time she dragged me out from behind the couch by one leg and gave me to a stranger to sodomize, I was two – maybe I was three, but I don’t think so.  All I remember was the screaming and the pain.  The shame came later.  I learned to sleep further behind the couch.

My mother never explained why this was happening to me, and she was never there to rescue me, just handed me over like the commodity I learned I was.  She always smelled of alcohol.  They all smelled of alcohol.

We had no hot water.  Very little food.  Almost no clothing.  My mother would take me out sometimes and we would go behind a big store not far from us and she would dig through the rag bins and throw things at me and those would be my clothes.

I saw other children going to school and I asked her if I could go.  She laughed.  I didn’t get to go.  I got to “work.”  That was what she called it.  It was often, it was painful, and I knew it wasn’t right.

One day when I was six or so, and she was passed out on the couch, I snuck out of our apartment and struck out for the rag bins.  On my last trip there I’d smelled food – as it turned out, it was rotten – but because I didn’t know anything else, I was intrigued, and I was so hungry.  I was half up-ended, digging through the garbage, when a door opened behind me and a man called, “You there!”

 I pushed myself off the bin so hard I landed on my back and before I could scramble away, he was standing beside me.  He offered me his hand and pulled me to my feet.  He seemed very tall, and he was dressed in a plain brown robe and sandals.

“My name is Brother Darwin,” he said.  “Who are you?”

“I am Gideon,” I said, still staring at his sandals.  I could see his toes.  They had little tufts of black curly hair on them.

“Are you hungry, Gideon?” he asked.  I nodded.  “Come with me,” he said, and led me into a room that smelled like…many things and nothing.  Now I know it was the smell of clean food and clean clothing.

I washed my hands in water that was warm, and he gave me a bit of soap to use.  The water was brown when I finished.  I guess I hadn’t realized my hands were actually white.

He sat me down in a chair at a table, and for the first time in my life, I had a real meal.  There was hot soup, salty and good, and bread, and a glass of milk. I’d never had milk before.  I was amazed. 

“Things are going to change for me,” I thought.  “Now my life will be different.”