I kept the comics in a shoebox under my bed, wedged between dust bunnies and old sneakers with frayed laces. Conan the Barbarian\u2014sword raised, chest rippling like knotted ropes. He stood atop a mountain of skulls, gaze sharp as a blade.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat junk again?\u201d Mom asked, catching me thumbing through The Tower of the Elephant<\/em> one afternoon. A dish towel was slung over her shoulder, hands red from scrubbing the sink. Her nails were clipped short, practical. \u201cAll that macho stuff\u2026 You know it\u2019s not real life.\u201d<\/p>\n She reached for the lettuce drying on the counter, fingers tracing the veins of a leaf, her eyes distant. I wondered if she ever read things like this when she was a kid. She never said.<\/p>\n I gave a small nod. Easier than arguing. \u201cIt\u2019s just a story.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, well.\u201d She folded the towel with precise, practiced movements. \u201cReal life\u2019s got enough monsters,\u201d she said, her thumb running over a tiny burn mark on the counter\u2019s edge.<\/p>\n I nodded again. I always did. Mom had a way of saying things like they were carved from stone. Conan was toxic. Power fantasies were toxic. My room smelled like the gym locker of toxic boys.<\/p>\n But at night, when the house settled into its creaks and whispers, I\u2019d slide that shoebox out and read by the glow of my phone\u2019s flashlight. The torchlight licked castle walls, shadows stretched into dungeons, and the clash of steel echoed.<\/p>\n I knew what she meant\u2014sort of. Conan solved everything with his fists. He ripped through villages, cleaved monsters in two, didn\u2019t flinch when blood hit the sand. Just pure muscle and grit.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t just that. It was the way he moved through the world\u2014never giving up, the way his sword cut through everything without hesitation. Alone but not lonely. He never looked back. He didn\u2019t wait for anyone to come home.<\/p>\n Dad had left two winters ago, slipping out like the last patch of snow on our front steps. No goodbye. Just a note on the kitchen table. Mom burned it in the sink before I could read it.<\/p>\n I read more Conan after that. Built a fortress of comics around me. Drew swords and monsters in the margins of my notebooks. When teachers asked if everything was alright, I smiled because it was easier.<\/p>\n One afternoon, I caught a reprint of Queen of the Black Coast<\/em> at the thrift store. Ten bucks, paid for with Christmas money I\u2019d been saving. I read it in one sitting, breathless. But this time, I noticed things I hadn\u2019t before\u2014the way Conan took what he wanted, the bodies piled up, the women falling at his feet.<\/p>\n I imagined Mom\u2019s voice: That again<\/em>?<\/p>\n When bedtime came, I slipped the comic into the shoebox and nudged it back under the bed. I lay on my back, stared at the ceiling, thinking of Conan\u2014alone on that mound of skulls, sword slick with blood, unyielding.<\/p>\n Maybe unyielding didn\u2019t always mean strong. Maybe it just meant alone versus everyone.<\/p>\n But I still liked it. I liked the monsters and the swords and the castles crumbling under dragon fire. I liked the impossible bigness of it all, even if I didn\u2019t want to be him anymore.<\/p>\n That night, Mom passed by my door before going to bed, her footsteps soft. She paused, hand on the knob, like she might say something. Her fingers tapped once\u2014light, almost a whisper. But she didn\u2019t speak.<\/p>\n Once she left, I reached under the bed and slid the shoebox out. I flipped through the worn pages. They felt heavier somehow, like the ink had thickened. I paused on a splash page: Conan against the world, sword lifted as always, eyes sharp as flint.<\/p>\n And I thought maybe it was okay to hold on to things, even if you saw the cracks. Maybe it was okay to keep them close, not because they were perfect, but because sometimes you needed a torchlight in the dark\u2014just enough to see the monsters coming.<\/p>\n I turned the page and let Conan run wild.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was the way Conan moved through the world\u2014never giving up, the way his sword cut through everything without hesitation. Alone but not lonely. He never looked back. He didn\u2019t wait for anyone to come home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-mathieu-parsy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23350,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22410\/revisions\/23350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}