WHEN I was younger, I would dare my father to dare me to touch crawling insects, just so I could see his reaction when I actually did it. My mom would stand by the kitchen counter and giggle at my tactics, and maybe I would include her also, or perhaps dad was the one to smother her with attention. That was when I thought the world was all good, that there was no evil on Earth, and that I'd be okay, as long as I was with them. But then reality struck me at the raw age of thirteen when my mother died from being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and my father became a money and power crazed man, who married a woman for the imagery, and I had to deal with her wrath.