Whole ‘nother level. ⥍ Not @WWERomanReigns.@LabeledHimChief
BEAR MCKENZIE
born to an absentee father and an alcoholic mother, nicholas didn’t exactly grow up in the most idyllic scenario. his father was a soldier, a married one who had conceived him during a drunken tryst. as he would learn later in life, his mother had done next to nothing to notify his father of the boy’s existence. in fact, it was the opposite. his mother was a deeply bitter alcoholic who, at 40, had conceived a child that she never truly wanted. of course, she made sure that same son knew just how much of an ungrateful burden he was on his mother. she practically buried the boy in expensive gifts, because who would truly believe that a spoiled kid like that was ever being ’abused.’ it was the 80’s. words like ’mental health’ barely existed.
his home environment was designed to teach him just how useless he was. day in, day out, every interaction was another struggle for dominance. year after year, she broke him down, destroyed any self esteem that the boy might have had. all in a vain effort to somehow hurt a father that he didn’t even know that he had. unable to let go of the bitterness she felt. so bitter was she that she didn’t even tell her son when his father was killed in combat during operation desert storm. nicholas didn’t know of his father’s death for nearly another five years. he wouldn’t have even known what to feel if he had known, so destroyed was the poor boy’s psyche.
it all came to a head one night when he was fourteen. coming home from a school dance with lipstick on his collar, nick earned a truly vicious, acidic speech from his mother, insulting everything from his father to his own manhood, culminating in her luridly poking him square in the chest with her finger and revealing the details of his father’s death to him. the boy, easily as strong as three boys his own age, pleaded with his mother to stop. begged her. but her bony fingers jabbed at him one too many times. pushed to the breaking point, the boy lashed out in the only way he knew how: violently.
by the time his blind rage had subsided, his mother had to be identified via dental work. he didn’t even call the police for two days. he simply sat on the couch in a fugue state, while his mother’s corpse decayed not ten feet from him. when they finally found him, he was nigh-expressionless, chain smoking the last of his mother’s cigarettes. they processed him and booked him into the local jail, and before he was even put on trial, the local news was all over his case.
"the mansfield mauler" was what they nicknamed him. for a brief moment in time, nick’s name and face were known all over the news in the greater north texas area. nicholas was incarcerated at the lakeway youth correctional facility for nearly three months before he was placed in the care of an unlikely guardian: his grandfather on his mother’s side, army colonel bodhan dombrowsky. having cut ties with his daughter years prior, bodhan had no knowledge of his only grandson’s existence, until he was notified of the death of his daughter. instead of consigning the boy to a life in and out of the system, and inevitably in and out of prison, he took it as a personal task of penance to raise the boy as best he could, and to try and instill in him the values that his mother couldn’t.
bear moved into his grandfather’s home in central texas, where he spent the next few years healing. his grandfather could see just how much damage his daughter had done. instead of trying to give the boy ’tough love’, he paid for the finest psychologists, therapists, and tutors to make sure the boy had the opportunity to catch up on his education as well as working to heal the emotional scars. under his tutelage, the boy flourished, although his track record for violent altercations with bullies wasn’t exactly exemplary. it became known very quickly that the massive, samoan bear of a boy was not one to be taken lightly. still, he managed to graduate with honors from high school. yet, (c)
