An Interminable Initiation

A photograph of him as a child hung near the floor of his room. He would look down at it from time to time. He was wearing a plaid shirt, and one of his hands was showing. This photograph, a photograph of absolutely no consequence, was printed in the year 1987. In 1988, something horrible had happened to him. Since then a number of more or less horrible things had happened to him. But none, one might argue, as horrible as that first horrible thing. It had been a sort of initiation, an initiation which, unlike most initiations, had never concluded.