SPAWN (LET HIM SIN #6)

1

KING

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Nothing remarkable.

Nothing special about me, with the exception of the feather layer of red hair just like my mother’s.

My beginnings were humble, right in one of the rooms of the Red Ash Regional Hospital in Ashford, Virginia. Ashford was a very small industrial town, just 27 miles southwest of Richmond.

The hospital was a midsize, underfunded building that served factory workers, transient families, and more importantly, the lower-income residents.

It wasn’t a place known for luxury births.

The nurses were overstretched, everyone was overworked, and no one was nicer than they had to be.

Anytime you went to that hospital, the one word that would describe it was tired.

It was the kind of place where babies were born every night and forgotten just as quickly.

The fresh smells of antiseptic and clean sheets hit me first, along with the bright lights overhead. I could hear people talking and making noises that I didn’t understand yet, and above all that, the sound of my own crying.

Much of my early childhood was also not remarkable.

I don’t really know much about my father except his name and the fact that he left. Aisling Kyle O’Bannon was not a remarkable-looking girl. She had naturally copper-red hair and pale skin, but she could be impulsive at times and emotionally dependent.

I’m pretty sure that when she started out her life, she never imagined that she would be pregnant at 15, responsible for a baby boy, living in poverty without a father or a proper family to help.

She gave me my name, Kingston Ross, after my maternal grandfather.

I don’t know why she gave me my father’s last name.

The asshole was never in my life. Not enough to make a difference, just enough for me to vaguely remember the stink of booze that was on him even at his young age, and the fact that he had a shock of deep red hair like I did when I was younger.

I imagine my mom was panicked when she was pregnant, and of course Calum, the man who was my biological father, didn’t want the responsibility.

He loved sticking his dick in anything that walked without any mind of the consequences.

But maybe it was for the best. At least that’s what my mom told me.

Even as a teenager he was heavily involved in drugs.

He was inconsistent and unstable. And his drifting in and out of my life feels like a dream until he permanently disappeared when I was 7 years old.

No formal goodbye.

No explanation.

No contact afterwards.

Just gone.

But some people will count me lucky because they would say I had a good father figure in the old man that worked very hard. I’m glad they could see it that way. As soon as I was old enough to understand everything, they didn’t feel that way to me.

Uncle Daryl, who was really my mom’s uncle, took my mom in when she couldn’t live on her own.

Two years after I was born, he began working for Red Line Petrofreight Logistics, initially as a regional hauler and later as a long-haul industrial driver.

The company contracted drivers to move fuel components, refinery equipment, and chemical freight between processing plants across the Southeast and Gulf-adjacent corridors.

A year later, when my mother turned 18, she moved into an apartment with him.

Uncle Daryl was already established there, so he figured, “You’re struggling.

Why not come over and have this little rented rinky-dink house for yourself while I’m away on long hauls?

” Typically it was three to five weeks on the road at a time, followed by seven to ten days at home, sometimes less.

His routes were irregular and changed with the contracts, so there was never any consistent return date, which kept our household in constant uncertainty.

The man would work 10 to 14 hours driving per day, often overnight, sleeping in truck stops and roadside motels or even in the cab. But he made a lot of money. It was enough to keep us afloat, but the income fluctuated.

Uncle Daryl used to justify the volatility and excuses that he made enough money to control the household, when the reality was that it was not enough to create real stability. And God knows what he spent most of the money on. Probably whores.

His lifestyle on the road while away involved him drinking heavily, mostly cheap whiskey and beer that he picked up at truck stops.

He always rationalized it, as I heard him say, as “blowing off steam.” Even as a young kid I understood that he hired sex workers during long routes, particularly near the industrial hubs and ports. And what did he call it?

Private entitlement rather than infidelity.

That’s when he was drunk and talking to me about his journeys on the road.

He never called them sex workers, of course.

Only “a sexy gal” or a “damn good looking doll” that would spend the night with him and “suck his dick real good.” That’s what he told me, something that was too young for my little ears to hear.

Whenever I did watch TV, which was very rare, those families in the movies with a father and a mother that were home and kids happy and playing outside in the backyard seemed alien to me.

I asked my mom if we could have something like that and celebrate Christmas together and all of that too, and she told me, “What’s on the TV is make believe. Those families aren’t real life.”

So at some point I stopped expecting it.

I didn’t have a lot of toys growing up. And of course when you’re growing up as a kid with no older siblings, the only thing that you manage to see is what your mother does or the man of the house does.

And both of them… well, both of them, for their idea of fun when they weren’t fucking loudly whenever Uncle Daryl was home, was to drink.

My mom controlled her substance abuse, but day in and day out that’s all I saw.

And I saw that they looked so relaxed after, or angry. Either one.

But I wanted to see what all the fuss was about, so at six years old, three months away from turning seven, I snuck alcohol from Daryl’s stash.

It was a beer. I felt like a man when I drank it, even though it was bitter and stung my throat.

But I figured to be a man like Uncle Daryl, I had to act like Uncle Daryl, and Uncle Daryl drank and smoked.

So I would steal a beer first, take a sip, then a gulp, then liquor later.

Uncle Daryl had a trailer out back, and I would sneak out there to drink. And the weirdest thing happened.

Even though it tasted bad, my mom was right about something: bad things are usually good for you. Medicine tastes bad but it’s good for you. And it did feel good to me. Even at six years old.

And at that age, I was glad to have something that felt good to me.

I didn’t have the luxury of knowing what clean clothes were or nice clothes.

I was dirty all the time. That’s probably what my mom thought.

It’s not like we went to church, even though my mom had started going right when I was a baby.

I don’t remember that. She sure as shit didn’t do it when I was growing up.

So I had old clothes or regular clothes.

They didn’t look old to me because that’s what my clothes were.

The only way my mom would try to get me clothes or hand-me-downs from other people whose kids didn’t need them anymore was when I was literally squeezing out of them, way too tight to even have them on. Otherwise I would just not wear a shirt.

Drinking became my medicine. Whenever I was sad or lonely or when I was dealing with things at home, the horrible things, it was a way to soothe my soul and regulate the fear and anxiety chemically before I even understood those emotions.

I didn’t have a mom that hugged me when she came home or kissed me or told me she loved me. I can’t ever remember my mother telling me she loved me.

Even though I started drinking early, at least I waited till twelve before I started smoking. Might as well.

Funny enough, when I started drinking out in the trailer, that’s when I started meeting some of the other boys nearby. I would say hello to them and they would eventually come over. We would all drink beers together. Some were a little bit older than me. One of them, I think, was younger.

It didn’t matter.

We were adults whenever we were in that trailer, drinking and smoking just like our parents, talking about our lives and our futures.

Sometimes if Daryl was home he would come and chase the other kids away.

It was one of those kids that used to come over regularly who introduced me to drumming.

I had gone over to his dad’s trailer and his dad had a drum set.

That’s what ignited my passion. When he made me try it after I saw him play the drums expertly, I didn’t have the rhythm like he did, but I was damn sure going to learn.

What I know is that it felt good when I slammed into them and the loud noise spoke straight from my soul through the instrument.

I would sneak out to go hang out with my friends sometimes until I was threatened with my life if I kept doing that. I could never go far. Just stuck to that little fucking house, the house filled with smoke.

It was only understandable that I eventually started smoking because the little old house that we were in, that Daryl eventually paid off, was always filled with smoke anyway, just with my mom being there and her… many “men friends.”

But let’s go back a little bit because my mom’s men friends grew over the years.

Like I said, I was lonely. Sometimes my mom’s friends couldn’t come over so she had to go to them, or at least that’s what she told me.

So of course she couldn’t leave me alone.

My friends couldn’t come over all the time because they were off on their adventures or whatever they were doing, and I couldn’t go with them, so I was by myself a lot.

Apparently my mother had an issue with the cops before. When I was very young, maybe about three or four, I ran out onto the highway and almost got hit by a tractor trailer. No idea how I got out that far.

The cops were called, but miraculously she was able to maintain custody of me, claiming she was overworked and whatever else the hell.

She beat the ever-loving shit out of me though.

Yanked my arm and trained me to stay inside.

Anytime I touched the doorknob on that little house she would crack me across the head.

I learned really quick not to go outside unless Mom let me outside.

I don’t know what happened after that, but she thought that it was necessary when I was nine years old to get me a babysitter. Maybe I was getting a little too unruly or something.

I do faintly remember when I was six years old and in elementary school that my mom had to get called because I had alcohol poisoning. That was that, so I was homeschooled after that.

My mom would leave me alone for long periods of time, but whatever the issue was that brought trouble for her, she couldn’t leave me alone anymore.

It didn’t matter because her presence was merely a fact of life.

But sometimes I didn’t even notice when she was gone because when she was here it’s like she wasn’t anyway.

She was either smoking on the couch or making noises in her room by herself.

The same noises as she made whenever there was a man over, minus his noise when he wasn’t.

So when she had to leave, it was out of the question now. She had to get someone to watch me.

I thought babysitters were supposed to be horrible old ladies with meter sticks in their hands that slap you in your palm when you did something wrong.

That’s what I thought when I watched TV.

But nothing could have prepared me for when she brought over the 17-year-old very pale-skinned girl with light blue eyes and very long jet-black dark hair with a thick layer of bangs in the front.

This is the first time I’ve ever actually seen another woman up close besides my mother.

Of course sometimes she brought over other women that were dressed as though they didn’t need clothes because it was practically falling off them.

But most of the time my mom had male friends.

So having someone that was somewhat closer to my age was refreshing.

My babysitter was really badass. My mom was able to be away for long times, probably days, and it made me wonder if my babysitter ever had her own family because she would stay over for those days when my mom was gone, probably traveling.

“You’re the cutest ginger boy I ever seen,” she said to me.

Those were her first words to me. All I wanted to do was impress her.

But as a kid with no other reference, I thought this is what true friendship was: sitting down by the couch, snuggling and watching TV, her putting her arm around me and making me feel wanted in a way that my mother never did.

My heart beating fast because I had no idea what to do with this contact, because my mother barely ever touched me with any affection, much less hugged me.

My babysitter taught me things that most boys would come to learn on their own going out there in the world, but of course I couldn’t.

I was sheltered or captive, whichever one you want to call it.

And in a short space of time I experienced many of my firsts; things that awakened me, things that I didn’t know I could enjoy, things that I thought were only for TV or for the adults.

We cussed together. We drank together. And she never judged me or thought I was too young.

She was my heart. The closest thing to me.

And that closeness, she helped me to live in that in every way possible, taught me things, and gave me that little bit of joy that I needed as a young boy in a family that didn’t see me as anything special.

She made me feel special.

Gia made me feel special.

She was my only friend, my heart, an angel sent down to watch over me. Despite the family members that I had, Gia is the only one who ever felt like family.

When Gia couldn’t be there I explored my pain and expression in other ways.

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