Blood would flow, scars would never heal. He wasn't a sadist, but he liked it this way. He'd seen this movie before. He wrote the script!
He pursued his prey across the arid desert of her insecurities to the riverbanks of her plumping confidence. Poison dart-toting archer he tracked her. She never stood a chance, not that she wanted one. Beautiful innocence.
Predator that he was he worked her like a crankshaft on a recalcitrant automobile until she turned over, sputtered and purred. She was smitten before morning when she heard the screen door slap shut.
Predictable as sunrise he rode away. The wind ruffling his glossy hair. Sensuality was his fuel while feelings were for suckers. He pricked the necks of the wiling to nourish his uncertain self, his shaky ego.
An ego born in the slush of sadness. A child reared in the hush of neglect. Left to his imagination the algae blooming of pop-culture proliferating, sliming the pond of what was once his heart. His child's nature was repeatedly doused until only a certain formality remained. On the exterior everything looked fine. Sure, his mother loved him, even if she did blame him for his father running off, without explanation. He needed to believe her.
His mother swore up, down and around she'd done her best. Maybe her eyesight was feeble and all that was in front of her, the post-nuclear wasteland of her immediate life, she mostly couldn't see.
In a ritual of self-immolation he forgives this woman who created him. Magnanimity, he hopes, is his life preserver to sanity, to safety. His greatest fear is he'd grow up to be just like her. In truth he already was.