Search Results for: rennie

Growing up, the only things Dad loved were beer and his car, certainly not us.

My condition stopped me drinking, making me less than a man to him. To compensate, he pounded cars into me until I bled oil. I learned all he knew about auto repair: changed tires and rebuilt transmissions, while Mom tired of the beatings and left him. Us.

“Brake lines fixed yet?” He had a business trip. Eight hours on I-40.

I palmed the file. “Good to go.”

If I’d filed them right, they’d fail in the mountain passes.

Too late for Mom. Maybe not for me.

I stare at my bride, remembering that Damerites are honourable, noble, and just a little too literal.

I was besotted with their society, their magic, and especially Princess Sabrina. She loved me, but was promised to another.

When the Unholy Horde invaded, I took my opportunity too eagerly. The Damerites formally and irrevocably agreed to my terms. After the war my reward was given honourably. And much too literally.

The ring sparkles on my bride’s finger. Her perfect skin ends abruptly in a life support bracelet that keeps the amputated limb alive.

I shouldn’t have asked for Sabrina’s hand in marriage.

My father’s mask was black with silver stitching around the eyes. He had worn it for three decades until his coronary.

He had worn it the only night he spent with my mother. The night of his second championship win, when he bested 30 luchadores in a battle royal. He never knew her last name.

He knew me only as a young tecnico, carrying his bags, learning in the ring, learning more than he knew he taught me. The shadow of a shadow.

I was twenty-five when I put on my father’s mask. He never acknowledged me.

But the crowd would.