Brian’s first memory was a simple one, that of sound.  Perhaps there were others that happened before, but in his mind, all time began with that single sound.  Brian was the universe, and everything of his being began with that sound.
The sound of an open palm hitting flesh, a woman crying out in shock, pain, and despair as her lean body hits the floor; the thud of that echoing through the wooden house.  Then comes sight, the dark room with the moonlight drifting through the blinds, the silent silver skulker to all human despair and dreams turning her gaze to the dark orbs that open to the sound, two dark planets formed in the universe.  The feeling of touch, first of the sheets of the bed, warm and comforting, but also the feeling of the house shaking in echo of the rage that occurred outside of Brian’s perfect little bubble.  Then the feeling of cold, young, bare feet on the wooden floor, tip toeing to the door, and opening it with a dull creek.  Then smell, the smell of the wood of the house, sawdust that he always smelled by his door.
The last was the taste of bile in his throat, not knowing why he suddenly felt sick, his tummy desiring to throw up his dinner, as he saw his mother coming up the stairs, her face bruised.
Which was why, standing in the play area of the classroom, Brian found himself in this predicament.  The room was large, but it was singular, holding perhaps two or three class’s worth of students in its open arms.  The large class was split up further, into centers, who went around and performed a myriad assortment of tasks for the teachers’ amusement.
Brian was in the play area, the small area with a plastic house set up, and blocks and such, for students to relieve themselves of their rigors of study.  Such as they were.  Brian was there, and so was Rebecca.  And Rebecca wished to play house.
And Rebecca wished for Brian to serve as her husband, the father of the house, with a few of the other students, supplemented with stuffed animals, would be their children.
And Brian could not agree; the bile rose to his throat at the thought, for some reason he couldn’t understand.  To be a father meant to be a horrible thing.
But Rebecca, in the way that only a pretty young girl in the first week of kindergarten, held the reigns of Brian’s heart.  So he stammered, then spoke: “I don’t want to be the father, but I could be…”  His brain whirled, and Brian felt the bile again.  The big brother of the siblings?  The uncle?  That was unsettling, frightening, disgusting to him.  He did not know the world, incest, yet.
Later he would, and read about Quentin dying with the idea burned in his head.  Later he would think of Oedipus.
But he knew that he did not wish for Rebecca to serve as his mother.  The idea of anyone but his mother being his mother was strange enough; to have this desire to be around his mother, in this fashion, felt wrong and abborent.
“A neighbor?”  He finished.  “Like on television, the friendly neighbor who can answer problems.”  His words were spoken quickly, his young voice blurring them together in the desire to expel them from his mind.
He did not wish to serve as her husband, or the father to her children.  To be a father, a husband, was a terrible thing in his mind.  To be a grandfather was fine; his grandfather was one of his favorite people, and he felt wonderful curled up in the tall man’s lap as they watched TV together, his grandfather with the headset to a small radio in so that despite the fact that the screen held cartoons and the like, the older man could still enjoy his sports.  But that link, of to be a grandfather one must first be a father, did not exist to him.  A father was a bad thing, that shook the house.
And yet he still wanted to be with her, to be around her, for some reason.  His young mind brought forth his favorite image, that of a knight fighting a dragon for the hand of the princess.  It only made sense that the knight and the princess would love, would be together.  But in his mind he couldn’t imagine them married; that was the future, that other place where his mind sometimes feared to go, because he was afraid that he might become like the thing that shook the house.
But the knight always had the princess; they were together.  That was better to him than the thought of marriage; to be together.  The idea of adultery, of sex itself was not in Brian’s mind.  Instead, he thought of the magnets on the refrigerator that his grandmother would sometimes let him play with, round things like small coins that had eaten too much and become fat and thick, that would sometimes draw together and be wonderful, but sometimes push away and not match.
The attraction, then, was like the magnets.  To be with, to be together, without being married.  The idea dug its way into his mind and laired there like the dragon in the stories.
Rebecca responded with a face, and Brian felt a shake in his soul that he would make her frown at him.  “Okay.  I’ll get Sam to play father, then.”
He was betrayed; the magnets shifted, and he was repelled from Rebecca at the betrayal.  To go to someone else meant that she did not wish for him, but instead, merely anyone.  The sensitive mind of the youth whirled at that, unable to understand why he was not the sole object.  In the stories, the lady waited for the knight to return from the wars; the lady should wait, and faith and love would carry through, as surely as the sun set and the moon rised.
Rebecca, then, must have been no lady.  Or at least, not enough of one to wait for Brian.  So he simply shrugged, in the way that he did, a motion that would become familiar as he accepted defeat, only to have it run off his shoulders like rain water.  “Okay.  I’ll play with legos.”
And his eyes looked towards Sally at the writing center, and he felt the attraction there.  He looked with resentment as he played with the blocks, looking at Sam and Rebecca, but did not wish to but in and influence it in the slightest.  He would not be the dragon, to break apart the union he wanted.  He would not be a beast like that.
At least not for years to come, when he would realize what the dragon could be inside of him.
He played with the legos, and then went to do his work.  Writing his name, writing letters, learning to read.  Reading came easy to him, but it bored him, because it lacked any hold in his mind.  They did not read the stories like his grandfather told, about the field mouse always escaping the farmer, retreating home to his haystack and outwitting the cat and the owl along the way.  They did not read the stories that his mother told about, about the spider writing things in her web.  They read silly things, about people walking and talking and spilling water, and dogs running.
He desperately, desperately wanted to read about the dragons and the princesses and the knights.
It would be years until he would, however; but it would be worth it.