21 Across: Oedipus to Laius, Nine Letters by Justin Souther

I've been doing crosswords my entire life. Or at least that's how it feels. I actually started at the age of four. It's my one true passion in life. Every single crossword, every one in the intervening thirty-two years, has been done in pen. Pencil is simply not acceptable. My father taught me that. "Only the ignorant and the insecure use pencil," he would tell me. "Real men use pen. Real men make the tough decisions, the decisions no else are willing to make, and they stick with those decisions, for good or ill. No son of mine is going to use pencil." He told me this a lot.

31 across: Curse of Frankenstein studio, six letters.

He's dead now, my father. He's actually lying here in front of me, on the kitchen floor. There's blood seeping from his head, and it's forming a puddle on the linoleum. That is sort of my fault. I guess that's the kind of thing that happens when you hit a man in the head with a hammer.

To be completely honest, I am a bit relieved. If I had done him in the living room, who knows what the clean-up would have been like. I've never had to get blood out of carpet before, but I assume it isn't easy. I dropped a Salisbury steak on the floor in there one time, and it took me hours to get that stain out. Eventually, I had to rent a steamer from the supermarket. But blood? Replacing the carpet might have been my only option. But here in the kitchen, a mop should do the trick. The hammer is in the sink, and I can just rinse that off later. First things first, however. I need to finish my crossword.

45 across: Attica, six letters.

My earliest memories are of doing crossword puzzles. I was doing crosswords before I even had a firm grasp of the English language, before I could even really spell, and those crosswords turned out to be indecipherable gibberish. But I still did them, and always in pen.

Jesus, I hope he doesn't leak out under the fridge. That'll be hell to clean up.

There are a lot of people, the foremost being my father, who would say that my skills have not improved. As well, I suppose in the sake of full disclosure, I should state that I have never actually completed a crossword.

13 down: Type AB, five letters.

There was that one time though. I'd have to say it was the best half-day of my life. After spending the first four hours of my day working on my crossword, I had finished it. I was ecstatic with a joy and pride I had never known before, or even since. I ran to my father, my work for the day completed, to show him what I had accomplished, to show him what his son was capable of. He was not pleased. Apparently it was full of mistakes. How was I supposed to know that Ike Turner didn't found CNN? It fit, sort of. Why was my father putting so much emphasis on the "correct" answers anyway? Shouldn't it have meant something that I finished? Shouldn't it? Needless to say, I received quite a berating that day.

I know now that my father was simply looking out for my best interests. It was always his intention to simply get me headed in the right direction. I remember one summer, I must have been about ten, at a friend's birthday party, I found out that I was an exceptional bowler. It was one of the few times that I had partaken in any type of physical activity, and I knew I was good. I had this extraordinary feeling of this hidden talent being unlocked from inside me. I felt like I had been born to bowl. It was a good feeling. I decided to tell my father about my new-found talent, and he simply gave me the "look." The disappointed look. He would cross his arms over his chest, slant his head forward, and look at me with those eyes. To me, at least, that look was a force of nature, like the hand of God. I got that look a lot. All he said to me, all he needed to say, was, "Why would you waste your time with such a silly, pointless activity?" And I knew he was right. Why waste your time cultivating your talents while you have a perfectly good hobby to work at?

10 down: Door from its frame, eight letters.

I was in a bookstore once, looking through paperback volumes of crossword puzzles. Standing next to me was some girl, looking through the same books I was. Out of nowhere she starts talking to me about how she likes to do crosswords at work. She tells me how when she cannot think of the answer, she asks her co-workers, or looks on the Internet. A "learning experience," she called it. I'm glad my father wasn't there, he might have decked her. Crosswords have never been about learning for either one of us. It has always been about using your own wits, your own cunning, your own skill, to complete a difficult task. Anything less would be cheating.

The crossword I am working on right now is pretty tough, if I may say so myself. It doesn't help that someone is banging on my front door. It's hard to concentrate with such a racket, it's simply absurd. I do not understand the way people act sometimes, with such inappropriate and raucous manners. It just seems rude. Whoever it is, they are at best third on my list of priorities right now, right behind my crossword and my father's corpse. They'll just have to wait or come back later, as far as I'm concerned.

55 across: Constables, Bobbies, Mounties, e.g., six letters.

Justin Souther lives in Weaverville and attends A-B Tech. He kind of decided he wanted to be a writer after watching "Secret Window," when he realized he would rather sit around on the couch in his bathrobe all day than work a normal job the rest of his life.