It is 1950 and X is five years old in Becket, Massachusetts. He witnesses his best friend's father, Lew Quirk, bludgeon his wife to death, cut her up, and bury her in their backyard. X later tries to tell his parents about it, but they don't believe him: "Things like that don't happen in Becket." In Boston or New York, maybe, but not here. Their refusal may as well stab a long sword into his heart. How does he go forward when the arbiter of his truth denies that which he knows in the depths of his soul to be absolutely true? Persistent nightmares and violent fantasies dog him throughout his life and fragment his personality into a variety of disorders which all but destroy him. He blames others for his problems, sets goals for himself that he cannot possibly accomplish, and claims achievements which he never achieved. He leads a relatively successful life which is inwardly dark and tortured. He sub-contracts bad acts -- killing his parents, participating in the group murder of his drill sergeant, and the bloody murder of his last boss, whom he regards as the cause of his failures -- to an imagined character whom he refers to as "The Quirk." He is eventually tried, convicted, and imprisoned. He decides to reveal where Lew Quirk buried his wife, but it turns out that that location had been revealed to his parents when he was in high school, but they had decided not to tell him, and he was telling the truth all along, because it would upset him. This partial resolution of his conflict begins his healing.