They say my grandpa died a young man.

  After searching through every local library, government building, and the now dug up dirt of that years’ time capsule, I’ve only ever found this little scrapbook tearing of a news article that reported on that night he died in ‘04. Damaged, of course, but with enough words to hint that something momentous had happened.

  It’s the only thing I have, on paper, that actually confirms his existence at all. Other than the little things, like his social and his birth certificate.

  Everything else, I had to learn from stories. The night of his death is always told the same, but the buildup gets served all sorts of different ways. Just rolling through town with your window down you’re bound to hear two. Stop by Junie’s diner for a bite and you just might hit number three. Confusing, I know. Lucky for us, I’ve heard them all, and I’ve constructed something of a canon of sorts. One that, with as little setup as I can muster, gets us right into the action.

  I think it’s the best way to go about things. Even in life. They say my grandpa held a similar sentiment, amongst other things. His whole thing about not swearing, for example, which I’m quite fond of too, don’t get me wrong, but I digress.

  Even from the very start, my grandpa couldn’t wait for a proper birth. He was born on a Sunday, a whole month premature underneath the spring showers of the Georgia countryside and inside an old, crooked shed resting aside an elder oak that had long since died towards the back of a swathe of property belonging to one, Reverend Thomas.

  This shed, ill used and the relics inside long forgotten and rotting within cardboard boxes stacked high up to the ceiling, almost poking the old Army tarp his father had put up there to keep the rain from coming in.

  His mother, Ruth, thick with the sweat of her labor, would have preferred the rain at this point, but Reverend Thomas was rather fond of the livery he had unfortunately chosen that Sunday, and Ruth’s circumstances weren’t going to ruin it.

  By the Reverend’s standards, they had already ruined enough and was happy to see the small child would be with them, and out of his hair, before too long.

  You see, Ruth and company were rather new in town, and in the small, dusty settlement of Gloomrich, something new was novelty enough, and the townspeople couldn’t help but find themselves eager to make their acquaintance. The commotion that came from Ruth’s premature labor brought the entire town into the Reverend’s shed at one point or another. Most, coming to check in on Ruth, brought with them constant offerings of water, food, and blankets making it so most of the town had skipped that Sunday’s church service.

  The revered, respected, and by now expected blessings of southern hospitality, ensured the Reverend himself remained begrudgingly locked away inside the shed, much to Reverend Thomas’ dismay, who resigned to leaving a small collection basket off to the side for people to see as they walked in, and he shared a few words with each visitor in between Ruth’s cries, as he used his elbow to nudge the basket every now and again, it somehow appearing evermore emptier with each passing glance the Reverend managed to sneak away.

  The fair people of Gloomrich, currently witnessing the undertaking of a real miracle, paid the Reverend and his basket little mind, opting to offer their attention to the more pressing matters of a new family’s formation, and the hard work such a forming would entail.

  Ruth had been in labor for the past 27 hours. Her muscles ached and her body, drained of every slick of moisture, had given it her absolute all. Luther, my grandpa, your great grandpa, would be her third child, and he was by leagues far and wide the ‘toughest sumbitch’ to put her to task thus far. Excuse the French. Her words, not mine. She didn’t know it at the time, but she meant that literally too. Luther would be the only boy she’d ever have. Fortunately, her love didn’t discriminate and, just as she did with everything else, she pushed with all she had, and Luther came out, flush in fluid and crying still, a healthy baby boy with eyes all too eager to wander.

  And even as he thought back to that night throughout the course of his life, Reverend Thomas, the impromptu deliverer of little Luther, never could remember what exactly was loudest that stormy evening. The cries of a freshly-born Luther, the droning beat of rain against the shack’s metal frames, or the screams of Luther’s father as he held Everything that was once his wife in useless arms. He begged The Lord for five more seconds, just enough to gather himself and keep praying for more.

  The Lord saw fit your great great grandfather get none, and he never forgot it.

  Two weeks later, once my great grandfather had enough of remembering, he gathered some rope, put it to work, and promptly left All of Reality to join his beloved in that very blackest sea.

  Luther, now orphaned, was paraded around the town in search of prospective parents. Not that none would take him, but with his being born on Reverend Thomas’ property, and having, since his father’s death, been in Reverend Thomas’ care, with the help of the town’s women of course, it seemed only natural, to Reverend Thomas’ chagrin, that the baby stay right where he was.

  Many years later, on the day Luther’s adoptive father died, the air had been incredibly dry. In fact, it had been dry the entire week, and no amount of water could keep his lips from cracking and his throat from scratching. Which meant he must’ve been saving up his spit for at least two days to hack his last loogie right at Luther’s face and claim “spitting ain’t sinning”, then the Reverend used his last breath to thank God and promptly left.

  Luther stared at the spittle, it having flown too close to the sun and just shy of his face, laid depressed against the carpet, the phlegm now sadly oozing its way to its final resting place, and whispered an apology to God for what he could only assume to be unfolding was a rough first impression, and remembered that his two little girls were waiting right by the nursing home entrance for him. They always got ice cream when they came up this way, which was rare. He didn’t see a reason for today to be any different.

  He wasn’t allowed ice cream when he was a kid, so he let his children enjoy as much as they wanted, within reason, along with everything else he wasn’t allowed to have. Soldier boy toys, devil-grinned knick knacks, and books. So many books. As many books as their appetites could handle. His father’s restrictions never really hurt Luther until he came for those.

  Luther’s adoptive father wasn’t sure Luther could even read the things at first. He didn’t start talking until he was four, and he was never really any good at it once he started. Luther, though a bit slow, was as perfectly capable of recognizing the words of these texts as he did the coldness with which the Reverend held him and so explored better realities as often as he could.

  So, his father took the quiet time as a blessing and let Luther stare at the pages and get absolutely enwrapped in fantastical worlds he himself never could’ve conceived. Stories of the far future with zany characters and depressing settings. Stories of fantasy that all carried their own special versions of the past.

  But his favorite? His absolute, drop-dead favorite?

  Nothing more than these dime-worth paperbacks printed on this thick, well-yellowed paper that he would claw from a single shelf across from the register at the liquor stores his father hadn’t been quietly banned from yet. The stores kept changing, but the books stayed the same, and Luther was always pining for his next one. It took him some time, but through endless nights of planning, Luther figured out a trick to sneak the books in along with the Reverend’s bottles.

  The trick? Luther would wait for the Reverend to show up to the store already drunk.

  And Luther would sit on stacked bibles as he drove the Reverend home with a slick smile on his face, and once home, his gambit having paid its dues, he’d sneak away into hidden corners of the house to peruse his treasures.

  Inside, these were stories of a particular pastiche. Tales of werewolves that stalked mountain towns, vampires that sucked the very essence from a city’s night life, and other, scattered scribblings of all sorts of creatures of yore. Each of them thrust into their own little hellscapes with nothing left on their schedules except to terrorize.

  Luther was having pretty great fun with them at first; who doesn’t love a good scare? But upon reading and re-reading these books, he began to have questions. Every tome was a little different, but they all had the same ingredients. Snarling beasts, bloody ends, whole worlds strewn in macabre tapestries. He wondered if they could ever be anything more than what was written on their pages.

  In fact, these questions had been bugging him so much that, one day, he decided to ask his teacher about them. Without even meaning to he damn near put a whole presentation together. His teacher’s eyes went wild as he seemed to always have another notebook containing patchworks of analyses, breakdowns of scenes, and close-up shots of various characters. The school teacher, happy to see such a student putting this level of study into otherwise completely mediocre pulp fiction asked to see one of the actual books for herself. Unfortunately, his ten-year-old eagerness to share the fruits of his life’s work ended in complete disaster.

  Mrs. May, who feared any written words not held inside the Bible, absolutely hated the raunchier, and lesser delved portions of Luther’s beloved tomes and promptly confiscated the notebooks, sent Luther to the principal, and had the Reverend leave home to come hash things out with the faculty.

  The conversation, held within the dusty, ill-taken care of principal’s office had a surface-level pleasantry to it. The Reverend put on that smile he always does with strangers, hid his hands beneath the table to hide his constant clenching, and assured the school that his son wouldn’t be giving them any more problems.

  And so that’s how the books went away. Except for one. According to the Reverend there was only one book that was ever really worth reading anyway, and easier still they read it for you every Sunday. And so, though torn away from the stories that made his heart sing, he found solace in the one book that he could have, and he read it every chance he could get.

  Which the Reverend had no problem appreciating. It helped keep up the charade. You see, not terribly long after Luther’s adoption, the Reverend mastered the art of hating God, but He didn’t need to know that just yet. Many years ago, beneath that old oak tree the Reverend experienced a revelation. He reasoned that if God truly could see into the hearts and minds of man he would’ve tossed us away a long time ago. But, as he checked in the shade of that old wizened oak, he could clearly see that his flesh wasn’t burning. He posited that God must not be able to read the actual thoughts of man. God must come to know His Creation through action alone.

  This Revelation didn’t mean much to that old crackpot at the time, but not long after Luther’s unavoidable adoption, the idea came back like a sudden lust, and he spent that cozy morning hatching a plot. One to trick God Himself. The Reverend, and his son were both baptized, hardworking, and God fearing, and they’d remain that way till the day the Reverend died; whatever came next in this life was of little importance to him, and once the Reverend was good and dead, when God would have no choice but to accept him, he’d really let The Bastard have it the very second he’d cross those Pearly Gates.

  The Reverend, old and foolish and bitter then, was still unwilling to give up a life everlasting, so he and his son made it to church every Sunday dressed in their best and going through the rigmarole like clockwork.

  His adoptive father, hiding every insidious cackle behind a sermon, and Luther, who had by now resorted to just rereading the Book of Psalms, his current favorite, over and over, lifted his head to the ceiling and saw his life laid out before him beneath a ceiling crowned in off-white terracotta snowflakes.

  As the years went on and Luther grew into his manhood, he picked up work as a grocer at the corner market. By this time, he was living on his own, but thanks to my grandma, your bisabuela, his treasured solitude was short-lived. Relatively new in country, the market was one of the places she had to visit, and before long she found she was having great pleasure in doing so. Her profession as a cleaning lady, humble education as a ranch girl, and frankly lackluster English skills failed to register exactly what was wrong with my dear old grandpa, and what words they couldn’t share amidst the aisles of canned goods they made up for with smiles.

  Before long, those smiles turned to laughs, and those laughs into love, and she forewent better judgment and married him on a Saturday, read their vows in a broken creole, and danced The Bamba beneath a ceiling crowned in off-white terracotta snowflakes. Their vows were scarce, and what words they couldn’t share they turned into kisses, and they left the church that night with eyes full of fear and promise.

  The first two babies came easily, my father being the second, when he realized that there was only so much that a grocer’s check could cover. Grandpa enlisted in the Navy not long after that and shipped off to Hawaii. He never spoke much about it.

  He’d go to the reunions, but the only stories he told then were when the beer was let out its cage and all the children were no longer allowed in the vicinity. One of the sailors, his name was Hanky, told my father not to take it too much to heart, and that he had a pretty cool old man, and, in all of their time together, he never EVER heard my grandpa swear once and for a sailor, that was one serious accomplishment. The rest of the story, well up until you know what, is pretty short. Grandpa took that good heap of shrapnel off the coast of Guam and came back home, where his wife remained, ready and waiting, for a new addition to the family.

  What little he had said before was even less now, and of that twice more once bisabuela gave birth to her third. Grandpa was never the same. Though he still stuck around, some might say he’d died long ago, and his newfound apathy came at the cost of his health, and he suffered that stroke not five years later. By then, he was staying in an old cabin towards the back of Uncle Otis’ property. He let his lip sag and his drool spill without a care, and he would just sit, cooped up in the corner of his room, and let the sway of his face freeze where the window was, so that people would assume he was just admiring the view and leave him alone.

  It usually worked, up until the grandbabies started showing up. Though hurt, grandpa’s little family had bloomed in his wife’s stead, and they were always finding excuses to come and distract him from his window. Over countless birthdays, holiday parties, and the odd Easter celebration, I never realized that it was you that always dug him out of a funk. Even when you were a little baby. When your hands were just a fraction of mine, you took them and used them to squeeze the last two fingers of grandpa’s hand that laid splayed out and useless against the bedspread.

  Only upon recollection, I can see that you were his saving grace. With just a simple squeeze of those digits, he’d be leant over and whispering little fairytales into your ear. I always wondered what it was that he said.

  And so finally, on that fateful, hot summer day the air was incredibly dry. The room was packed with bodies, all of them vying for their own private view of that moment of truth. Grandpa’s face was this half relaxed stone that looked like it could barely tell what was going on. There was so much commotion, even me in my right mind couldn’t keep track of it all. There were so many people that thought every minute change in his face was the harbinger of destruction, and in every last second that he drew breath they thought that he was already gone.

  But I saw you.

  You. Just this precious little thing, laid up against grandpa’s side. Probably just about as clueless as he was at the time, but something took a hold of you that night. Something that I think gripped everyone in the room at one point or another.

  With hands just a fraction the size of mine, you grabbed onto grandpa’s magic fingers and squeezed more life into them than you had any business possessing. And, for the first time in months, he looked around the room.

  He was slow with it, taking in every face and smile and dimple. The room was still so loud only a few of us noticed at first. We all noticed what came next. All grandpa knew was that his grandbaby had called, and he aimed to deliver. Grandpa sat up straight, cleared the phlegm from his throat, hacked it up, looked high up to the waiting heavens before spitting it on the floor, unfortunately unaware of baby Julius, before addressing his esteemed audience.

  And the following, word for word, is what he said.

  I shit you not.

  has been a learning curve for me, but I think I've got something of a handle on it now, lol. With that in mind, if any edits happen to Chapter One this week at all, I wouldn't expect them until this weekend. Worst case scenario, it'll be next week. I'll keep y'all posted!