Chapter One
Merle could feel his life slowly starting to slip away. As he lay there coughing up blood, feeling his body getting colder and colder as the inevitable approached, memories of his long life flashed before his eyes.
He sees her lying in the bed. Her long brown hair in an unruly mess. She looks exhausted, pale, with dark bags underneath her stunning blue eyes. An all too rare smile lights up her face, "Merle come and meet your baby brother Daryl," she says as she beckons him toward the bed, holding out the sleeping newborn.
"I don't wanna. I don't like 'im," seven year old Merle pouts. He hears the squeak of the easy-chair as it abruptly becomes empty, footsteps falling on the old hardwood floors getting closer and closer. He braces himself for what is coming and sure enough, a cold hard hand swats the back of his head.
"Ya better damn well like 'im," Pop slurs, mid-afternoon and already sloshed, "He's ya baby brotha and it's your damn job to look after him for the rest of ya life." Tears spring to Merle's eyes as he thinks of Daryl. The first time he took him out hunting, rough housing in the backyard, their first real fist fight after Ma's funeral which resulted in an Emergency room visit for the both of them, giving Daryl his first beer at the tender age of ten, leaving a teary-eyed pre-teen Daryl in the dust as he sped out of that damn trailer park for the last time... He did his best. He tried his hardest but it was too goddamn hard to stay around home once Ma passed. The Old Man went from pissy drunk to raging alcoholic once he became a widower, progressively becoming more hateful with each passing year, and all his anger fell directly on Merle, swats to his head, punches to his face, the occasional choke hold, and the horrendous whip lashings his back suffered…
"Fuuuucck", Merle sighs. He feels exhausted, cold, and fucking angry. Goddamn fucking Governor doing this to him, his last chance to make things right, to start fresh with Daryl, to maybe make some sort of life for himself at that prison. He feels as though his head is swimming and starts to nod-off from the rapid blood loss.
Suddenly a half-assed smile crosses his dry lips, "Tammy," he breaths, "yup that was her name" as images of his first fuck come to mind.
A teenage Merle sits on the edge of the woman's bed, naked and sweaty. His crew-cut brown hair glistens in the light coming through the nearly-drawn drapes. A smirk plastered on his face having just lost his virginity.
"That was good baby" Tammy breaths into his ear, her breasts heave up and down with each ragged breath she takes. She was one of Ma's few friends. After Ma barbequed herself in that house fire, Tammy still kept coming around the Dixon trailer, at first bringing casseroles to keep them fed, helping out with household chores and sometimes just dropping by to check in on them. After a couple of months she started to only stop by when Merle was home alone. It didn't take him long to figure out that she was a lonely woman looking for someone to fill a gap left in her life after losing a close friend. He was a horny teenager looking to fill a certain dark hole with his man-meat. Over the course of several months they used each other selfishly and it all started one muggy summer afternoon while Pop was at the bar and Daryl was over at a friend's place. At that time he had believed that those two minutes were two minutes of undeniable pleasure. Countless one-night stands and short term relationships that went nowhere later, Merle knew that his first sexual encounter was less than mediocre and scoffed at his fifteen year-old self for ever thinking his first time fell into the mind-blowing fuck category.
He quietly laughs to himself that she felt the need to lie to him after it was all said and done. Then again those few words boosted his confidence and allowed him to later approach women with such self-assurance and bravado. He wonders how many sluts he actually banged over the years. How many hearts did mean ol' Merle break? How many bastard kids came from his seed?
He starts to shiver from the blood loss. He can hear a couple Walkers shuffling around but they don't seem to pay him any attention. Probably so close to death that they think he is already one of them. Then he sees her. Her waist-length light brown hair, with streaks of blonde that would shimmer in the sun as though they were rays of sunshine, rustling freely in the breeze. Her beautiful hazel eyes that would turn to a violent green when she was upset. Her pale pink lips, usually parted in a dazzling smile as he sees it now. It used to royally piss him off how she always seemed so happy then how, one day, those feelings abruptly changed and it became his livelihood, the reason for getting up each morning, and how he did everything and anything to make those kissable lips light up. She reaches down to him with a hand that once caressed him with such love and tenderness, he lifts his hand to meet her touch, briefly wonders how this was possible, as his eyes roll back into his head and the world fades into black.