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I used to get along well with my father. I have memories of being a foal riding high on the enormous stallion's broad shoulders, my fetlocks clutched tightly in his strong hands. Hands whose thick, hoof-tipped fingers bore the calluses of hard manual labour, and were dry and warm and rough. Hands that, as time passed, ceased to be a comfort, and instead became objects to be feared and avoided. My name is Jack. Jack Frost. Yeah, yeah. I know. I don't know what they were thinking either.

My family lived in a small rural community in the middle of a landlocked state, a bellwether example of an industrial town that had sprung forth from the endless plains a generation or two before. Darcy Frost, my dad, was...is... a country stallion through and through. The truth is, I don't even know if he's still alive. Part Clydesdale, part warmblood, he was a bulky and immensely strong workhorse, with a work ethic to match. And work he did, he was never without employment. He left school when he was fourteen, as soon as he was old enough to get a job. By seventeen, he'd been apprenticed to a master machinist, and by twenty he was a handsome stud with a solid job, a trade, and the world's doors opening all around him. It was a fairytale beginning for him, and one which could easily have given him a lifetime of satisfaction drawn from the nobility of his work, and his character.

His troubles began when he met my mother, Annabelle. He was 21, she was 18, and they fell in love over the course of a hot summer spent largely together. Long evenings were spent laying on the hood of Dad's truck, watching the sky blaze with colour and then darken to reveal the firmament of innumerable stars. Mom took him dancing, and it wasn't long before they considered themselves partners. So Mom tells me. She's pretty sketchy on some details, but I can hardly blame her, given what she's been through. There was only one drawback in those early days. Mom's a donkey. While that didn't bother either of them, Dad's parents, and particularly his father, were enraged by it. It was a different time, and cross-species relationships - even if they were biologically compatible - were frowned upon by the more conservative side of rural society. My Dad tried again and again to point out that he, himself, was of mixed lineage; that his father was a Clyde and his mother a warmblood, but he failed to sway Grampa's opinion, and less than a year later, he packed in his job at the local factory and, together with Mom, moved to a new town to get away from it all. I'm sure more happened than Mom knows, or will tell me, but that's all she's ever mentioned.

For a guy whose entire life to that moment had been built on rock-solid foundations, a new start was difficult for Dad. He and Mom eventually married, and with her support he managed to get work. Their new town was larger than the one they'd grown up in, and more cosmopolitan. A marriage between a horse and a donkey there wasn't seen as unusual, and so in time, Dad found himself able to settle into a routine there, and rebuild the stability in his life. It was slow, and hard, but the arrival of my older sisters gave him the determination he needed. They're barely more than a year apart; Mom was pregnant almost as soon as she finished breastfeeding.

Dad loved... loves... his daughters. He doted on them. And on Mom. He was such a good dad, she told me. And for many years, life was good to my family. I think Dad struggled with the knowledge that his father had all but disowned him over his relationship with Mom, and it was a sore point in his life that he lacked the emotional skills to cleanse himself of.

Twelve years after the birth of my second sister, Annabelle once more fell pregnant, with me. Dad was already in his late-thirties by then, and while he was well-established in his workplace as a master machinist in his own right, the lack of career advancement had begun to wear him down. In close to fifteen years, his pay packet had not increased substantially, and yet he found himself with apprentices, managing staff, supervising shifts and contributing well beyond the requirements of his position. Money was tight, the company bosses would say, and everyone was expected to work harder to make ends meet in a more competitive economy. The unions went on strike again and again, demanding more pay and better conditions, and at first, Dad attended their rallies. But in time, it became clear to him that all he truly wanted was to work. He wanted his job to remain stable and secure, to know he'd be paid enough to live on and to support us, and to know he'd still have a job the next day when he turned up at dawn, as he had done every day for a decade or more. And the more I think about that, the more sense it makes. He's a pragmatist, above almost all else. From what little I remember of him, if he wasn't fixing something or building something or coming up with a solution to a problem, he wasn't happy. And yet, the bosses threatened him when he rallied. The union threatened him when he didn't. Work was becoming all too political for Darcy's liking, and he withdrew into himself more and more. The worst part is, it began slowly, and when I was barely old enough to remember what he used to be like, before.

Fact is, I'm a damaged kid because of it.

Mom noticed Dad coming off the rails, and did her best to support him. But Dad was nothing if not fierce in his independence, and he balked at the idea of Mom attending night school to get her accounting degree. Unlike him, she'd finished school, and had been enrolled in first-year college when they'd met. But she'd chosen him over completing her education, as was the expectation of the era. But now, she found herself having second-thoughts about her decision. There was a college campus in town, only a short drive from our house, and Mom used to drive past it more and more often as she ran me to and from school. I remember asking her why she was taking such a long route to get me home, and I remember the big, squat red-brick college building with its faux-columns and young adults swarming around it. I don't think she ever did answer me, but then, I was six and in first grade, and I'm sure the constant barrage of squeaky, braying questions wore thin.

I sure as hell remember when she confronted Dad about going back to college. It was the first time I ever saw Dad properly lose it. He bellowed and roared and smashed the kitchen table to kindling with his fists while Mom cowered in the corner of the kitchen. I'd been in my room, and as soon as I heard the noise I came running out, thinking perhaps Dad had fallen and hurt himself, and that maybe I could help...

What I saw instead is burned forever into my brain like a cattle-brand. The display of raw physical power and violence my father was making terrified me. So much so that I pissed myself, standing right there in the kitchen doorway. I really think the look he gave me at that precise moment, the smouldering stare of unbridled hatred was the first nail in the coffin of our relationship. I vaguely remember Mom rushing across to stand between me and Dad, and then her arms around me, sweeping me off my hooves and out the back door into the car. She was crying as she drove, and she drove until the car ran out of gas. I was still drenched in piss, and crying because Mom was crying and I didn't understand what I'd seen.

I don't remember how long we stayed away for. We somehow made it back to the town Mom and Dad had grown up in, and in the middle of the night we arrived on Grandma and Grandpa's doorstep. Mom's parents, not Dad's. The mixed feelings, the emotional rollercoaster of home being unsafe, but Grandma and Grandpa's being a nurturing, loving environment stood out starkly to me. It was a rural property; one of those quintessentially Middle-America kinds of places that's so clichéd you don't imagine it could be real. Orchards and vegetable gardens, a wooden house with a porch, a big barn, tractors and machinery everywhere... you get it.

I don't remember everything about that night, or the following few days, but I do remember sitting on Grandpa's knee while he told me stories. He'd wrapped me up in a blanket while my clothes were washed and dried. I definitely remember Grandma's pies. Apple and cranberry, I think. There was so much love in that house, often disguised as gruff acquiescence. We stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for three days, until finally, Dad called. He'd worked out where we'd gone, and when Mom talked to him, she was smiling. So we went back home again, and Dad greeted us out the front of our house with open arms. He hugged us both at once, kissing us and apologising and promising to never let that happen again. He'd fixed the kitchen table, cleaned the house until it shone, and had even cooked dinner for us all. It was a glimmer of the old Dad, and I let myself believe it really was true, and I'd never again see the fierce, angry, violent Dad. I think that led to me bottling up the fear I'd felt a few days prior, rather than ever confronting it and working through it. The biggest hailstones grow from the tiniest grains of clay.

So Mom went to college. She attended during the daytime, when I was at school and Dad was at work, or out rallying with his union. She knew in her heart that her husband was a good man, and only wanted to provide for his family, but in the absence of a God-given pathway to doing so, he was lost. And for a while, Dad helped. He cooked, he cleaned, and often he picked me up from school, too. But slowly, over the months, he became sullen again, ever more silent and withdrawn, and ever more prone to fits of rage.

And, much of the time, it was me who bore the brunt of my father's disgruntlement.

I'm a mule, of course, and because of that I'll always be sterile, unable to sire foals of my own. I doubt that would've ever been an issue in any case - I'm fruitier than one of Grandma's pies. But while the same was true of their two daughters - the sterility, not the gayness - Dad seemed to grow particularly distant from me. And of course at six and seven years old, my sexuality was the furthest thing from anyone's mind. My two older sisters had moved out of the family home at almost the same time, when they were nineteen and eighteen years old, and headed to one of the city colleges several hours' travel away. They were closer to Grandma and Grandpa than to us, so we rarely saw them.

And I soon discovered that Dad apologising and fixing stuff and cooking for us and hugging us was something he'd do to get us to come home again. To be his little family. His family. I can't remember what set him off the second time. Or the third, or the fourth. But we made numerous trips to Grandma and Grandpa's over the following year, while Dad raged and yelled and drank himself into a stupor.

Within eighteen months, I'd witnessed both my sisters moving away, my mother returning to college, and my father changing from the fun, loving and proud stallion he'd been, into a morose, bitter, brooding animal with a penchant for whiskey and violence. It was enough to cause me to change, too. I became silent and withdrawn, and increasingly terrified of Dad. I couldn't speak to him any more, I couldn't even look at him. My school work suffered, and when I wasn't being yelled at to listen and sit up by teachers at school, I was at home, listening to Dad yelling at Mom, or worse, yelling at me. I'd started wetting my bed at night. I couldn't control it, and it scared me. What was happening? But Dad didn't see it like that. The harsh beatings he rained upon me with open palm or his belt whenever he found out it had happened again were almost impossible to bear. I screamed the first time. But after that, I couldn't. I had no sounds to make, no tears to cry to quench his anger. Mom tried to intervene more than once, but when a whiskey-drenched Dad rounded on her, his closed fist thundering into her temple, I think she finally saw the demon that had perhaps always haunted the man she loved. When he was done, and I was a bruised, crumpled heap curled up around a piss-soaked blanket on the floor of my room, Mom would come in, sniffling and rocking on her knees as she held me. Then we'd go and stand in the shower together while she cleaned me.

But even there, in the shower, naked in front of my mother, I didn't feel safe. I'm a boy, and even to a boy of seven, things happen sometimes which people usually attribute to teenagers. I was so traumatised by Dad that I never even had the presence of mind to cover myself with my hands if I dropped from my sheath in the shower. It's a normal thing to happen, and let's face it, you gotta clean there too. But Mom hated that. As gentle as she is, she had no idea how to react, so typically she used to gently slap it until it shrunk away again, while muttering words about how dirty it was that it had happened, and how I should never ever touch it.

You know how a bone that's been broken and not properly set will always heal crooked, right? Brains are like that too. They're the most vulnerable to damage when they're already broken.

The teachers noticed my bruises and cuts at school, and sometimes they pulled me aside to ask me, gently, what happened. They knew, I can see that now with the benefit of hindsight. But without an accusation, teachers were powerless to intervene in those days.

In those days. Shit. It wasn't even that long ago.

I grew ever more silent, ever more withdrawn from the world, until I could no longer speak a word to anyone. I was completely noncommunicative. Fearful braying, occasional tears and cries of pain were the only sounds I ever made. I was eight, and had barely spoken a word to anyone for six fucking months when the stock market crashed.

Dad's job was gone within a week, along with thousands of other factory workers, skilled craftsmen and labourers alike. Iron chains shackled closed the gates of the factories all through town, and Dad was, for the second time in his life, truly and utterly lost. And this time he was an abusive husband, too, so Mom was not there to offer her support. He was beyond redemption, and that day he not only crossed a line, he fucking pissed all over it.

When Mom came to pick me up from school on that fateful day, she was in the worst state I've ever seen her in, before or since. Her nose was bloody and broken, her lips and tongue were split, both her eyes were black and swollen, there were chunks of her mane ripped out and she was shaking like a leaf, gripping the steering wheel of our old Pontiac so tight her hands, already covered in cuts from defending herself, bled.

The trunk of the car was haphazardly stuffed with our belongings. As was the back seat.

This was it.

She sobbed uncontrollably when I climbed in, just a few times, and just looked at me, shaking her head and wringing her bloody hands around the cracked black plastic of the steering wheel.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry... I'm sorry..." she kept repeating, her voice thick and hoarse.

I don't know how long we sat there in the car, me silently rocking in the passenger seat and hugging my knees to my chest, Mom sobbing and apologising. It was Mrs Hicks, my English teacher, who broke the spell. She knocked a couple of times on Mom's window, an expression of serious worry creasing her brow. Mom cracked the window an inch. Her mane covered the worst of her injuries, what was left of it.

"Mrs Frost, you and I need to have a chat, sweetheart. Can I hop in for a minute?"

Mom nodded dumbly, and I clambered over the seat-back to kneel in the footwell behind Mom as Mrs Hicks climbed into the passenger seat and shut the door.

"Annabelle...it's 2009," she began. "It's not the 1960s. You don't have to keep going back to him. I'm seriously concerned about the effect this is having on Jack, and... dear God, look at you..."

Mrs Hicks' gasp was heartwrenching as Mom finally lifted her face to meet my teacher's gaze. A moment of anger flashed across her features, and she resolutely harrumphed, and launched into action. Social services would be too slow to deal with a situation like this.

Mrs Hicks clucked and prodded Mom out of the driver's seat, across the bench to the passenger side, and she herself drove us to the hospital. Mom, by that stage, was barely conscious, as if relinquishing responsibility had finally allowed her to rest and to let go. As we drove, Mrs Hicks called the hospital on her phone, and when we arrived, two nurses were waiting out the front to take Mom inside, in a wheelchair. They had to lift her out of the car. For me, still sitting amongst the jumble of our possessions on the back seat, this was even more surreal than anything that had yet happened - but Mrs Hicks was on my side. I knew it. I climbed back into the front, and hugged my school backpack tightly. Tears ran down my muzzle, blurring my vision, and I didn't notice where we were going until it started to get dark outside. How long had we been driving? Mrs Hicks talked softly, quietly, the whole time, but I barely heard a word of it. It was a soft voice, just plucking at the edges of my battered consciousness and wrapping me up like a warm blanket. There was only calm in Mrs Hicks' voice, but I do recall her saying the word 'bastard' a lot.

The very next thing I remember was Grandma. Her smell, her tight, loving hugs, and Grandpa's gruff, slightly choked voice.

Grandma let out a cry of anguish when Mrs Hicks told her what had happened. It only made her squeeze me all the tighter, and Grandpa ambled forward to embrace the both of us, just the way Dad used to. But I knew Grandpa would never fly into a rage and smash furniture, or yell at us, or call me a weak, disgusting little faggot for pissing my pants in the night, or punch Grandma until she bled. In the depths of my traumatised brain, I knew that was what differentiated Grandpa from Dad. One was a good man. An honourable and respectful man. The other was not, and hadn't been for a long time. And never would be again.

Mrs Hicks finally turned to walk back to Mom's car, to return it to the hospital. I wriggled free from Grandma and ran after my teacher, braying for her to wait. She stopped, and knelt down as I grabbed her hand and threw myself into her arms, sobbing uncontrollably.

"Thankyou," I bleated, over and over. It was the very first thing I'd said in half a year.

Mrs Hicks made a little choked noise and hugged me back, tightly, and then held me at arms' length and looked into my blurry eyes through her thick, horn-rimmed glasses.

"You're safe now, Jack, he won't hurt you or your Mom again. But you might have to be very brave, and if some policemen ask you about your Dad, I want you to tell them everything. Write it down if you need to, if you don't feel you can speak of it. But you must tell them."

I stared dumbly.

"Do you understand, Jack? This is how we stop your Dad from hurting you. Your Mom... well... it's clear what he's done to her. But to you, the hurt is on the inside, isn't it? In here," she prodded my chest, and I wrinkled my snout, holding back a sob at how unerringly _right_she was.

I nodded, sniffed loudly, and swiped my arm across my muzzle. "I promise, Mrs Hicks. I'll tell them."

"Good boy! I'm so proud of you Jack. It's so nice to hear your voice again after so long. You make sure you look after your Grandma and Grandpa, alright? I'll be in touch."

And with that, Mrs Hicks was on her way back to town, the familiar, Detroit rumble of Mom's ancient car disappearing down the road.

That was, of course, a kneejerk reaction to an awful situation. Mrs Hicks saw it for what it was and she did what her years of experience as a teacher told her to - she intervened. Oh, I hardly dared imagine what Dad would've been like once he figured out Mom and I weren't coming back. I'd love to say that was the very last time I saw him, but it wasn't.

Grandma and Grandpa did their very best to deal with it all the best they could - they knew Mom was alive and that she'd recover, but still, Grandma cried when she received a call from the hospital to tell her that Mom had a severe concussion and swelling on her brain, and would need to remain there for possibly weeks while she recovered. I remember hugging her, and offering her my little stuffed dragon toy to comfort her, and somehow that only made her cry more.

Grandpa came and softly pulled me aside, kissing Grandma's soft cheek as he did.

"Why's Gramma sad?" I remember asking him, my little dragon clutched to my chest.

"She's sad because your Momma's in hospital, Jackie. Just like your Momma would be sad if it was you in there," the old donkey explained gently, dropping to one knee with a grunt to bring himself to my level. Gold-rimmed, round glasses clung to his muzzle, and a long, wispy beard cascaded from his chin. His was a face that just radiated kindness, such that I'd never experienced from anyone else.

I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa for over a week, although by the end of that week - as with all the other occasions that had come before - Dad started calling. He didn't know Mom was in hospital, and Grandpa didn't tell him. Nor did he tell Dad that I was there, and Grandpa made sure to tell me not to answer the phone. But the terse, gruff tone he used when speaking to my father spoke volumes, and I think Grandpa knew it was only a matter of time before he showed up.

I didn't wet the bed as much when I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. My shame never left me though - it was like a burning knot in the pit of my stomach, twisting around in my guts. But when it happened there, instead of receiving a flurry of blows, being kicked and spat on by my father, I received a bath, a warm towel and a story from Grandma, while Grandpa washed and changed the sheets. My anguish and anxiety was soothed by my grandparents' softness and love, and it was Grandpa who explained to me that I'd started wetting the bed because of my father's reaction to it - he didn't know exactly why either, but he assured me that it would stop soon enough on its own.

It was raining hard when Dad showed up. I'd been at Grandma and Grandpa's for ten days, or thereabouts. It was late in the evening, and I was already upstairs tucked up in bed, my belly full of supper and hot cocoa. The roar of an engine came from outside, and headlights flickered past my bedroom window. Grandma and Grandpa's house was far enough back from the road that anyone driving so close was clearly intending to arrive there. Fear rose in my chest like bile, and my heart hammered. I recognised the sound of Dad's truck even without seeing it.

Torn between the instinct to hide, and curiosity borne from my recent feelings of safety, I crawled out of bed and across to the window, peeking out from beneath one corner of the curtains to the front yard below. It was Dad alright. His truck skidded and slewed closer and closer to the house, sliding in the mud, before coming to a shuddering halt. The door was kicked open from inside, violently, and Dad staggered out. There was a bottle in one hand, and he staggered drunkenly towards the house. I whimpered, and clapped my hands over my mouth as if he'd have been able to hear it from outside. My whole body felt like it was on fire, burning with the urge to run, to get away from him. It was an urge I hadn't felt in months. Images of Mom's broken face flickered through my mind, and I felt my legs crumple beneath me, my arms alone holding me up against the windowsill. Hot wetness ran down my leg, and the acrid stench of it - now so familiar - caused me to freeze in place, shivering. I couldn't move. I couldn't look away. Closer and closer he staggered, swigging from the mostly-empty bottle in his hand.

"JAAA-AAACK!" he bellowed. "Come to Daa-aaad! JACK!"

Murmured voices filtered up through the floorboards beneath me, and the squeal and thump of the front door opening and closing followed. Grandpa stepped down off the porch to meet Dad, his hands held outward from his body a little to try and pacify the drunken horse.

Words were exchanged between them, I couldn't hear exactly what, but I saw Grandpa gesturing towards Dad's truck, clearly urging him to leave. Dad hawked and spat into the mud at Grandpa's hooves, and even from upstairs I could see his hands clench into fists. He was in the process of drawing his fist back to hit Grandpa, and I shut my eyes.

And then came an almighty bang. Smoke drifted upwards from the porch, and Dad turned his head, dumbly staring at the jagged shards of glass that used to be his bottle, still gripped in his hand.

Click-click.

Bang!

The second shot missed him by inches, and one of his truck's headlights shattered in a cloud of vaporised glass.

He seemed to get that message. I peered downwards, and saw Grandma - my dear, sweet, gentle Grandma - reloading Grandpa's rifle with the same calm collectedness she might've used to roll pastry, or chop vegetables. The rifle came up again, and Grandpa moved well to the side, the old donkey now yelling at my father to go, to run, lest he be killed.

And leave he did, in a shower of mud kicked up by his tires.

Grandpa turned back towards the house, but there was no victorious smile on his face. He looked grim, and as they came back inside and locked their doors, I moved away from the window and looked down at myself. My pyjama pants were soaked, and my eyes blurred with angry tears as I kicked them off and took myself off to the bathroom on my own. I cleaned myself up as best I could, and left a towel on my bedroom floor to soak up the little puddle by the window, before sneaking slowly downstairs. Grandma was sitting at the kitchen table, and Grandpa was standing behind her, his hands on her shoulders as they talked in low voices about what had happened. I gave a quiet bray as I arrived, wearing fresh pyjama bottoms, and tottered forward, to a thin, stressed smile from them both.

"Ahh, Jackie..." Grandpa sighed. "He worked out you're here... obviously. Glad he left when he did, your Granny mighta shot him if he'd kept comin."

"Might've?" Grandma snorted, an odd mixture of emotions pouring off of her. Pride wrestled with fear, anger with a terrible sadness.

"You get yourself off to bed again, Jackie, the police are comin' over, and I think in the mornin' we'll have to start thinkin' about what happens next, hmm?" Grandpa bundled me gently back upstairs with a hand in the middle of my back. He noticed the towel on the floor, the messy PJ bottoms and fresh humidity in the bathroom, and gave a proud little grunt, ruffling my hair. "You did good there, son. Well done."

That was more praise than I'd ever heard from either of my parents, I suddenly realised.

I didn't think I'd sleep much, that night. I could almost make out the words my grandparents shared in the kitchen downstairs if I perked my ears really hard and listened closely. Something about Annabelle... Mom was getting out of hospital! They were fair in their concern, though. If Dad knew I was here and was bold enough, even after what he did, to get drunk and come looking for me... who knew what he'd do next time? They were discussing what to do next when the police arrived. It was a non-emergency call, so there were no lights and sirens, just a calm, authoritative knock on the door.

At some point though, I must've fallen asleep, because the very next thing I remember, Grandpa was gently shaking me awake. Sunshine streamed in through the window, and I realised I must've slept late. I could hear voices downstairs, and my ears must've perked forward really hard, because Grandpa chuckled, and winked.

"Your Mom's here, Jackie. She's feelin' much better'n the last time you saw her, but she's still sore, and has a bandage on her head. Just so you know," the old donkey fussed me out of bed and began to undress me.

I gasped, and flattened my ears, covering my groin with both hands as my PJ pants fell and turning away. "I...I can do it Grampa!"

He frowned, and nodded. "Mmkay. Did your Dad hurt you there, too?" he nodded to my hands.

I thought for a moment, and shook my head. "N-no... B-but it's filthy and disgusting! It... you know... points, sometimes. That's bad, isn't it?"

Grandpa sighed. "No, Jackie, it ain't. Who'n the hell told you that? Christ, son, you're shaking like a leaf. It's alright, I ain't gonna hurt you! Jackie, there is not one damned thing in this world that you could do that would make me wanna hit you. Not one."

I was thankful that he didn't make me answer that question. I didn't know how he'd take knowing that Mom, even with the best of intentions, had compounded the trauma Dad had caused me by convincing me that my organ was a filthy thing unfit to be touched or seen, even by myself. In hindsight I don't know what she hoped to accomplish with that, but she did it anyway.

Once I was dressed, Grandpa and I went back downstairs, and Mom squealed in happiness to see me. She rushed awkwardly forward and hugged me, briefly, making me bray in surprise and wriggle away from her. There was a long moment of silence while we stared at each other, somewhere between pain at what had happened and happiness that we were both alright. But it was an awkward reunion. Something between my mother and I had changed, but at the age of eight I had no clue what it meant at the time.

A serious discussion ensued over the course of that day, and at the end of it, Mom was convinced that there would be no going back to Dad. Grandpa told her what had happened the previous night, while Grandma sat with both of Mom's hands clasped in her own. I sat to one side throughout, my little stuffed dragon in my arms. I didn't fully understand or grasp what was going on, but for the first time in conscious memory, I felt like my life was about to change for the better. Maybe someday soon, I wouldn't have to be afraid any more.

***

Dad ended up in jail for what he'd done. Aggravated assault occasioning serious bodily harm, or something of the sort. The police came to us several times at Grandma and Grandpa's house, and we went to them a few times as well. The officers who spoke to me were very calm and understanding, although they did ask me to tell them some pretty awful details that I'd hoped I'd never have to recount. But Mrs Hicks' words kept echoing through my mind, and I kept my promise to my English teacher. Mom and Grandpa testified in court, and they asked me to, as well. But being in that courtroom, with him glowering in the dock as he was, staring right at me... I froze. I couldn't speak. I fucking pissed my pants in a courtroom.

The judge found that to be ample evidence of Dad's violent and unstable temperament. A permanent restraining order was imposed; he was never to come within a hundred feet of us ever again.

We were free, for a time, Mom and I. Free to go back home, to try and pick up some of the shattered pieces of our lives in his absence. Mom finished her degree as quickly as she could. Upon hearing our story, the college granted her several credits for free based on her GPA that substantially sped up her graduation, so within a year she was a practicing accountant. That was a rough year, though. We had precious little money, and while Grandma and Grandpa helped out as much as they could, they were hardly rolling in cash either. One thing was certain; we both knew we had to disappear before Dad was released. We didn't know if the criminal justice system would rehabilitate him, or serve as the anvil upon which his evil would be honed and strengthened. I don't remember how long he was away for. Four years? Maybe six? It doesn't even matter - that was the last time I saw him, as he was being led away in handcuffs to serve his sentence. We only told my sisters what had happened after the fact, and they were both home with us within 24 hours of hearing. More tears were shed, more anguish shared, and they left a few days later promising to look around in their hometown for work for Mom that would take her out of this house. And me, too.

We moved a lot over the next couple of years. Five times in total. Three times within the space of six months. We basically lived out of our suitcases for that time, and I hardly went to school. It was sixth grade, and no one paid it much attention.

And I got better. I improved. My bed-wetting stopped of its own accord, as Grandpa had said it would. But I was permanently damaged by the whole saga. I couldn't stand to be touched. If anyone tried, I'd shrink away and react fearfully, and my body betrayed me in the strangest ways in those moments. I suspect that the only people who could've touched me without my fear instincts kicking in at that time were Grandma and Grandpa, and it seemed that every time we moved, it was further away from them.

But, we went where the work was for Mom, and it was in that pursuit that, when I was eleven, we ended up in a quaint, pretty little coastal town called Stillwater Cove.

Mom found a solid client base there, and we even managed to put down a deposit on a house. Stability, a sense of permanence... I was a painfully shy kid, but as I was soon to discover, Stillwater Cove is a nurturing environment. The kind of place a broken mule colt might finally begin to find a sense of peace, and grow up in the light.