Wyck/Background

xxxxxWyck grew up in a very abusive home. His mother and father never loved each other. He was, essentially, the product of a one-night's stand when his father was passing through Las Vegas and went to see her show at the 'Moonlite Lounge' where his mother was stripping. They stayed together for a few years - until he was around seven years old and then she ran away and left him with his alcoholic father. His father would have probably ditched Wyck at the nearest grocery story if he wasn't reliant upon his check every month to buy him beer and pay for a few bills.

xxxxxHe and his father traveled around a lot, preventing him from attending much school. His father worked odd jobs here and there in construction and the like and they bounced down to East Texas and eventually over to New Orleans after Katrina had hit. While working on the reconstruction of the city his father parked them in motels and hotels every other day or so and so Wyck learned to live out of a gymbag. If he wanted it - it had to be on him or near him at all times. There was never any warning when his dad would come back to the room and tell him that they had to get out of town or move with only a few minutes notice.

xxxxxIt was while they were in New Orleans that Wyck wandered into a HooDoo shop in the back of a Laundromat. Part of his chores was to do their laundry when his dad was out working. Wyck only had a few pair of clothes to his name but his dad would go through t-shirts and things all of the time while working. The HooDoo shop was where he saw 'Miss Cecile' reading tarot cards for people and he asked about them. She showed him what they were and how to read them while his laundry was finishing. Miss Cecile was called away to help one of her 'clients' and Wyck swiped up the cards and his laundry and snuck out to head back to the room. It was the first thing that he had ever stolen. He couldn't pay her for them and there was no way that his dad would give him any money. Sure enough - when he got back to the room his dad was waiting for him and the laundry because they had to pick up and go to another motel in town.

xxxxxHis father was always ducking or hiding from someone but Wyck could never figure out who it was. At their next stop, Baton Rouge, Wyck was able to 'tell fortunes' for people on the street. He as almost able to 'guess' what the person wanted and could tell them what they wanted to hear. The scam gave him some extra money that his dad didn't know about. It was a quick buck here and there but it was ok for a fourteen year-old boy. Before they left Baton Rouge he heard his father talking to someone on one of the pre-paid cellphones about a debt and how he wasn't going to repay it. He also heard a name "Iago". His father said that the man with the strange name could go to hell and that he wouldn't pay him back - ever.

xxxxx Iago, apparently, was not a man to be crossed. By the time they had left Baton Rouge and had made it back to Phoenix they had bounced around nearly two-dozen times in two years. Each time the move was rushed and frantic as though his father had realized that they were being followed or that someone had come to where he worked asking for him. Whenever Wyck would ask why they were running and what was going on - he'd just get a back-hand or a smack-down or threatened with leaving him alone like his mother did. For the longest time, being abandoned - again - was Wyck's biggest fear. It took him a while to realize that life alone was probably better than life with his father. The man did little more than stay gone all day and when he came home he'd be drunk and angry. Many times Wyck would just lock himself in the bathroom to sleep in the tub rather than risk his dad's latest "Do you know what I do for you" beatings.

xxxxx When Wyck turned sixteen, his father said that he had found a way for the two of them to stop running. The idea was an odd revelation and yet he couldn't help feel that there was something else going on. His father was positively giddy when, on his birthday, they arrived in Los Angles. With money that he knew his father did not have, they checked into a 'nice' motel and his father took him out to a real dinner. He told Wyck that it was an apology for all of the things that had happened to him over the years and that he was going to make up for it. There's nothing that can make a person more paranoid than when the abuser suddenly becomes apologetic. Wyck -wanted- to believe that his father was trying to make up for all of the crap that he had to live through but there was just that nagging feeling that it was too good to be true.

xxxxx And indeed it was. That night, while Wyck slept with a full belly and after his father had taken him to see a -real- movie in a -real- theater, he woke up just long enough to see two men throw a black bag over his head and drag him out of the room. That wasn't the only thing he saw, though. He saw his father - standing in the room talking with a third man who gave him a fist-full of cash. Wyck had been sold into slavery. There's not much that could break one's hold on reality but that simple fact - of being sold into slavery by the only parent that he had left did it.