Chapter 1: A Life of Pain

For a long time which felt like it lasted for a whole 9 months, I dreamt only nightmares, those nightmares being my life up until this point.

...

"Thomas, stop fidgeting around so much and follow me quietly" 37 years ago during early spring, when I was 6 years old, My mother, a fat lady named Karen, who always had a frown on her face speaks to me.

Due to a birth defect where my skull under my eyebrows was outdented, causing me to seem like a caveman, my lackluster genes and FASD, caused me to be an "ugly child". While it wasn't permanent due to the advent of better healthcare technology, I still held that look for 33 years of my life, only having surgery done when I had the money to do so.

"Yes mum." I reply, rolling my eyes as I jog away from the candy aisle of our local Tesco.

My mother isn't the best parental figure you could imagine, but she did her job atleast for the 14 years she "took care of" me.

Now, the reason this memory came up now, is not due to her grumpy and irritative attitude. As most I remember of her is such behaviour, this doesn't strike as anything out of the norm. The reason is what comes after, which strikes my mind the most.

Just before I leave the candy aisle, I spot something. Five giant marshmellow teddybears sit atop a pyramid of easter eggs, I felt unnaturally excited over such a simple thing for some reason, but I immediately call for my mother.

"Hey! Mum, can I have thi-" But she's not there, having moved on to the next aisle over without me. So I resolve myself to just show her the candy teddybear, climbing up the wheeled, two-meter high stepladder that an employee forgot to move after restocking the nearby shelf, I reach out for the closest bear and grab it, but due to the shift in weight and me being an eight year old that doesn't understand a hint about elementary physics. The stepladder slides from under me, throwing me off it right over the pile of easter eggs.

Crash

The cardboard scaffolding bends under my momentum throwing off a good percentage of the thin-plastic wrapped eggs onto the hard floor, breaking them into pieces.

"Waaaah!" I immediately start crying, not from pain in my arms but from what is coming after the pain, which is my mum.

"Agh! you bastard child, look what you've done Thomas!" My mom shouts after seeing the chaos I've accidentally created. "Now I'll have to pay for this mess you've caused! Each of these eggs costs atleast seven quid you daft cunt."

In retrospect, I do not know whether my mother was an idiot or was trying to cause me distress, but I'd argue the latter, of course she wouldn't have to pay for those eggs, but my 6 year old self did not have such reasoning andI continue crying in the pile of cardboard, plastic and chocolate.

"I-I din't meawn it, it wath an accident" I try to convey through my unrelenting tears.

"I DON'T CARE THAT IT WAS AN ACCIDENT" she shouts. "Everything you do is an accident, you took three years to be able speak coherently, you constantly break things around the house, and yer entire life is one aswell!"

I don't know what cause this insane woman to shout at a 6 year old so aggressively, but it comes to noone's surprise that my younger self could not handle such attacks and I fainted shortly after.

-----

"Tom, do you not cry for your mother?" My Father James, asks while staring at me with displeasure on his face.

"Why should I?" I reply apathetically.

"Karen raised you for 14 years Tom. I get that you quarraled with her quite often, but she deserves atleast a modicrum of respect for raising someone as useless and difficult as you." He replies, turning in the direction of her grave, his face crumbling and tears falling from his eyes.

I don't understand why my drunkard Father cared about her so much, all she did was insult him for arriving late from work, not helping enough around the house, even though I've never seen her pick up a vaccum in her life, and anything else really.

I can't even say I want to pity the man, as he is just as bad, if not worse than that grumpy pile of shit lying 6 feet under.

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"I heard yer mum died." Samuel says.

"And what of it?" I answer. "How do you even know that?"

"Yer dad's been crying about it on his facebook page."

"What the hell are you looking at my dad's facebook page for? Actually, nevermind, I should expect that from you." I let out a sigh as I pick up my pace to hopefully avoid this bully of mine.

Samuel was a nuisance towards me for most of my childhood life, only escaping from him when I graduated. He seemed to take advantage of my weak character in every way he could, mostly he just got me to steal alchohol or cigarettes from my parents, ike today. The latter option is no longer possible after my mum died, as dad would freak out any time he suspected I took a cigarette pack of his, and I hoped Samuel understood that.

"Have ya grabbed yer dad's gin yet?" He asks expectantly.

"No, he's picked up his drinking again after mum died, doubt I'll be able to take it from him, if he hasn't drunk it all yet."

"What, are ya scared of a little retaliation from ur shitty dad? and the last part is obviously just an excuse, you said it urself it's a liter bottle, stop fucking with me and just take it, or I'll smack ya to death." He half-shouts at me with a glare.

"Jeez, fine. You know if I die your main source of cheap alchohol will be gone right?"

"I'd rather you gone than my alchohol."

"Then why not leave me alone for once?"

"You can't change fate dumbass."

I reluctantly stop replying to his illogical nonsense as I near my class, dreading what is to happen later today.

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I arrive at our old house, taking my shoes off and hanging up my hooded jacket before I head into my room.

After playing my xbox on and off for about 4 hours I confirm that my dad's fallen asleep on the lazy chair in the living room, blackout drunk with a bottle of vodka to his side. I head to the wine cabinet and take out the out-of-place liter of gin that is 70% full and pour most of it into an empty bottle of coke, keeping about 20% left in it's glass encasing.

In retrospect, it may have seemed stupid to dilude it with water until it was 50% full, hoping my dad wouldn't notice the lack of flavor, but it is excusable that I had never drunk much alcohol at that age, only having a couple sips of beer for the sake of my curiosity.

I placed the rest of the original gin bottle on the glass table by his side, returning the half empty vodka back to the fridge, hoping that he will believe he was in a gin mood this afternoon, when he wakes up. Well, that was what I hoped but reality isn't always so kind to you.

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*Bang, Bang, Bang!*

I wake up upon a loud series of noise at my door, checking my alarm I see that it is 5am.

"TOM YOU PIECE OF SHIT WHAT'D YA DO TO MY GIN!?" My dad shouts, I immediately tense up as I scramble at how to answer.

Let's just choose the safe option "What the hell are you talking about?? Why the hell are you shouting at me in the middle of the night!?"

He throws open the door and continues shouting with a drunken look on his face. "YA THINK I CAN'T TELL THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WATER AND ALCOHOL YOU MORON?" Hearing the crux of the problem, I lose all hope that I get out of this situation with excuses.

"O-Okay, please calm down, l-look, my friend needed some alcohol and his parents didn't allow him to have any, so he a-asked me to help. Yes, I-I took your gin, but it's not like the bottle is half filled with just water! Atleast 30% of that is still gin!" I stammer, trying to defend myself from his clearly hateful and disgusted look.

"SO YA RUINED 30 DESILITERS OF GIN?"

"It's twenty bu-"

"THAT'S ENOUGH!" He interrupts me, while dashing in my direction.

Still half naked sitting on my bed, with no room to escape, He grabs hold of my arm, lifts me by the collar of my t-shirt and shouts in my ear.

"WHERE THE HELL'S THE REST OF IT?" He asks before throwing me hard back onto the bed, causing me to bounce off it and hit my head on the wall beside it, knocked out immediately.

-----

"I am sorry Thomas, but we sadly cannot invite you into our company"

I read a message that I swear I've read over a thousand times.

I was 22 years old at that time, having moved out of my father's home as soon as I turned 18, well, I say I moved out, but in reality I had just been secretly living in my dad's addic, that he thankfully never uses. I've been able to survive off my mum's life insurance, which seems out of character for her, but I assume she was socially pressured or something.

I had still yet to find a job, my horrible grades and eventual expulsion for it in school, my lack of work experience, a criminal offense from Samuel's pressure, my looks (I think) and my scrawny body unable to lift even 10 kilograms, caused me to qualify for not a single job I applied for.

As a backup plan, about a year before I started learning programming, looking to do freelance work, and because it allowed me to browse the web on the job.

The thing that saved me, as I doubt I would necessarily be very successful as an amateur programmer, was being directed towards bitcoin while it was in it's infancy. Me being a improperly raised fool at the time, took it's weak pitch of being a decentralized currency seriously, and took part in mining it while the pond was full for draining, thinking it would actually change the world.

Well, atleast it changed my world, for the better and the worse.

-----

"Well, aren't ya lookin' handsome for a pub like this?" Is the first sentence Amanda said to me.

At the time, I was ecstatic. Me, who has never spoken properly to a woman before, due to my insecurity about my horrible genes, and facial features marked by my mother drinking with me in the womb, was approached by a beautiful chestnut haired woman.

I was 25 years old at this point, and my coincidental investment in bitcoin had paid off immensly, immediately making me over a million pounds after I cashed out about half of it. Dressing fancily, upon my newly gained confidence, seemed to have been enough to attract leeches, or, due to my week concience, just a single, heartbreaking leech.

I don't know what brought here to decide it, maybe it was to make her 'love* more believable, but she chose to have 3 children with me, well, it turned out to be 4 with the conception of our twin girls, the oldest, Janice, being born two years after we met.

After marrying at 28, which I cannot help but regret, my new wife, and my new wealth brought forth the first ever positive social standing I've ever had, I believed that my life was finally on track, that this was it, a straight road to a happy retirement, after a life of pain.

But life is never that simple.

We started arguing, she disliked my pathetic behavior that I had developed over a lifetime of suppression, she disliked my lack of purpose, due to my stable financials, I never really worked on anything, preferring to watch TV and helping out around the house most of the day, she my nightly drinking, and she probably disliked hundreds of other normal things I did because that's all she ever does, dislike something!

Anyways, 6 years later, after an individualistic crisis about why she married me, when she complaines so much about me, like she is my parents or something. I searched the internet for help, and found what I was looking for. A term called 'gold digger', while my paranoia may have cause me to overlook some definitions that didn't fit my bias, I had been certain that's what she was doing, and her filing for divorce only exacerbated it.

She started spreading exaggerations of my character towards her friends, family and aquaintances, which most were also my friends and aquaintances, my reputation was smeared, and it revealed the truth that hurt so much. They only spoke to me due to my relationship with Amanda.

After a long legal battle and some bribing of the judges and lawyers, and alot of half truths, I managed to win custody of our children and allowing the leech to only meet me and my children only once a month, while she took half my net worth.

-----

Three years of hateful grief, with an alcohol addiction overstaying it's welcome in my life, I sat there, at a nice pub in London, where I met my first and last ever True Friend: Zach.

Zach helped me alot in my depression as a drinking partner. Though 6 years my junior, he had quite similar circumstances to myself, which caused us to relate to each other quite a bit. Though, while I was always pointing out the negatives in my life, and difficulties I was facing, Zach always seemed to be able to look at the bright side, introducing me to many things that helped my mind. Mainly, exploring nature, which funnily enough was the cause of my children's demise, or my own, depending on whether or not I ever get treated in the comatose state I am in.

After 4 years I finally started to return the favor and I took more strides in helping Zach, as I had fewer things to worry about myself, nevermind the fact that I felt bad that I was leeching off of his kindness.

A year later I finally could consider myself no longer an alcoholic, I was-

Something pulling at my legs, and muffled voices sounding cut me out of my thoughts.

After an uncomfortable couple minutes of pulling I feel like my skin was touching the air for the first time in my life, while I cannot open my eyes for some reason, I can clearly hear at a louder volume and my nose feels like it could breathe tons of oxygen.

"Engur innó far!" I hear an Icelandic man speak excitedly in an odd accent, probably just glad that I'm still alive.

Well, I am too, but as I start crying out in joy; "Waaaah-" I immediately stop as I hear a baby's cry come out of my mouth.

The mental shock of the circumstance had been enough to allow me to open my eyes for once, seeing a giant blonde woman above me, with long black horns growing out of her head.

"Waaaaaaaah" Out of pure shock at the unnatural sight I start crying again, only now realizing that it indeed was my real voice.

Through my tears I bend my head look at my body, confirming my doubts immediately. The man was not speaking Icelandic, I was not in a coma, I am in hell, and was just birthed by a demon.