Many of the characters within this story, and the universe they inhabit, are the intellectual property of Jason Katims Productions.

Roswell: Re-Imagined

Written by Horatio Jaxx

Chapter 8: Michael Guerin

The jeep came to a stop in front of a white, wood framed single story house. The building looked to be of an old design. When it was first constructed, three decades earlier, much of the land around it was part of a farm worked by the persons living there. The building was now surrounded by grass that looked to be unkempt for the most part. A garage that looked more like a barn was to right and rear of the house. The neighboring houses on either side of the property were separated by a distance greater than the width of two houses. There was no sidewalk other than the walkway from the street to the front door. Four full grown trees bathed the front of the house and the lawn in shadows. The neighborhood around it was mostly populated with houses and properties that were similar in appearance.

Michael Guerin climbed out of the jeep and bid farewell to its remaining occupants, Max and Isabel Evans. They drove off the instant he turned away. Michael steered away from the house, up the gravel driveway that led to the rear of the building and towards the garage. He entered the garage through the large double doors, through the interior and the up the attic ladder at the right rear. The attic above the garage had been converted into an apartment several months earlier. Michael convinced his adoptive father, with the help of a mental push, to make the conversion.

Michael's relationship with his father had been contentious since he was the age of eight. Russell Guerin was prone to drinking heavily. While intoxicated he was not above physically abusing his adopted son to a small degree. A slap with the back of his hand was usually the extent of one of these acts. He was quick to anger while intoxicated and nearly as quick to regret his actions. As a preadolescent, Michael was eager to win the favor of the father who adopted him. When he came to understand how different he was from nearly everyone he knew, Michael began to long to be rid of his alcoholic guardian.

Russell Guerin was twenty-eight years old when he married Joanne Lerner, a neighborhood girl who was three years his junior. Their acquaintances with each other went back to their grammar school years. The age difference between them limited their association to strictly a distant familiarity. It was not until after Joanne had blossomed into a buxom teenager that he gave her any real notice. Unfortunately for Russell he was not the only single young male in the community who was admiring her. By the age of eighteen she was pregnant with her latest boyfriend's child. He was four years her senior. The relationship came to an end when the would-be father left town ahead of the birth.

Joanne Lerner turned to waitressing at the age of twenty to care for herself and her daughter, Vanessa. By the age of twenty-three she had been through two boyfriends and was living in a two-bedroom apartment with her four-year-old daughter. Russell Guerin was the next man that she entered a romantic relationship with. He had made advances in the past that she politely declined. There was always someone else nearby who held her preference. It was not until after Russell had opened his own auto repair shop that he rose to the top of her list.

Russell was a very good mechanic and had been working steadily in this profession since his junior year of high school. It was always his ambition to own shop and he had been saving toward that end from his very first paycheck. He purchased his home first, little more than a year out of high school, and then borrowed against it to start his own business. Less than two minutes into his relationship with Joanne, he invited her and her daughter into his home. Six months later they were married. At this point, life was nearly perfect for Russell Guerin. For Joanne Lerner-Guerin, this was an acceptable compromise.

By the age of thirty-three Russell Guerin had a profitable business, a home, an eight-year-old stepdaughter and a wife he adored. There was only one thing missing that he needed to make his life complete and that was a son. It was only after learning that he could not father a child that Russell turned to adoption. That was not an unacceptable plan for Joanne. She had no desire to have another child of her own making and even less so one fathered by Russell. The compromise of this marriage had been steadily losing its appeal for her, so much so that she began having an affair with a man nine years her junior. She agreed to the adoption simply to please Russell, with the proviso that the child was not an infant.

Michael became a part of their family at two years of age. Four years later, Joanne Lerner- Guerin, with Vanessa in tow, ran off with her lover. Devastated by that, Russell turned to drink far in excess of his previous quantities of consumption. As a result of that practice, he neglected his business. His list of clienteles dwindled away, and his profit margin nearly disappeared completely. Two years later, he took on his top mechanic as a partner, and it was he who saved the business. Despite that near loss of his only source of income, Russell continued to drink to excess, but not all his drinking was due to events of his making.

At the age of twelve, Michael began to learn how to effect changes in his father's behavior. He accomplished this by gently probing into his mind and nudging his thinking away from thoughts that was emotionally depressing to him. These adjustments quickly became a pattern of confused thoughts and lapses in time. Even when he began to become suspicious of these sudden changes in his moods and plans, Russell would lose his mental grasp on these revelations until another two or three weeks had passed. At first, he thought he was losing his sanity, and that motivated him to drink more. After several years of what seemed to him to be an endless delusion, Russell's suspicions latched on to the one constant within this maze of inconsistencies. In the back of his mind, he could not help but think that Michael was behind it somehow. Despite that suspicion, he feared to think it, and he was terrified of saying it aloud.

The relationship between Michael and Russell devolved into that of little better than resentful acquaintances living beneath the same roof. Russell fell into a pattern of quiet acceptance and Michael ignored him so long as he stuck to that inclination. Over the summer of the year just past, Michael nudged Russell into accepting his claim to the attic space above the garage. These urges in Russell's mind had by then become a familiar precursor to one of these fugue events, and he knew better than to question it or try to fight it. There were times when Russell considered the idea that he had become schizophrenic, but during the calm between these delusional thoughts he could not help but note how Michael seemed to be looking right through him.

There was no malice behind Michael's manipulation of Russell. Over time he became sympathetic towards his adoptive father. His familiarity with the thinking of his father lessened his perception of the severity of his abuses in the past. He knew that it was the pain of loss and the alcohol that provoked him to do all that he did. But Michael was not one to forgive weakness of character, and he blamed his father for that. It was for that reason more than anything else that he pushed him into a longing to be rid of him. The attic was Michael's first step toward total freedom.

Up until this day, Michael's plan was to move out after graduation. He had no doubt that he could find work in some capacity somewhere within the vicinity. He had no desire to live or work beyond a one-hour drive from Roswell. That plan was due to the belief that there was something in the wilderness outside of the city calling to him. Because of that belief, he had never given a thought to leaving the vicinity until this day. It was the thought of someone in possession of Max's memories that made leaving a serious consideration for him. However, that consideration notwithstanding, Michael knew he could never leave the state of New Mexico without Max and Isabel by his side.