Tarantino's Son

Bar Fight

My jaw clenched tautly as my eyes narrowed to crinkled slits. The printout was faint, black lines drawing out a man, eyes turned away from the camera but with an unmistakeable scar above the left side of his eyebrow. I had seen this face only once, 7 years earlier. Yet this was a face I had never forgotten, the face of a man that had maimed my vitality and stolen my innocence. He was the face of my nightmares, Tarantino and he was alive. My parent's killer was still alive.

I sucked in a breath, almost gasping in pain as I looked down suddenly realizing that my nails were leaving bloody indentations into my palms. I stared at them, slowly removing my nails as tiny rivelets ran down the length of my arm. Anger surged through me as I traced the lines tenderly with my eyes, ignoring the tears that threatened to spill into rivers as I dove head first into a pandemonium of fortitude.

I still remembered them, my parents. It had been 7 years, yet some part of my mind had been forever divulged into the memories of them, into the last night I had spent with the them..

**

My mother, soft and beautiful with trails of tattooed petals inked around her hipbones and tassels of onyx hair to her waist. She had been young, only 29 years old yet despite her age, she was never frivolous. Her hands were always warm and when she took me in her arms, I always felt safe as I snuggled up to her chest. At night by the candle light, she had told me stories of her childhood, her father was an Bosnian ex diplomat in a foreign land escaping a broken country left midst the ruins of a war and her mother a young orphaned Colombian seamstress. Sometimes on sweltering nights in the summer when the heat was far too sickly to remain in the house, we would sit together on the porch listening to the voices of the slums as she wove stories of the little red house with blue windows she had lived in growing up.

Her hands nimbly braided my long dark hair as her breathy falsetto dipped spurring pieces of her past as she lamented on the peeling beach house, her father had taken them when she was 7 years old. For hours we would talk, until the wee hours of morning when my father came home..

Jumping off the porch, drowsy eyed and disheveled I would run to him leaping into his arms as he held me tight. He had always smelled of peppermint mixed with a distinct tinge of hard leather. I would laugh, shrieking as he tickled me with his coarse black beard and complained that I was getting too big for hugs as he carried me inside. . Tucking me in bed, I would sleepily ask him to tell me as a story as he loosened his tie, collapsing rather tiredly onto the edge of my bed..Despite having worked most of the night, he would never complain-he wanted the best for us, for me..

The last night I had seen them alive was July 18th, a night so platonically vivid in my mind that nothing could ever expel it from the depths of my memory.

I blinked withholding back the choke in my throat, as I bit my tongue vaguely remembered that I was indeed, still in Veno's sitting only inches away from Caine whom had probably been pensively trying to get my attention for the last ten minutes or so.

Calmly I pushed back the printout, without meeting Caine's eyes.

"He's alive." I said, my voice hollow and hoarse. I bit my lip, hating the vulnerability that consumed my weak mutter. I was not weak-I was a survivor not a coward. I wouldn't spend my days running from the man who had taken away everything I had ever know, whom had carved me into a monster-a beacon of savagery and shadows. I would not run anymore-

Looking up, I lazily met Caine's eyes and in the steadiest most invulnerable voice I could muster, I said "I wanna find him and kill the bastard."

He shook his head, his blue eyes were grave as he nonchalantly lifted the beer to his lips. "He's dangerous Lana, you know that." He scratched his head, flimsy bits of blonde static sticking up. "He'd kill you in an instant, no regrets."