short & horrific

Title: The Last Baker [Prologue Drabble]
Author: shorthorror
Pairing: Brian Haner & Zachary Baker
Rating: NC-17
Summary: This beautiful asshole just came around and started ruining everything for me. I was the last Baker, and I'd promised my father our name would not die with me.
Disclaimer: I am confident the readers can distinguish between what is real and what is fiction. I need not state the obvious.




It was always my father's dream for me to become the greatest male in the history Baker. My dad always had big plans and even bigger hopes. He wanted me to be the kind of man he was, and his father was. The kind of man who never needed anyone's help but his own. An entrepreneur or anything with equal or greater income. He told me he never wanted me to suffer or feel lost or have to rely on anyone else's money to get me by.

After immigrating from Milan in Italy to the culture-shocked beaches of sunny California, my dad became horribly detached from his roots. To fade out the lingering memory of his Italian descent, he married a Californian woman named Maria Lessard. Together they bought a house just off the coast of the Pacific, on Huntington Beach. They married a year later on the warm beach, underneath the blazing sun. She took my father's last name; Baker. My dad would have it no other way. The pride he invested in that last name exceeded anything else in his life. Until I was born nine months later. Zachary Baker.

I'd inherited my mother's chartreuse colored eyes, her milky white complexion and her luscious pouting lips. Nothing about me indicated Italian besides my naturally dark hair and my ability to cook with any ingredient I could find and produce a goddamn culinary masterpiece. During my childhood I would curse the fact that I wasn't tall and dark like dad was, but he never seemed to care that I was a yield of pure American culture. Though I was raised by my Italian father, I was influenced by the Cali kids I went to school with. Punk, American whiskey, UFC and body modification became my identity. I was Zacky by the time I turned thirteen. I was Zacky Vengeance by age fifteen.

No matter how many tattoos I got or piercings I put through my skin, my father always loved me. Always told me what to do in a bad situation. Always steered me in the right direction. He knew about my life and how I was connected with the American born kids. He never minded, as long as my own mind was where it was supposed to be when it had to be there. If I could distinguish between friend time and work time, hell I could take up ballet and he'd be right there supporting me.

Then something horrible happened to me and my family. My parents were killed in a drive-by shooting on a visit to Los Angeles, in search of property that needed purchasing and renovation. It would have been me with a bullet through my head too if I'd have gone with them. But the thought of 'Restaurant Shopping' wasn't something too alluring to an eighteen year old boy. So I stayed home in Huntington Beach, turning my parents house into an official party venue, right off the white sand beach.

When I found out my mother and father had been killed while me and my friends were drinking ourselves stupid in their house, something changed inside of me. I kicked my friends out of the house, hauled out anybody who might have been unconscious or dead and locked all the doors and windows. I spent almost five days cleaning up the two story house top from bottom. I counted four garbage bags full of broken glass, sixty beer cases, three kegs and sixteen bags of those large red plastic cups that you see in a lot of teen partying movies. I scrubbed the stains out of my beautiful mother's imported Persian rugs, scraped the dried vomit off the marble floors and countertops and polished the bay windows to a blinding shine. After that, I organized my entire room. Color-coordinated my closet from reds to purples. I folded my jeans into perfect squares and stacked them precisely in my drawers. And when I was done that, I did the same to my dad's closet and to my mom's. Then I proceeded to the closet in the foyer where our jackets and rabbit-fur ski coats hung.

I don't know why I spent nearly a week cleaning that house. But I suppose, subconsciously, I felt obligated to restore my parents' residence to the way it was when they had first bought it. It did, however, belong to them and I got this searing inner pain like their deaths were payback for letting myself and my friends defile their beloved property.

Going into hiding helped me rethink my life and the way I was living it. My father had come all the way from Italy in his twenties to start his life in Orange County. He wanted a wife, so he got one. He wanted a son, so he got one. He wanted a big house and a fancy car and a bedside view of the ocean, so he got all that too. But he also wanted me to be his success story. He wanted me to be his biggest and best trophy. He cherished me more than his Mercedes Benz, his diamond wristwatch and his million dollar home put together. I would not let him down.

I would become the ultimate Baker.