Chapter 1
It was a dark, bleak morning the day I met them. My place was silent except for the moaning of the wind in the high-tension wires nearby and the heavy downpour.
I had been living on my own since '97, -ever since my uncle left me the house in his will after fatal stroke.
He'd been able to hold on for a week or so, but it took him out on Christmas morning, at exactly 8:05 A.M. Eastern Time.
He had been a kind, old man, with twinkling brown eyes and a snow white beard, and the best sense of humor a mortal man can possess.
Coupled with it all was a heart so big that if you were to have set a stethoscope up to it you'd have thought you were listening to an amplified ZZ Top album.
And ever since the day when he took custody of a ten year old boy from Libertyville PA, he'd done everything within his power to make sure that boy was loved and cared for, as well as hammering into the brain of the child every last ounce of his wisdom.
I couldn't help thinking of this as within the darkness of my room I lay, with my eyes staring wide open into the abyss, and my head throbbing with a pain unknown to science.
After all, its been said that if you think of something else, it takes the edge off.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case then.
The worst part was that it was 5:01 in the morning, and on a school day at that.
I hated having to lose sleep to the pain, - but when you have to get up at 4:30 to have piping hot coffee in the thermos by 6:05, that's sometimes one of the dangers.
"You know," I thought dimly, "- some folks actually LOVE mornings. Of course, if they haven't got a gun or a fishing rod, or are even standing on pension-age feet, they're usually the ones that own a strait jacket".
This little spark brought a dry chuckle to my lips, but it went out as fast as it came when I remembered that there was in fact such a person in my school. Worse still, she was my Senior Lit teacher.
The bag-of-bones in question was a Forty Nine year old woman by the name of Ms. Mona Howard.
She was a mean, temperamental creature, with a car shredder for a tongue, and nitroglycerin running through her veins.
In addition to that, she had a penchant for turning a normal morning for anyone who got in her line of fire into a raging battle field of misery and despair.
And try as I might every morning to repress the looming nightmares that woman wrought as I lay beneath my old patchwork blanket, they just wouldn't die.
Luckily, every now and then, nature has a way to escape such things known as a blackout. And for another glorious hour that day it came and crammed the fearful thoughts back into their cage for a merciful ounce of extra sleep.
But then…
BWRRAH-BWRAH-BWRAAH-BR-BRAAH!
The sound of that Flip-plate menace that masquerades as my alarm clock liked to have given me a coronary. However, when it abruptly sailed off of my nightstand on the wings of my rusty left knuckles, it was me who had the last laugh.
Or so I thought.
Unfortunately, when that little beggar hit the floor the volume adjuster caught on a small nail that stood out from the base molding opposite my bed, with the infernal noise spiking, and my headache shooting through the roof.
It was that searing roar that pulverized any chance of extra Z's, but then heck, -what can you do?
And although my eyelids felt like dog doors weighted with stone, I carefully rotated myself around in my bed until my feet fell off onto the laminate, and then like Frankenstein's monster I slowly rose up until I was sitting upright.
With one last, hard look at my pillow, I heaved my scrawny frame onto my feet, tottering slightly with the rush of blood to my noggin.
From there I trudged about my normal routine, fighting that splitting pain all the way:
I showered, brushed, slicked my hair back, and then poked through my closet until I found one of my comfy denim shirts and a pair of dark blue jeans.
After I had changed I made my way downstairs in pitch black to my kitchen, where that pot of coffee was still nice and warm as I poured it into my jumbo-sized thermos, taking special care to mix it with just enough RC cola to cut the taste.
From there I simply strolled, with duffel bag in hand, out onto my screened-in side porch where I kept my old vynl jacket and my big Brahma boots, whereon I squatted down and put them on, and then I trudged out to my garage, with my handed-down glasses sliding down my nose, and those big sleds I call feet making deep holes in the mud.