The Life and Times of John St Crow

I was born in a run down shack on the east side of a city. There were riots in the streets and my mum couldn't get to hospital in time, and she was hiding from the riots in the shack. Born to her was a baby boy with tan skin and hazel eyes, and a tiny bit of brown hair. She took off her clothes to wrap him up warm, and ran home through the backstreets, naked, scared of the riots going on. She didn't make it all the way home. A man stopped the naked woman, tore her infant from her arms, held her up against the wall.

That is interesting. I was born from rape, and my birth mother was lost for the same reason. The man rode her like a horse and snapped her neck, and then he left me there, to cry and cry, new to the world.

Someone found us, my mother dead, viciously assaulted, and myself, wrapped in her clothes, still screaming. I was taken to an orphanage. It had colourful walls and lots of noise and other children who the adults there wouldn't talk to, and windows and toys, and they gave me a name. I was named John by them. John was an okay name. I didn't mind it. I was three before someone saw me, thought 'what a pretty child' and adopted me.

I was taken home to a nice house with comfy beds and carpets and sofas. There was always a warm smell of cooking, and Mr and Mrs Blatt were very nice. Mrs Blatt wanted to change my name. I wasn't John when I was with them, I was Louis. I preferred John by far. I would often refuse to answer to 'Louis'. No, it wasn't my name, it never would be my name. After a year or two, the Blatts grew tiresome. They found adopting me had lost its novelty, and they weren't cut out to care for a child like me. I used to fingerpaint on the walls, you see. I saw myself as an artist, and they saw me as a little monster. I was passed on to the next foster carers, the Walkers, who I told I wanted to be John again. Well, ask and you shall receive. They saw me into school, and school was...interesting...

I didn't like the Walkers. The man was strict and vile, and believed in hitting children. I hated getting told off enough, but being told off and slapped until I have a baboon bottom is definitely not my idea of a picnic. It didn't mess me up any. It wasn't like it was major abuse or something. The woman didn't like me. She wouldn't talk to me, and often brushed me off, and never let me watch TV, and she had very few toys. I missed toys. The Blatts had loads of toys.

The school was a single storey high, and my classroom was an ugly shade of orange. All we did all day was learn to count, sing songs, eat fruit and play with toys. I hadn't been mixed with other kids my own age for two years by this point, and I found it weird. I guess I wasn't very good at socialising. I didn't stick around that long anyway.

No, one day Mrs Walker was drunk, and she threw something at me. I got a scar above my eye as a result. I ran away that day, out of fear. She had gotten drunk in mourning of her late husband. Anyway, I slept in the dark, wet and cold that night without any supper. I was five now.

I went on a lot of missing child things. The world was watching for John Walker, but I was just John now, a street rat who ate out of rubbish bins and slept by the Pizza Hut and drank water out of fountains. This went on for three years, it did. I carried a knife with me. You would not believe the amount of people who have tried to attack me and have their way with me. I usually chop their junk off the moment I see it. Boom, no sexual assault, but a lot of punching. My cheeks are probably the colour of salmon. Anyways, I survive. I'm good at surviving. I am John, and I have killed. I know how to hide bodies. I know how to cover my tracks. Sometimes I sit on benches and read newspapers, if I feel unwell or tired or dizzy, and that's when I saw it.

The article about Michal St Crow.

In the picture, there stood a man, tall and great, with warm smile and substantial belly. The article spoke of a great, kind man who was in the news for doing great, kind things. The bit that got me was the skin, like mine but darker still, and the golden-hazel eyes, and the ever familiar nose and mouth.

He looked like me, but older. I had that thought in my head a long time, kept the newspaper with me. I had to see this man, this likeness to myself. Only it took a lot of deep research and sneaking around. Well, they don't call me Clever St Crow for nothing. My research led me to St Crow manor. I wrote a letter and hand delivered it to the gate, and said I would sit outside until I got a reply. I was a stubborn boy, and tired. I wasn't sure how able I was to move along. I hadn't eaten in a while, and sitting down by the wall wasn't very draining, so it was fine. A man came out, pulled me to my feet and pulled me along. I was dizzy and sick, and I didn't pay much heed until I was propped against a wall and a man turned my head from left to right. He was looking me over and when my eyes focussed, I saw Michal St Crow. Dark skin, hazel eyes, black curls and a thick beard, and round glasses on the end of that familiar nose. He offered some food and I took it gratefully.
"My, you do look familiar. I think you might be right, boy. You may well be my son." He stepped back, leaning against the opposite wall. We were in an alley, with wooden fences either side of us. My father nodded. "Yes...my son...what's your name?"
"John." I told him eagerly, thinking this would be the end of my troubles.

How naive I was. He grinned and took my hand. "Years ago, I did a few things I'm not proud of. Linda, Vick, Flo, embezzlement, fraud, ever so much...I thought I'd eliminated all evidence, but Linda survived my attack." My smile was gone now.
"Why are you-?" I cut off with a scream. The most excruciating pain was flaming from my eye, and there I was, screaming. Through my tears I saw a gun. The bastard had shot my eye!

Through the pain, I did something amazing. I heard the gun being reloaded and I lurched forward. Stab. Knife in his belly. Drag. A long, long slash. His screams mixed with mine. Slash, the gun was released from the hand in my desperate attempts to cut him. People came to see what the hullabaloo was and saw a grown man strangling a young boy, and the whole alley went crazy. I wasn't able to breathe and the whole world went fuzzy.

When I next woke up, I had tubes in me and I was surrounded by beeping, whirring machines, and I had a mask on my face for air. I had never been to a hospital before, so I was frightened. I'm healthier, body no longer that of a starved toddler. I'm still very small for my age. That's what comes from such ill living. When a doctor came in I started begging to be let free, and then I had to endure all the cursed tests and whatnot, and then I was sat up in bed. I had a scar near by eye, which was covered by a thick bandage. When it came down to Michal, my father, I had killed him. I was not in trouble for it. It was in self-defence, according to many eye-witnesses.

If I had lived a normal life, with my mother and father, or at the very least with my mother, I would have a name like St Crow. That's what I told them all my last name was. It was what I wanted to be officially registered as for the rest of my life. My inherited title. I felt I deserved that. Now, I never ever found out my mother's last name, so my father's was the best I could go, despite his vile ways.

I was adopted by another family. I took to wearing an eyepatch after leaving the hospital. My sight wasn't salvageable and neither was a decent looking eye. On my first day of my first secondary school, I couldn't find the patch and had to go in with that mutilated goop on show. I can't close that eye, and the eyelid twitches. Even so, I made some friends. Divan, Eric and Riordan. All bigger than me, and Eric could be just as mean as me.

Well, that lasted well until Eric had a falling out with Divan. Lovers' tiff. I hung around the girls after that, and at 16 a girl who wasn't quite my girlfriend gave birth to a girl who was my daughter. Brook died in labour, and the child was left to me. I named her Agnes, and oddly I think she was the first person I ever loved. Darling Agnes, who never did live to an age at which she would attend school.

I did my very best to be a good parent. I knew all the things about disease spotting and avoiding cot death, and I didn't drink or smoke, and I was careful but not too careful...and my latest foster family was very supportive. Agnes lived to the age of three, when in the middle of one night my house went up in flames. Choking smoke and burning flames all around, already in my room, and I went straight for Agnes'. Her bed was on fire. My adoptive sister forced me out of the house in the end. She was younger than me, and in the end?

A charred corpse of a little girl. Confirmed, Agnes St Crow. It was even more devastating than losing my eye, and that certainly left me with trauma. The crying every night, having disturbing dreams, turning into an emotionless man before others that people label a complete piece of excrement kind of trauma. The memory of Agnes, of seeing her burnt, innocent body, it made me physically sick.

I never did quite get over it. I was trusted with that little life, and I lost it. I wouldn't leave what next became my room for days on end, just crying. Camilla, the little sister, brought be in food every day and glasses of water every hour she could, and would sit on my bed and try to sooth me, giving me hugs and trying to say the right things.

Eventually, I allowed myself to socialise again. Still, I distanced myself. I was a sad, sad person. I was 20 now. I had spent months locking myself away, falling apart at the loss of the only one I ever loved...and slowly I was clawing my way back up, back to John St Crow. Then I met an old school friend. One of the girls. Penny. She had always been a good friend to me, and when I told her what I had been through since leaving school to care for Agnes, she was there to help wipe away the tears. I don't want to do into specifics. It would be five years of specifics, turning to dates and all that jazz and a real, a real romance...the second person I ever loved...Penny Merryweather...

And we married, and this time I won't lose my daughter. Maisie, my Maisie, our Maisie...the whole experience with Agnes made me rather...pyrophobic...but in the end it's fine. Everyone has their fears, after all.

The life and times of John St Crow...so far...

Peace out.