Chapter Text
My father is an extremely rich business man and the son of extremely rich business men. He’s kind of short, really – mostly shoulders. He married my mother when she was eighteen and I’m pretty sure he only chose her because his father (my Grandfather) wanted an heir. He didn’t find out until after the wedding that she was allergic to everything. And by everything, I mean everything; milk, eggs, bees, nuts, cotton, silk, sugar, plastic, wood, real silver, fake silver, most green plants, all red plants, dusty air, dirty air, clear air and 98 types of grain. When I was born my father didn’t want us to get too attached so he gave me straight to the midwife. My mother didn’t seem to notice, as she lay on the bed, exhausted after my complicated birth. She was allergic to all the different medicines they used and quite possibly allergic to me as well.
I have always been small for my age but even more so then. You see, my dad wanted me to play sports…. But I kinda sucked. I remember this one time I was playing baseball, I bowled the ball and somehow managed to make it hit my own head. I don’t know how it happened either, but I got concussion. Then I threw up all over my baseball coach. It wasn’t really a great day for me.
I also have no musical talent, and am not very strong. I guess my only good point was that I never got sick. Other babies got colic, croup, conjunctivitis, chickenpox, whooping cough and meningitis – all of which I managed to miraculously avoid. So yeah, my childhood was pretty much me trying to ditch sports lessons, going out to buy milk-free milk for my mother and just generally getting yelled at by my dad for not being able to use calculus.
I was ten when it was my father’s turn to hold the annual athletics competition that his business league insists on holding. He hired one hundred extra staff members to turn the grounds of the manor house we lived in into a proper sports ground. Of course, I sucked too much to actually take part in the games but there was this one kid my dad was pretty jealous of. When I saw him first I thought he was a girl – I mean, he had pretty long hair. But then he insisted on running topless, so I guess that sorted that out.
He was running the two hundred metres and the secret betting pool my dad was organising said he was set to win. Sure enough, he did. Pretty easily in fact.
I was too engrossed in my big mac to notice when the gun went off, and by the time I looked up, all I saw were his feet crossing the finish line, thirty metres ahead of the nearest other contestant. My Dad turned to look at me, with an expression that I had seen many times before - one that screamed pure disappointment and seeped into my very being – or at least it would have if I hadn’t been staring at the winning contestants butt as he did the Macarena.
It was my job to give the winner of each race their trophy, and the moment he had it in his hand, his father bounded over and lifted him into the air. They spun around laughing and I had to look away. I recognised the man, Peleus something-or-other. He was one of my father’s business partners and, though he was slight and bland looking, he was popular with his workers and associates for being fair and just and not totally corrupt - the polar opposite of my father. That made the boy his son, Achilles, whose mother was rumoured to be one of the most powerful women in the country. Clearly, Achilles was well loved.
Other than that I don’t have many memories of my early childhood. Just random scenes of my parents and I. That time my dad got Outkast and Enya to have a private concert at my house; the head gardener teaching me about plants and shit; swimming aloe in our private pool; almost drowning in our private pool. A trip with my mother to the coast, spent skimming stones and eating ice cream. She sang to me in her wobbly, out of tune voice. The sea was one of the few things she wasn't allergic too. On her temple was a shiny white scar from when father hit her over the head with a glass milk bottle after we ran out of coconut milk. Her feet were buried in the sand and I remember being careful not to scratch them as I dug around for pebbles to skim. I am not sure this is even a real memory, Father didn't really let us go outside in case mother ran into something that most of the human race depended on for daily survival but she was somehow allergic too, or I broke something. So you know, just an average childhood.