David's Lot.

“Terror-Bringer Hackmonster” his agnomen read. “Terry Ackermein” is what his credentials said. To his mother he was Terry, through and through, to the bone. His brother knew his darker side, but left Terror alone. His father was a macaronic failure built of little girth (he’d promptly up-and-left at Terror’s brother’s birth)   

His mother, a sylph of a woman, had moved them to Boxes and Soot as an apotropaic, seeking solace in poverty from those seeking solace in advantage. However, Terry, now some sort of ephebe, piped up about pipe dreams and wishes of grander lifestyles and fine woollen clothes and ‘delightful pastimes’ and ‘holidays’ and his wishes regarding such things. His mother, a sylph of a woman brought up in a time of cumshaws and bona fides and not one prone to barnburning, decided that it was “time” to “move towards” something of a brighter future, however realistic her take on Bright Futures was.

Six years pass. Sylph and Co. pack and move to a littoral shack near Atlantic City, NJ. Younger brother dead from the rattles. Older brother revives his murderous old habits in grief and slays mother. Turns hisself in at the next police-box. Confesses to numerous crimes of a gratuitously graphic nature. Makes bail from mysterious petit old man. The audience learns of his identity - the child’s father. The child is still in the dark on this matter. They live together for several years after the Bail incident, until father dies of TB. The child moves from place to place, seeking refuge. Does he find it?