You can certainly tell a story. The path to disaster was set in the first paragraph. It is a tale told and retold around dinner tables, where sometimes parents' ambition for their children is a pathological compensation for their own sense of failure. In this case, Ridley never had a chance at realizing his true potential. His potential was limited to what his father needed.
Of course, most ambitious parents don't end up assaulting competitors and mutilating them. But Reggie's ambition was pathological, and as any Greek dramatist would know, the end was inevitably tragic.
Thank you for posting this story in the Ink Well community.
Thank you for your kind words and for taking the time to read my story.
It's funny, I never really analyse or attempt to structure my stories all too much. It is so useful to have an outside pair of eyes to help me see it for what it really is. Thank you.
Until you mentioned it, I hadn't thought of this as a tragedy. The Greek analogy is quite fitting too, with Matt morphing into a cyclops in the last sequence!