Gustave Daaé: The Tales Of My Childhood

Prologue

     The way we grow up, every detail of our childhood, is what determines how we end up. Every influence around us, in those early years, sculpts every aspect of our entire being. Our grandparents made our parents who they were, as our parents made us who we are.
In this deal life made, my father got the short end of the stick. Like we all biologically do, we have two people who created us. Two beings that formed to become one. But when it came to the two figures who were designed to be your guardians, nicknamed "mom" and "dad", that's where the floor fell out under my father.
When I asked him what he remembered about my grandparents, he never used the descriptive phrases we normally use to describe someone. He never described their hair, the way his mother's perfumes smelled, their shape of body. The only words he was ever able to mumble out was,
"Their faces...they looked at me with the most twisted frown and eyes of disgust."
And that's all he ever said, and it was even more heartbreaking knowing that more than likely, that's all he ever remembered, because the moment their eyes met his, he was swept away. From the very beginning, his chance at a good life was taken away from him, and it only got worse in time.
But if his past did anything to him, it made his heart kinder, especially when it came to me. A man known for evil, couldn't have been a better father. He loved me with an inhuman capacity. He did his best to make the insane life he led a normality to me.
Though he did the best he could, my life was far from normal. I was the son of a ghost, a murderer, and man who was long believed to be dead. But though it was a childhood unique from every other kid, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. The masked man I met back when I was ten turned out to be the best dad I could have ever asked for.