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She stood panting above the still body, wiping the blood streaming from her forehead out of her eyes. The body twitched; with another throat ripping primal scream, she kicked it again, violently, in the cleft between its legs. A car driving by slowed, then sped up, its actions clearly delineating its owners desire to be elsewhere, away from the scene of carnage in the driveway of the small, old house. Thick brick-red blood pooled on the stark, bone-white crushed shell of the driveway. As the faint sound of sirens grew louder, she looked again at the still, furry form of the beautiful dog, then at the pile of broken meat she had created and began to laugh the laugh of the mad. Chapter One He was born in Quincy. His parents were not affluent, but hard work had made them comfortable. The family network was typical Americana; doting, accented grandparents who had fled the Auld Country, and the censorious gaze of folks determined to preserve the status quo of an ancient enmity despite the individual pain that status quo inflicted. His father worked long, hard hours to win for his small family the wholesome meals and warm rooms, to nurture the fledgling humans that were the product of his union. His father cherished the highest hopes for both of his sons; the elder, the one of which you will read more, a strong, apple-cheeked, large and boisterous boy with a perpetual sparkle of mischievous good will, and the younger, who spent his childhood in thrall to his elder brother. For the elder was one of those folks who find fierce joy in manipulating those around them, manipulating and warping their wills to his for whatever reason the moment bore. As the elder grew, ever larger, eventually towering over his father and mother, he slowly worked on his manipulations, until those manipulated could not see the machinations until well after the fact, and time, had brought whatever aim the elder had to fruit. But he was ever charming, ever pleasant, ever 'Hail fellow, well met!' in his dealings. Temper he had, too, mercifully slow to kindle, but frightening when its fire lit the colossus' heart and set his great, hams for hands swinging. A genial, jovial giant, with secret missions in his heart. He was inherently lazy, and, as laziness so often does, he followed the dark paths that crept behind alleys and into the seedier sections of town. Early in his adolescence, he began bringing home random strangers, folks he had but met. One stranger proceeded to rob his family, to steal his mother's heirloom jewels and his father's cherished gun collection. That stranger set the tone for the vast majority of strangers that he brought home. He got into, or made, other trouble, too; a high school girlfriend, sent on a drug run in his souped up sportscar, lost control of the car and died in the ensuing crash. He became involved in dealing arms to the IRA, which, when caught, won him the privilege of, when pulled over for routine traffic violations, being approached by, not one, but at least two police officers, weapons drawn. The state and local police had instructions to NEVER approach this dangerous individual without first phoning in for back up. Faced with the choice of jail, or war, he chose war. A dark karma seemed to haunt our main character; successful ventures ended ignominously in death and chaos. His second wife ran his credit into the ground and allowed their house to be foreclosed on. Chapter Two Our next character, of an age with our first, was born in one of the oldest seaside towns of Massachusetts. He, too, enjoyed the classic American family, mother and father who doted on him, and nourished him, and taught him right from wrong. These lessons he absorbed into himself, becoming an honest, forthright, and upright, hardworking member of the community. He became a truck driver, hauling special, oversized, or especially dangerous loads, so skilled and safe was he. A marriage, with children, found itself on the rocks when the wife spent the money her husband spent long days away from home earning on things other than home, like drugs, and her boyfriend. She disappeared abruptly with the children, and other people, hearing this story, wondered what mental incapacity, or what unrevealed detail, would cause a mother to cut her children off entirely from their father. An unfortunate accident nearly paralyzed him, rendering him a broken, twisted, shriveled caricature of himself. Ultimately, he found himself living in his van on the side of the road. Another veteran, he met our first character through the meddling of a third, younger veteran, and so they began to form their small 'band of brothers'. Chapter Three The next character was born in another, less revered seaside new england town. Outwardly, she too enjoyed the classic picture of American wholesome family, but closer inspection than usually afforded to strangers would have revealed some decidedly odd factors, like, for instance, her mother and father had no friends to the house for dinner, or summer Saturday evening barbecues. Neither, for that matter, did their young daughter; for the first years of her life, her circle of aquaintances included her mother, her father, her maternal grandparents. The children of her school quickly hung the Pariah sign on her, and so she spent her entire school career as she spent it at home, on the outskirts of society. In her early twenties, she finally began to come out of her shell, and move away from her shy, wallflower status. Chapter Four Our next character is the daughter of our main character. Only our main character and his wife know the exact details; friends of the daughter heard the story that her parents' relationship started as an illicit affair while our main character's first wife was in the hospital recovering from an accident which he had involved her in. The child was conceived, this story runs, and the parents were married because our main character's father, an upright man of old-fashioned, strict morality, threatened to disown his son if he did not marry the mother of his illegitimate child. This rumor is not entirely outside the realm of possibility, as our main character's father was a successful man by this point, with a great deal of money, and, our main character being an avaricious sort, he would respond to such a lash. Our main character tells a different story, stating that they had been married for several years, in fact beginning to believe the union barren, when the child was conceived. Each consciousness believes what it must to fortify its own attitudes, and what it wants to justify its own actions. The daughter suffered a slightly strange childhood; the mother, suffering from an incipient madness, was at first overprotective and nurturing of the childhood, but as the mother's psyche fractured more, the indissoluble bond was strained, until ultimately, in a fit of misplaced jealous rage, the mother threw her adolescent daughter out of her house, and onto the dubious, tender mercies of her father. Chapter Five The last character in our dark tale was born in an old town in inland New England. He sports an extensive record of domestic abuse and is a registered class III sex-offender, for three counts of 'lewd and lascivious behavior' over the span of five years, nearly twenty years before his introduction to the household we are reading of. A bit of digging by the main character's daughter's friends revealed that domestic abuse charges had been filed a scant 8 months prior to his introduction to the house. He is an angry man, short-tempered, vitriolic, sporting a perpetual chip on his shoulder. Frenetically energetic, he works and works and works, trying to burn off the dark energy that is his rage, a rage he wears like a broken, snarling mask. He instantly condemns everyone, as he thinks they instantly condemn him, justifiable given his record. But our main character believes in giving folks another chance, even if that chance should be at the cost of sanity and well-being of his slight daughter and girlfriend. Our lesser characters are a variety of domestic animals, cats and dogs, whose characters will be developed as our story unwinds. |
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