As I walk into my childhood home, the smell of my past invades my nostrils and provokes all the terrible memories from this house. Letting the servant take my bags, I look across the foyer and reminisce my father pulling me by the hair across the floor, my mother following frantically behind.

"You're better than this!!!"

"Frank!! Please don't hurt him!!!"

Slowly ascending the stairs, my pale hand on the marble rail, I remember when I got a bronze medal in a steeplechase. He dragged me over to the stairs by my neck and shoved me down the hard, marble, but luckily shallow steps. It was a wonder my skull wasn't cracked. I was knocked unconscious, though.

..I was seven years old...

I reach the top of the stairs and walk over the balcony into the hall with all of the paintings draped over the walls. I turn my head to the left and look at the tapestry I made of a marsh. I made it in Japan one summer for my parents since I didn't have a camera and they wanted to see the scenery. I had also entered it in an art contest and got first prize, surprisingly. However, as I look closer, I see the spots where it was mended from my father getting drunk one Christmas and tearing it with scissors because I only graduated with a bachelor's when my father wanted me to stay in college to get a master's degree in architecture.

I stroll into my old music room, the windows letting in all the sun's rays. It was actually originally an upstairs patio, but in the twenties, it was converted into a greenhouse, even though it was a very large room. After I was born, it was made my piano room, since it was pretty and large enough that the piano could rest in the middle of the room without the sound being tainted.

I walk up to the grand and place my hand on the cold, polished surface. My head almost instinctively turns to my far left over at the couch and coffee table in the corner that seems to be brooding to me.

That was where my father sat.

Smoking his fat cigar, my father always sat there during my piano lessons, just watching, judging, finding out what he'd pick on later. I remember my hands shaking whenever I lost focus due to his oppressive, laser gaze. Lessons were always best when he was on a trip.

My father hired Mr. Tanaka because he used the traditional method of beating knowledge into me with a small bamboo stick. That's what my father believed in.

"If you're scared enough, you'll grasp any concept."

I turn around and leave the beautiful, yet tainted room and continue down the hall to my father's chambers where I was told he'd be.

My father's room is dimly lit and the windows are draped shut. How depressing. I lay my eyes upon his weak, frail body. It's disgusting, and yet, I can't help but feel a little satisfied by the sight. That's depressing, too.

"Father." I call to him and sit down on the chair beside him.

His once beady eyes slowly blink open and roll over to me. He draws in a slow breath, climbing up to a sit with his elbows.

Of course, any polite person would offer to help him up, but not me. I have no shred of respect for this evil man. I only have deep hatred for him. All I want to do was watch him suffer.

He struggles up to his sitting position and then looks at me again. "Hello, son."

"Afternoon." My face is blank as a sheet. There's no more need to be overly cordial to him now. He's going to die soon anyway and has no one else to leave his things to. Not even mother. She left without a trace right after I finished college.

My father notices and purses his thin, crinkled lips, looking me over. "My only son..."

"Indeed."

"..What is it like in Japan, son?"

Why so nice?

Cunt.

I sigh, crossing my legs. "Very lively. Unique." I try to be as sparse with him as I can.

He nods and looks away at his own filthy bed, then to me. "You hate me."

It honestly takes me aback. I really didn't expect him to cut to the chase like that.

"I can see it in your jaded eyes. You hate me because I wanted so badly for you to be the greatest. I was foolish to not accept your laziness and mediocre nature."

My brows furrow and I can feel my skin start to burn. "Pardon me?"

"You're mediocre. I put you in everything I could imagine in hopes you'd excel at something, but you took to absolutely nothing. You didn't even try."

I look at him, my face most likely a scalding shade of red. My tongue pokes the wall of my mouth in agitation.

"And what's more is your mother and I could never have another child to inherit everything. I couldn't even leave anything to her because she abandoned me. Now I'm just stuck with you..." he shat and then looks away from me like I'm dirt.

"I hear you..." I say, taking a stand from my chair, to which he looks at me from the corner of his eye. "I am mediocre, but everything I am is a reflection of you, father. Every scar you left, every bone of mine you broke made me who I am today. Yes, I am all you have left, but you made it that way. Mom and I hate you because you never had anything for us but hate."

My father's face has stretched into one of awe, his eyes wide, but his thin lips identical to mine still in a flat line. Even though he tries to stay cool, his eyes give him away.

With that, I turn around and stride to the door, only turning around to face my father for a split second to say: "..Who hurt you?"

I close the door behind myself and walk down the hall in tense silence. I feel like going back to Japan. I don't even want to be there when he dies. He doesn't deserve it. The only death he deserves is a lonely one. At least I have some self respect.

~

When I was twenty-five, me father wrote to me, telling me he had lung cancer. He informed me he had six months to live, so since I was his only living family member, I went back to Seattle alone to spend my last days with him there. I was under the impression that perhaps in a reflection of his life, he had realized all the wrongs he did and felt remorse.

It would've been nice. I might've forgiven him.

He did not.

After our tiff, I gathered all my things and left to go back to Japan. There wasn't anything left for me there. My father still didn't love me and I didn't have anything left to anchor me to Seattle.

My father died a few months later at the age of sixty-eight. In comparison to me, my father was quite old. I was born when he was forty-three, so there were many, many years between us. My mother was only twenty-two. I would've been born earlier, but she just couldn't get pregnant. My point is: My parents had a large age gap and my father was old when I was born.

I got a letter in the mail that my father died and a bit reluctantly, I went back to Seattle to inherit my stuff. I brought Osamu with since I really didn't care and he always wanted to see America. I told him Seattle wasn't that much different from Japan, but he didn't have any of it and insisted he come.

In the few months that we were staying there while I signed paperwork and sold the house, Osamu was doing research of his own. He had a vision of opening a high end, Japanese style bar/strip joint or something. There were a few already, but they were unsanitary and Osmau had the funds to make a clean, luxurious one. Together, we bought a warehouse downtown, I designed the inside, he designed the business plan, and as business partners, we opened up the place.

Of course, then I had something to stay in Seattle for. With the money I got from the new business and my late father, I bought some rural property and built a house of my design on it. I always loved the idea of living far away from people in a nice house, and I was finally old enough to do that.

A few years passed and Osamu established a pattern where he'd stay with me for a few months while he took over "Little Tokyo" and traded out whores he bought from Japan and those he'd take back. After that, he went to Japan and traded whores and the cycle continued.

We decided that when we were away, we could see other people and then share that person once Osamu came back. The only problem was that we couldn't find anyone who was accepting of an open relationship or threesomes in the late 70s and early 80s. It was taboo enough just to be gay.

Eventually, Osmau and I got tired with always being rejected, so we just started using our whores to let out our lust on, but after a while, we got bored with that, too. He wanted a rush. What's more of a rush than kidnapping someone and holding them as hostage?

That's where Marcy comes in.

Marcy worked a small job at the counter of a gas station, greeting people and taking calls. Her job was the smallest thing in the world. Literally no one would care if she disappeared, I promise.

And so, behind the scenes, I "dated" her. There had to be no was she could draw a correlation to me, so I told her a different name.

Eventually, the day came where I finally took her home as my pet. Of course, there was an investigation, but no one ever correlated anything to me. It was like.. She just disappeared off the face of the Earth. Quite nifty of me. The case closed with only more questions than answers, but that was fine for me.

At last, after a long time, Osamu and I finally got tired of Marcy. She got too obedient and her mind was too far corrupted. She was boring then. However, it would be too messy to kill her and too risky to let her go, so we just kept her.

I noticed a particular client of our's at the club that came every night. He was peculiar in a normal way and always mingled with people, but after he took them out of the club, they never came back. I concluded that he was a killer.

I decided to get to know him and learned his name was Sai. I learned he had an interest in cocaine, so I bought some for him and let him use it in my office. The more familiar we got, the more I was intrigued with him.

One night, I decided to follow him with a group of young guys and girls. It was odd how he only looked as old as them, but acted so much older. He took them to an apartment he was staying at and through the curtains of the window, I could see them all having sex on the bed. They were.. Until something happened. A few drops of blood spattered on the curtain and that's when I knew. Sai was a vampire. It explained the silky skin, the unnatural eyes, and the old aura.

This only made me more intrigued.

So intrigued...

..I took him.