Our Life Our Story - Book 1

Chapter 7 - Born Errored

"People see gold spun hair and the dark of death, but they never see the darkness that plagues my soul and mind."

Eden Alders was named after the garden of Eden, a haven of immortality and pure blessings. Yet his path was never destined to be the good little preacher boy his parents might have wanted him to take. Instead, he grew up to be one of the most fearsome delinquents of Los Valburn. He grew to be the "Racqueteer" of the city. He was the close range attacker and distractor of the Voided Tigers, the racket spinning supposed psycho.

The "Raqueteer" was a fellow that liked to dress quite differently than the regular citizens of Los Valburn, but then again, he wasn't a normal citizen of Los Valburn. His hair, the colour of sunbleached wheat, often falls in front of his face, as he kept it chin length to the right bangs, but short everywhere else. During heists, he wore an imperial red shirt printed with a black dripping pentagon in the back and the words "Cross me" in the front, a musty leather jacket with mysterious firebrick red stains scattered about the hems, navy blue jeans, and black Vans.

Eden Alders was known by many as the blonde-haired criminal, the dancing Tiger, the "Raqueteer". He often acted chill and like he didn't care at times, but everyone in the gang knew that he would do anything for the Voided Tigers. He was quick with his sharpened baseball bat and electrified racket strings and swift in killings. His victims were often beaten to a pulp, squares of the strings and stab marks apparent. But he was surprisingly caring and delicate with the crew, always trying to include everyone in his strange stunts with Datu.

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Eden actually had a pretty good childhood, compared to the others. It wasn't the best, sure, but it was alright. He had been born somewhere in the Netherlands, the oldest of 7 children. His mother had been a widow who married a rather poor fisherman who had stolen her heart. They were loving and they tried the best they could to support their family, but they just couldn't do it completely. They were very religious people, going to church to pray for good fortune every Sunday.

Eden had remembered that his mother started a small farm near the house and would go to the market to deliver eggs and wheat for bread and that his father would be at sea for days to catch bundles of small fish for money to buy food. He remembered dressing up on days where his only nice clothes were old ones of his late grandfather, old and musty, with scuffed shoes and straggly hair combed down as far as it could. He remembered thinking it wasn't enough.

He remembered hunger, not enough to die, but just enough to gnaw at his stomach in discomfort. But he would live through the days where he would go with only water with his parents, because he couldn't bear the thought of his younger siblings, with their cries weak from illness and lack of food, experiencing the same type and extent of his pain.

Eden remembered working at the small mine factory as a breaker boy near their house for hours, sweat pouring down his face and soaking his back, his 9-year-old fingers numb. The area was old fashioned and survived mostly on the money made from the mind. Leaving the factory with blackened nails, faint with hunger and exhaustion. He remembered the panic that had blown up inside of his chest when his father was found at sea after disappearing, body cold and filled with salty water. His mother had mourned, but she still had a family to raise. She tried her hardest, she worked until worn and weak, but the family would soon fall apart.

Eden had watched as his family started to succumb to illness and hunger and the bitter cold that plagued the area one by one. How his siblings were put in small graves in the makeshift graveyard, eyes glazed and chest never rising again. He remembered having to bury his mother, the last one to die and wondering in grief why he didn't meet the same fate. He had tried to kill himself once, only to come back to life in his emptied house. To the villagers, he became of freak of nature and they started to exclude him. So he left the country, went to NYC and illegally hopped on a ship to Los Valburn.

There were people like him over there, those who were known as witches and devils, those who couldn't stay dead. And they were the Voided Tigers and they made him feel like he belonged.