Ezra’s family lived in a small townhouse on the outskirts of Regina. His father was a retired Mountie who was no longer employable due to two hip surgeries in the last year. Ezra had one sibling, his older brother Philip. The only planned child in the family.

His mother never went so far as to call her youngest son a mistake; she had told him, with an amused expression when Ezra was a precocious child, that he’d been a surprise. Only when he was older did he understand the quip, which he took like he took everything: with disinterest.

Ezra had long made a habit of being impassive. The only time in his life he’d ever really been shaken – literally and figuratively – was on one sunny afternoon, when he was attacked by a pit bull in a park playground. He was six-years-old. While details of the attack remained blurry, Ezra had never been able to block out the memory of that horrific close-up, those thick fangs that leaked saliva and the black beady eyes that had burned into him a rather brutal revelation of danger and evil in the world. A world that had up until that point revolved around after-school snacks, his hockey card collection and Science Fiction television.

He spent six weeks in the hospital, zoning in and out of consciousness through three relatively short, well-executed reconstructive surgeries. When his face had eventually healed, he would be reminded of the dog’s impact by a one-inch scar that ran horizontally along the edge of his chin, as well as slightly flattened nose, which the dog had really done a number on according to the picture diary his mother had kept. Needless to say, during the recovery stages Ezra began to understand that he was tougher than the rest of the world. Being mauled by a dog was no picnic. It fucking hurt.

Now, at 27, he simply did not care what anyone else thought and so took no one but himself seriously. The only side effect from the attack seemed to be a guilty conscience and sensitivity for underdogs, which he did his best to suppress.

Having little interest in impressing his parents, Ezra’s plan became one that would satisfy only himself: to create a magazine against normalcy. It was a dirty, raunchy, controversial publication that forced people to question their safety. Dissent was done being a small, half-assed project within its first year. This rising magazine was Ezra’s mark, his revenge against those who grew up without incident, never having to fear the unknown.

All these thoughts bumped around in his brain like bingo balls, while he sat with his legs splayed on the green couch in his parent’s living room. Sunlight beams emphasized the dust particles that quivered in the room like No-See-Ums.

Ezra’s father lay suspended in his tattered recliner. His large, dangling limbs as still as his eyes, which were glued to a cop show on TV. Ezra watched absently as a feathered-haired cop in tight bellbottoms ducked down behind a squad car. He forced himself not to check his watch because it was important to appear as though he was not waiting. He glanced at his father.

From what Ezra could gather, his father had decided that retirement meant giving up on life. The old man now divided his time between the television set and the kitchen table when he wasn’t sleeping. His weepy posture seemed evidence of a resolution in his own defeatist attitude and his eyes could no longer meet the gazes of the people who made up his family, instead stayed fixated on a comfort spot somewhere above the tops of their heads.

During dinners throughout Ezra’s stay, his father had sat at one end of the oval table in suffocating silence, lips locked save for the necessary commands of “salt” and “butter.” He'd grunt as he rose up from the table like a rusty robot to disappear into the living room. Television commercials would echo in the kitchen, above the sounds of carefully chewed meat and clinking silverware. Ezra's mother would just stare into her plate and pretended not to notice.

At Ezra’s spot on the couch, that day before his departure back to Vancouver, he turned his attention from his father to his mother. She was presently knitting on the perch of her orange-and-brown plaid swivel chair, which squeaked with old age whenever she adjusted her legs, uncrossing and re-crossing at the ankles. Her bifocals rested on a necklace strap against her ample breasts, demonstrating that she was not quite convinced they were yet mandatory for the detailed workmanship her fingers afforded her. And despite any failure of eyesight, her knitting was still flawless and efficient. Her only fault with her knitting, as far as Ezra was concerned, lay in her choice of material and color, which always left something to be desired.

Case in point: the previous Christmas. She knitted Ezra a pair of finger gloves in wool so thick his hands appeared clown-sized, with each finger a tube of red, black or white. He wore them only when he drove his car alone on winter mornings. While they were surprisingly effective against his ice-cold steering wheel, he still hid them in his glove compartment between uses; unable to appreciate the self-deprecatory effect they had on his somber character. Unlike Rebecca, who over the course of her early 20s had begun to grasp the notion that cool was more fleeting than beauty; Ezra had an image to maintain. This is why it took him an hour to get ready every morning.

On the couch, Ezra cracked his knuckles, avoiding a disapproving glance from his mother.

“You’ll get arthritis doing that.”

“Meh. I’ll die of lung cancer long before that happens.”

The knitting needles collided in a moment of confusion. She had never understood her youngest son’s twisted sense of humour. As a housewife who’d long seen her children off to college, his mother was content to pass her days with church functions and Girl Guide meetings, which she’d hosted like clockwork through the weeks that dissolved into years for as long as Ezra could remember.

 She had held Girl Guide meetings nearly every Wednesday evening, going on 20 years. The memory of those meetings was as strong and clear in Ezra’s mind as the pit bull's teeth. He still held close to his heart the impact of those nights, when he had peered down from the banister to the living room to watch the pubescent girls that would sprawl on the carpet below. He’d watch in awe as they giggled and grasped at each other the way girlfriends do, enamoured by every move of their coltish legs that crossed or tucked or stretched out from pleated skirts, bare thighs grazing the enviable charcoal carpet.

The carpet in their living room had long since faded to ashtray grey, littered with mystery stains. The sound of his mother’s knitting needles tap-danced in an annoying, monotonous rhythm that brought Ezra back to the present day. His stomach rumbled as he rested his eyes on the TV; once again mentally challenging himself to refrain from checking his watch and knocking off the minutes like a prisoner gouging chicken scratches into the cell wall.

Being home again was Hell. He felt trapped and unhappy, which only made him all the more desperate to go to the bathroom. When had he last gone? Would another trip be too obvious? He clenched his teeth and let his eyes travel with the action of the cop show. He wanted to show restraint, prove to himself he still had it, and willed Philip to pull into the driveway with his comely wife and two sugar-addled girls from their afternoon outing. The young family left that morning for the frozen pond that at this time of year was routinely populated by local kids and parents who, for reasons beyond Ezra, enjoyed outdoor activities.

“You sure you don’t want to come, Ez?” Philip had joked in the doorway as they put on their boots and coats. “You could meet a nice, wholesome girl. Move back to Glenfield. Buy a house with a picket fence.”

“Pass,” he’d muttered. His brother shrugged and winked at their mother, a gesture that annoyed Ezra because it seemed to suggest they talked about him behind his back.

For the rest of that afternoon, Ezra spent the majority of the afternoon taking occasional trips to the bathroom to get high and numb the emotions that bubbled in his chest like indigestion. Filled with a sudden decisiveness, Ezra excused himself from the living room and after turning the lock on the bathroom door he unscrewed the metallic capsule that dangled between keys from a carabiner clipped to his belt loop. He carefully tapped out enough for four adequate lines and promptly snorted them like a dust buster with a rolled up five dollar bill, which he retrieved from the back pocket of his jeans.

Head tilted back, he enjoyed the taste of the drug. The ritual comfort of knowing exactly what he was getting into, which was an instant of a life that knew nothing of anxiety. A handful of minutes blissfully seared to perfection like a turkey when the oven timer goes off.

For a few seconds after the first line, he hated himself for loving the drug so much and stared into the mirror until his suspicious, frowning expression fell into apathetic regard. He was useless, really, when it came to this stuff. He knew better than to have a problem with cocaine, but didn’t care enough to assess exactly how much control – or lack thereof – he possessed. There was a time he snorted it casually, when it popped up at a house party every six months or so. Then he was referred to a dealer who delivered, so it became only on weekends. Then it was only twice a week and so on and so forth.

He rubbed his eyes and clenched his hair that was still damp from a late morning shower. His recent conversation with Stan had rattled him more than he wished and the thought of that stupid fucking lawsuit gave him the cold sweats. No one knew what he put up with, all the pressure he was under. No one knew that no matter how carefully he stepped through life he was always quashing someone’s expectations of him. It seemed he was completely incapable of making anyone happy. For Ezra, people-pleasing was a frustrating business.

Feeling trapped and helpless, he knew he needed to get out of the house immediately – desperate for fresh air. Ezra did another line to dismiss his thoughts and squeezed his nose to let the drugs dissolve, in a paranoid attempt to silence his snorts for fear his clueless family might ask questions about his sniffling.

He checked for powdered evidence on the countertop and picked a small wad of crust from his right nostril, popping it in his mouth. The coke residue numbed the inside of his lips. He ran a hand over the beard he was trying to grow that was, after two and a half weeks, only patchy at best. Despite the insufficient growth around his chin he refused to shave; without facial hair he thought he looked too young to be taken seriously.

He let the water run over his hands beneath the tap, washing away the white foamy bouquet and sickly sweet aroma of his mother’s hand soap. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and wiped them on the pink towels that hung in a pair, beside the framed cross-stitch on the wall that he knew by heart: “If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.”

He was quite high he realized, steadying himself against an unexpected sense of vertigo that he blamed on the noxious soap. Ezra quietly skirted towards the kitchen like a mouse making a run for it. Countless toothy grins of school photos over the years blurred out of the sides of his eyes and he clenched his teeth, grinding them together in an effort to stay on track. The loud buzz of the refrigerator triggered memories of the countless times Ezra had snuck in and out of the house during high school. He came and went at leisure for four years with no notice, always careful on his way back inside to match his footsteps with its noisy rattles and groans.

His mother’s voice came loud and clear from down the hall. “Ezra? Sweetie? Are you going somewhere?”

“Just need some fresh air,” he said, barely troubling to raise his voice. He reached the door.

“Bring in a pile of wood on your way back would you dear?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled. God he was a terrible person. Why did he hate his parents so much? 

Outside the cold soaked into his pores to dissolve the weight that had settled in the middle of his chest. His head cleared as he kicked up clumps of dirty snow and followed the driveway, which wound between the trees about half-mile before reaching the main road that led to town.

He lit a cigarette in his cupped hands and took a deep drag, setting his face against the cold waves of a breeze. He wanted to scream into the open sky until he remembered he was within 20 feet of the house. The only sound he could hear was the cawing of birds, though Ezra had no idea what kind they were; he’d never been all too interested in wildlife. As he smoked, he grew nervous at the thought of Philip’s all-terrain vehicle suddenly appearing around the bend and forcing him to act normal. He was so damn nervous back home it always sent him into an almost catatonic despair. What was depressing was that his mother thought he was like that all the time. He didn’t have the heart to tell her it was only when he was around them.

 Once out of view from the house, Ezra stopped in his tracks and unscrewed his capsule with numb fingers. He held it up to his nose and snorted with awkward, rather nebulous results. His boots gathered snow like metal shavings to a magnet. He thought about Lou and what a joke it was that she’d looked to him to help her straighten out her life.

At least he was a self-made man and it was true, he persevered. Rightfully so then, he didn’t think it was fair that he should succeed on his own and be forced to give pieces of his accomplishments out to some girl who called herself his girlfriend. With a sturdy nod he reaffirmed his decision not to risk letting a woman distract him, or more realistically not to let one distract him for more than a week at a time. Keeping a woman around only led to complicated attachments that would end because he always put the magazine first. And for the most part women, in what was Ezra’s fairly limited experience, didn’t care for this kind of ranking system. A woman didn’t like a ranking system unless she was number one, according to his grandfather, who'd said this to him a couple of years ago when the old man was less senile. Age was strange that way, Ezra thought. What a difference two years could make! He didn’t want to be old, even the words “nursing” and “homes” together caused him a mild anxiety attack. He’d hang himself with a sock before his dignity was stolen from him.

Ezra turned back towards the house, tossing his cigarette into the snow and rubbing his hands together for warmth. He kicked the snow off his boots against the welcome mat before remembering his mother’s request for wood and turned back towards the shed. Rebecca’s green cauliflower-patterned eyes popped up in his mind until he reprimanded himself that he must no longer waste his time on thoughts of girls. What he needed was a goal to distract him from all the current downers in his life. It needed to be something big. He piled wood into his arms and it appeared to him as clear as the weather was cold: Distribution. He needed to extend his audience in order to grow. Ezra decided to immediately focus on finding distributors and contributors in Alberta, Winnipeg and Toronto when he returned to the city.

Inside, his father was still in his chair although his eyes had closed. His mother was still knitting. Nothing had changed in thirty minutes except that Ezra had gone outside and his bathroom tally for the day was at roughly seven. He kept his hands clamped between his legs as they un-thawed and he stared out the window, overwhelmed by an urge to jump up and run back out the door. Keep running until he couldn’t breathe. Dusk crept in over the trees and settled like a thick fog over the windows.

Ezra cleared his throat and studied the tube of pink between his mother’s needles; it looked like a small leg or an armhole. “What are you knitting?” he asked her.

 She glanced up at him. “Do you need a Kleenex, sweetie? There’s a box in the kitchen beside the phone.”

Ezra wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve. “Yeah, it’s a bit chilly out there.”

“You’ve been sniffling since you got here. I hope you’re not coming down with a cold.”

The drugs made Ezra paranoid but the look of concern on his mother’s face eased any fears that she was aware of his habit. “It’s just the weather. I don’t get sick, I’m invincible.”

“Ezra.”

“I’m just joking mom,” he interrupted, tilting his head back and staring up at the stucco ceiling. “Are you going to knit me a toque?”

“I didn’t know you wanted a toque. Honestly Ezra I don’t have E-S-Bee.”

“ESP,” Ezra said, truly pained.

“E-S-Pee?”

“What did you think it stood for? Extra Sensory Berseption?”

His mother didn’t answer and frowned at her needles. After a moment she told him, “If you want me to knit you something you have to call me on the telephone and tell me.”

“Well, I’m telling you now…”

She pulled at the bubblegum-coloured wad of yarn in her lap, her chubby ankles propped up on a crocheted ottoman.

“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use that tone with me, Ezra.” His mother suddenly put on her glasses, fumbling to settle them in a suitable position. “If you really want to know,” she said, changing the subject with an even tone. “I’m putting together some baby things.”

“For who?”

“For whom,” his mother corrected, with smug aplomb. “I don’t know, Ezra. Molly and Sarah, I suppose.”

“Mm.”

“What I would like to know is how Lou is these days?”

Ezra lifted his head and stared across at her. He didn’t trust the direction of the conversation and wasn’t going to let his mother think he could be so easily conned. “I wouldn’t know.”

His mother let out a sharp sigh, glancing at her surprise baby with a disapproving eye. “She was such a nice girl!”

“Mom, you never even met her.”

“I talked to her over the phone!”

Ezra rubbed his eyes. The cat entered the room with a bored stride and jumped up on the couch, stepping towards Ezra cautiously.

“She is thousands of dollars in debt, for one thing,” he said snapping his fingers gently at the tabby as it stared at him with an undecided gaze. “And she liked to think I had to help her with that. Like I don’t have enough debt problems.”

His mother pursed her lips together, needles clamoring for attention. Police sirens from another high-speed chase wailed out from the TV.

“Well, I’m not one to interfere,” she said, and placed her knitting project on the coffee table. “Philip and Stacey and the girls should be home soon, I suppose I should start getting dinner ready.”

She didn’t look at him when she spoke and seemed to be talking more to herself than to anyone else. He couldn’t blame his mother for being crazy. His father was a functional vegetable. Ezra would have suffocated him in his sleep if he were in his mother’s place. He didn’t know how she could stand him. “Lou’s a mess, mom. It’s not my responsibility,” he called after her, with a pointed tone that went unnoticed.

“I didn’t say anything,” she sang back, as she disappeared into the kitchen.

Ezra’s grandfather, up from his third nap of the day, shuffled into the living room in a waft of baby powder and wet diapers. “Don’t get up for me, my boy, just give me a hand will you? I was gonna go ice-skating but I couldn’t find my damn skates.”

“You don’t have skates, Grandpa.”

“You don’t have a sense of humour, turning into your father over there.”

“Touché,” muttered Ezra, as he helped his grandfather sit down. The cat jumped from the couch as if affronted by the interruption and the old man sagged like a deflating balloon.

Much creaking later the old man leaned back against the couch and groaned. “Good thing I went to the bathroom before sitting down.”

“Don’t want to go through that again?” asked Ezra, failing to hide a smile.

“Eh,” grunted the old man. 

Ezra’s mother appeared around the entrance to the kitchen. “Rolf, would you like scalloped potatoes or the casserole from last night, for dinner?”

 It annoyed Ezra to a profound degree that his mother could contemplate one thought – just one – for hours,even days and weeks. Were all mothers like that? Could they virtually ignore life flying by in all directions in favour of Christmas lists in July and whether Boxing Day dinner would be potatoes or leftovers? He doubted anyone else’s mother could be nearly as annoying.

His grandfather turned to Ezra, his wrinkled face contorted with impatience. “Eh? What does she want?”

“Do you want potatoes or leftover casserole for dinner?” Ezra asked him.

“I don’t care, I can eat everything,” grumbled the old man. “Why the fuss?”

“Because you know very well that’s not true,” his mother retorted. “You can’t chew solids, for Heaven’s sake!”

She disappeared into the kitchen again while the old man shrugged her off and turned to Ezra. “So how’s that magazine of yours going? You bring home a copy to show us this time?”

“I’m not sure, I think I have a copy on me, I’ll find it after dinner,” lied Ezra. The magazine’s attitude wasn’t something he was eager to show his grandfather, who’d given him a $5,000 loan to help fund the project when it expanded from the internet to print. His grandfather believed it was an above board operation, a quality piece of literature.

Certainly, it was not.

Since his grandfather’s respect meant a lot to him, Ezra couldn’t bring himself to show his grandfather the magazine and always managed to make excuses. He could get away with it because his dad didn’t care and his mother, who had found it online one day, refused to bring it up in conversation any more.

“Grab me a beer from the fridge, will you?” said his father, eyes suddenly open and once again focused on the TV.

“Pour this old soldier a gin, while you’re at it,” said his grandfather, smacking his lips. “That would be the ticket!”

For the patriarch of his family Ezra obliged and stood up, heading for the direction of the kitchen. His grandfather had been a marine in during World War II and the man’s greatest source of pride with regards to this time lay in the fact that he’d never learned to swim, let alone the simple fact that he’d survived. Joining the military was a long held tradition in Ezra’s family history, one broken only by his father who had opted for a career with the Royal Mounted Police. Ezra was the first to disregard tradition entirely, though he had resolute plans to recreate a new history for the men in his family, one based on creative endeavour rather than patriotic fanaticism.

In the kitchen his mother was peeling potatoes in the sink. He pulled two bottles of Molson Dry from the fridge, browsing the pictures that were held up under plastic food-shaped magnets. The photos were mostly of Philip’s girls, twins and 11-years-old. Dog-eared and half covered by a picture of the girls posing in their ballet outfits, was a graduation photo of Ezra, hair parted in the middle, smile as forced as his post-surgery nose.

He filled a glass half-full with water for his grandfather. The family had made a decision a few years previous to omit the alcohol from the old man’s glass, following an incident in which he’d become belligerent after one tumbler and started to verbally abuse Philip’s wife, who had huge tits and showed up at the dinner table in a tank-top that offered enough cleavage to overshadow the flavour of the meal.

“Disgusting,” his grandfather had muttered while darting glances at her chest and grunting in disapproving tones. “Tell that woman to put on some clothes.”

She’d run off in tears and while Ezra had found the entire exchange hilarious, especially the furious look on good ol’ Philip’s face, Ezra complied with the family’s wishes for fear of being on the receiving end of his grandfather’s drunken irritations with the 21st Century.

With the drinks balanced in his hands, he crossed over to his mother and kissed the back of her head. She smelled of lavender and he felt a faint pang of shame that had somehow escaped the numbing effect of the drugs.

“What was that for?”

“No reason. I made two thousand dollars last month. A record.”

“That’s good,” she said, using the same cheerful tone as earlier.

He thought about telling her he’d met a nice girl just to appease her, convince her that he was not faulty, despite his difficult formative years. He pictured Rebecca, those enormous eyes that stared at him like she was on the verge of giving him a hug, but pushed her out of his mind in the same moment, angry with himself for already faltering in his decision to stop thinking about women. It was a lofty goal and one that might require some practice. And a lot more drugs.

 “Thanks muchly, my boy,” said his grandfather, when Ezra passed him the glass of water. The old man took a hearty sip and held it up to his grandson, the tumbler shaking unsteadily between his gnarled fingers as he smacked his lips with satisfaction. “Smooth as molasses.”

His father took a beer from Ezra’s outstretched hand and grunted.

“So now, how about your lady friend?” asked his grandfather. “You done the right thing and put a ring on her finger?”

Ezra nearly choked as he took a swig from his bottle.

“Not yet, grandpa, not yet. She’s… got some problems to work out.”

 Even though he knew he needed someone stable to balance out his own issues, Ezra possessed invisible radar that consistently directed him into the arms of seriously messed-up women. His grandfather leaned towards him, the water from his glass sloshing onto his powder-blue trousers.

“Ezra my boy, I’ll tell you one thing we Fieldings got, you know what that is?

Ezra shook his head; he’d heard all this before but pretended to be intrigued. “What’s that, grandpa?”

“The voice of reason.”

 “Ah yes. The voice of reason,” he said, feigning somber contemplation.

Ezra’s father grunted from the chair but the old man ignored him. “You know the secret?” his grandfather asked.

Ezra smiled, amused. He shook his head. “No grandpa, what’s the secret?”

“A level head, my boy. A level head. All Fieldings were blessed with one. When God was handin’ those out we were first in line. That’s what my daddy always said, and dang if he wasn’t spot on!”

Ezra’s father snorted and made a sudden, grand decision to leave his chair. “If you want to level his head maybe you should tell him to get a real job,” he said, as he hobbled like a lame racing horse out of the room.

“See?!” said his grandfather, delighted, before frowning and looking mildly confused. 

Ezra ignored his father’s remark. It was a topic he had no intention of broaching during this particular trip home. He had no intention of broaching it ever again if he could help it; they’d made it very clear how they felt about what he did. He knew he just needed time. More time to become a thriving magazine, like Vice, and gain a level of respect with his parents that seemed reserved only and always for his older brother.