I've always had my fears, but it wasn't until I became a dad––naturally––that the minotaur began to take shape as the figure that held those fears. Jen and I lived in a nice little starter house outside Boulder with a fantastic vaulted ceiling over the living room. A sliding glass door led to a back porch, and at night when I got paranoid I'd imagine something on the other side of the glass

my father, of course

threatening me and Jen and the kids. It was a huge, muscular, bare-chested man with a bull's head and a two-headed axe like a medieval executioner. (This is not present in Cretan or classical Greek imagery, but was added to the minotaur's repertoire in the 20th century via fantasy fiction and literature.) He stood there

coming for me 

or was it

waiting for me

and simply letting me know that he existed and that I would not escape. Someday my number would be up and he would come for me (sort of like the unavoidable curse, no?), because he'd been appointed as my personal executioner. Who was this would-be murderer laying in wait for me but

my father, of course

though it was also a version of myself, one who had failed to keep the curse at bay. Was it waiting there to harm myself? To harm my family?

Dark times, indeed. Every night I had to go to that sliding glass door and lock it––triple-check it, quadruple-check it. Every night I'd turn the back porch light on so I could, if he were there, look him in the eye.

What would I have done if he'd showed up? Run screaming? Merely lower my head and await his wrath?