"Pio's favorite nights were spent with the wooden bull fighter. He had a running story in his mind from each previous night except this night the wooden bullfighter felt different in his hand. Now that he knew that Elmo was not his father the stories he told himself suddenly felt deflated of their adventure and realism.”

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Chapter 1 Part 1 | Chapter 1 Part 2

This is an original STEEM series novel. If you like odd dramas about odd things, strangely funny and sad, freaks, bearded ladies, emotional pain of invisible boys–I'll be writing a chapter in the series at least each week here on Steamit. Resteem, UpVote & Follow @ezravan

Chapter 2 / Part 1

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Exactly Nine months after Zola's mysterious night with the Russian and the Gnostic, Pio was born. He was such a large baby that the doctor charged extra wages to deliver him and within a few years it was obvious that Pio was like none other. At three years of age he stood nearly 4 foot tall, at eight, he was so tall that he had to look down when speaking to Zola and Elmo. It was at this age that the butcher, known to know everything, revealed to him that he was a double cursed bastard because he was conceived by the seed of two men; a freak of nature.

That evening after the Butcher's revelation, Pio asked his Mother if what he had said about his conception by two men was true. She looked up from her food for a brief moment–her shoulders drooped. She let out a heaving breath as if 10 years were exhaled from her chest–but she did not say a word. Her attention went back to her plate. Only the scraping of knives and forks broke what would be absolute quietness. Pio got up to leave.

That is when Zola slightly dabbed her lips with a napkin and finally said. “Yes. It is true dear. And one of them was a dirty Russian too.”

That night, after bath time, Pio’s large six-foot eight-year-old frame sat cramped in his corner of the bedroom. He played with the only toys he owned: a bullfighter and a bull, both carved and painted by the very skilled hand of the man he called his father, Elmo.

Pio played with the bull fighter every night for half an hour before bedtime, usually acting out a story that Elmo had told him of the real Toreros in Spain who risked life and limb for the glory of slaying a beast three times their size with such elegance and poise that it was honorable, even from the point of view of the bull, who lived in one moment, more than a thousand bulls live, in a life.

Pio's favorite nights were spent with the wooden bull fighter. He had a running story in his mind from each previous night except this night the wooden bullfighter felt different in his hand. Now that he knew that Elmo was not his father the stories he told himself suddenly felt deflated of their adventure and realism.

Elmo’s stories were inciting because he worded them in such a way that Pio felt in some way that he was the bull fighter; that he was the brave one fighting the bull. It was not a faceless Torero in the ring, it was Pio himself poised in the hush of the crowd ready to demonstrate his able well-trained sword into the hump of the bull. On some nights, Pio could hear the crowds roaring in his head. But not tonight. The bright and detailed bull-ring he imagined was faded, gray, not as alive; there was no crowd in the imagined seats this night.

This night, Pio audibly heard and felt his first hunger pang. It shook the floor. Zola heard it also while cleaning in the kitchen downstairs but she thought it was thunder and ordered Elmo to fetch her hanging soap on the outdoor line before it rained. It didn’t rain night yet the thundering pangs of Pio's newly born hunger continued.

To Be Continued...

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Chapter 1 Part 1 | Chapter 1 Part 2

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