Passionate Obsession by D.M. Mortier

 

Prologue

Ronin McKenna (Mac)

I think of my life span in two parts, the dormant phase and the alive phase, or, more accurately, before Katia and after Katia. Okay, I know it sounds as though the dormant phase was, ah, well dormant. It wasn’t that it was dormant so much as I, who I was, who I was meant to be, was dormant. I was molded out of fear. And while fear and terror existed out there, my life was all about finding and annihilating people or powers that perpetrated it.

I was someone’s war weapon. And man, I was the most lethal, efficiently destructive weapon there was. You have to understand why I allowed it. My new country, or should I say my parents’ new country, had just come out of a civil war and World War I. I was born in September 1919, Ronin McKenna, nine months after my father returned home from battle in France, wounded but more determined than ever to make life in his new country safe for his wife and sons. There were three of us. My older brothers were teenagers and already training to become defenders for our country. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that we were obsessive patriots or anything, we were just fucking glad to be in a country that beat the shit out of England! Oversimplification? Yeah. Agree, but that was all the reason my father needed.

Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re thinking. McKenna has to be Scottish or Irish, right? Well, it’s fucking both. We just happen to be Irish and proud sons of Ireland to boot. My grandfather had a title of English peerage, the Duke of Donegal, which had passed to my father. However, with a castle and other properties buried under with debt, it was an empty title. Hoping for a fresh start and away from the limited arms of the debt collectors, my father felt he had no choice but to run.

So, as I was saying, I was born in turbulent times. Times when boys became men too damn quick, and I was no different.

I was a mere month shy of my twenty-second birthday when both my brothers and father were killed in the war. I had already been a Marine, serving four years in the Navy, when I was suddenly alone in the world. My brothers had been too busy climbing the ranks in the US military to put down roots and maintain something so trivial as a wife and family. My mother had died from the Spanish flu weeks after my birth. My father had hated hospitals and doctors ever since. I can’t say that I blamed him after my own experience with the shady characters in that profession.

Now perhaps you can understand why, with no family, nothing to live for other than my brothers in my unit, that I made such a half-assed, give-no-shits decision that year.

Fast forward to 1978. Yeah, you’re reading it right. 1978. Thirty-seven years later. I still looked like I was in my damn twenties. The most I could do for a disguise was facial hair, unkempt or clean-cut facial hair, which I alternated for thirty-seven years. I was now no longer Ronin McKenna because that person was presumed dead in Vietnam. No one had ever called me Ronin in my adult life anyway. I had always been Mac. It was a name I acquired from my SEAL brothers, and it had stuck. Ronin had another purpose. I will tell you about him later.

So, why did I mention 1978? Well, that was the year that the Superman movie came out. And I swear to God, I thought someone had found out my secret. Yeah, well, that was until I sneaked into a movie theatre and watched it from a seat in a back corner, just in case anyone was looking for me.

Face-palm. Suck-teeth. Yeah, no way was that shit about me. Why the fuck would I be delivered as a baby in a spaceship? A spaceship! What? Was NASA asleep and not watching the satellites? Why, if I was determined to fight crime would I be working in a damn newspaper as a fucking journalist?!?! Because of some halfway decent looking chick? Really? And don’t get me started on the fucking spandex! Spandex? Given the size of my dick, no fucking way. As for the powers, well, let’s just say I don’t have heat rays coming out of my eyes or cold air from my mouth. And I don’t fly. I can move damn fast, and it may seem as though I flew, but no, I don’t fly. As for everything else, yeah, so they got some things right. Super speed, super strength, enhanced hearing and sight, and somewhat impenetrable because I healed almost instantly. Not Superman, but Captain America was damn close.

See, life span, the dormant phase and the alive phase. So, that was part of the dormant phase. Yeah, I acquired superpowers and longevity, fought a few dozen wars, changed my name a few times, and acquired wealth that few in existence could imagine. But other than those things, life had been uninspiring. It had a sameness, and I descended into ennui until Katia.