Bloodsport

Prologue: A Memory

Harry has a very clear first memory, and it comes back in flashes sometimes, against his will. 

Sometimes he's just writing, or watching tv and it just pops up in his head, like an unstoppable tsunami wave. He doesn't like his first memory much, and in fact, if he could he'd get rid of it, but that's not the way the mind works. It just does without any regard for the person.

Most people remember their mother's hugs, maybe something that happened in pre-school once, or a phrase their fathers told them. Most people a have happy memory, or just a memory, something insignificant and irrelevant that doesn't mean much. Some people don't even have first memories. Not many people sit down and try to pinpoint exactly the first point in their lives that they can remember. As it happens, Harry has. 

For Harry, that first memory consists of a throat slit open and blood pouring down the bathtub drain.

And that's not even the worst part.

He isn't sure why that is the first memory. It didn't happen when he was four or five, like first memories tend to happen. Harry was eight when he saw that, and he's tried to invoke something from before, but nothing ever comes up. Not a birthday party, not a game with his sister, not a school lesson—nothing. Just blood. A murder scene, if you'd rather go by technical terms. He has a theory. The murder scene is his first memory because that is when his life changed.

There's the murder and then there's the image of her mother's big brown eyes, wide and wild and worried when she spotted Harry standing by the door. He remembers her putting her hands up, as if to wave him away like one scares off a stray dog, before she caught sight of her blood-soaked hands and put them down again, hiding them from view with the porcelain of the tub. "Harry. Get out of here. Right now. You shouldn't see this." Harry remembers asking if father was okay, perhaps a bit dumbly. He remembers being confused by the scene, but he doesn't remember feeling scared. "He's—it doesn't matter. Go back to bed, yes?"

And like any other child being scolded by his mother, Harry had nodded and left the bathroom and gone to his room. He had crawled into bed and closed his eyes, tried to catch some sleep despite how hungry he felt. That had been the initial reason why he had been up in the middle of the night. He was just hungry. Stumbling upon a murder scene was mere bad luck.