Chapter 1

“FUCKING PIIIIIIIIIGGGGS!!!!” Garret Henderson yelled out the window, throwing half a fifth of Jack Daniels into the patrol car’s windshield as he passed them going in the opposite direction. He started laughing while doing 75mph on Mainstreet in the restored ‘84 Pontiac Firebird blasting Rob Zombies Dragula. He looked back as he heard the sirens and saw the blue lights behind him. He had had his foot to the floor since he had made the turn onto the main strip through town a block ago. Gripping the steering wheel tight, he hit the e-brake as he yanked the wheel hard to the left, drifting through the turn as he headed out of town. He stomped the gas down again as his tires finally gained traction and shot off down the paved county road. The cops not far behind.

12 years earlier

Ever since Garret Henderson was little, he could see the difference between him and his family. For his birthdays, he would get a cake and a few presents. Usually something that had absolutely nothing to do with his personality or likes. It was as if they went to the store, picked an aisle at random, and grabbed something from the shelf. He even got a woman’s shaving kit once, when he was eight years old! No, they weren’t kidding him or making fun of him; they just grabbed something, threw it in a bag, and then handed it to him on the day.

Garret grew up in an indifferent household. At least to him, his parents were indifferent. To his siblings, they showered them with love and affection. When he was little, it bothered him greatly, but over time he came to accept it. He learned to tamp down the jealousy of the love shown to his siblings by becoming self-reliant. At least emotionally, he still had to depend on food and shelter from his parents, which, as he grew older, he was sure that meant until he graduated high school; then, he was fairly certain he would be given a suitcase and be told to hit the road.

Garrett’s parents were Sue and Frank. Sue was actually an attractive woman. She was a pretty brunette with striking green eyes and angular facial features. She stood fairly tall for a woman at 5’8” and around 120 pounds. She wasn’t chesty, but she had a decent B-cup to her credit. His father, he supposed, would be called handsome by most women. He stood a good 6’1” and was rather slim at 165 pounds, but he carried himself well.

Garret had three siblings: Carl, the oldest; Brian, the second oldest. His sister Sylvia came in next to last, and Garret was the baby of the family. His mother popped out one per year, and then after Garret, she had her tubes tied.

His father, Frank, was tall and slim with hair the color of honey and blue eyes. He owned and operated his company, Tap-Die Global; yes, they made taps and dies. The little hardened steel cutting tools to make threads on bolts and in bolt holes. It wasn’t a huge global company but it did have contracts that netted quite a few million every year. And it put them in the upper-class portion of society. Sue and Frank weren’t the richest assholes in the town, but they did provide a large number of jobs, so that made them important people.

Carl was an asshole, a straight spoiled blimp boy. He got the best of everything, well, second best; Sylvia always had the best if anyone kept score. He stood six feet tall even and weighed three hundred pounds by the time he graduated high school. No, he was never a jock, nor was he all that popular, but he did have their parent’s name and money, so he got plenty of attention. Of course, his 16^th birthday present, a new Dodge Charger he could barely squeeze his big ass into, played a big part as well.

Brian wasn’t quite as bad, but he was close. He took after their Dad and was slim, not skinny. One could say he was a handsome fellow if he bothered to take care of himself. As it was, his honey-colored hair was always slightly oily; he smelled of cigarette smoke constantly and only shaved once or twice a week. Combine that with his yellow teeth and splotchy skin, and one gets the idea. He tried hard to be the family bad boy, always getting into trouble. He even went to one of those summer camps for delinquents when he was 15. They sent him home after a week with a thirty-five-thousand-dollar bill after he burned down two of the cabins when he tried to boil bleach in a fireplace. No one ever asked why he was doing it; they just assumed it was drug-related. Sue and Frank just quietly paid for the cabins, no doubt a little extra on top of that, and it all went away.

Sylvia’s facial features were plain. She had brown eyes, brunette hair, and a nice C-cup bust, and she was an athletic kind of curvy, but that was all she had going for her. Her personality would best be described as a cunt with a capital C. That was just the truth. And yes, she was popular, for a time at least. As she grew, she got stacked. And not only stacked but jacked. When she was in high school, she easily benched 200 lbs. and was a toned 185 lbs., standing 6’2” tall.

And that, of course, attracted the radical feminists to her who believed men were all Satan and must be subjugated and have regular testicle inspections to ensure they didn’t grow. She swallowed their garbage hook, line, and sinker. At first, it was just observations around the dinner table, then it was posters, blogs, videos, protests, meetings, and podcasts, and she participated wholeheartedly. She went off the deep end and never came back up for air. And for some reason the parents were tickled pink at how she turned out.

And his parent’s personalities could best be described as distant.

Frank just ignored Garret for the most part, but he did have little snide things to say from time to time. About the only thing he seemed to really want to do was go to work and play golf. That and fuck his wife. Garret had heard them many nights shaking their bed apart. Out of morbid curiosity, he often wondered how the old man kept up. But then he learned of Viagra from jokes and idiots at school, so the mystery was solved as far as he was concerned.

His mother was much the same as Frank, but she took it a little further. It was like she was proud of her first three, even the bad-boy wannabe fuck-up, but she was just annoyed with Garret. And would let him know infrequently how much of a disappointment he was. Garret always thought the problem was that they never really bonded. In Sunday school, when he was thirteen, he once heard the teacher say something about an old saying, ‘a cross to bear,’ and asked her to explain it. Once she did, he told her that’s how his mother treated him. As if he was just her cross to bear. She was a little shocked for sure, but then she got a little teary-eyed and hugged him. Garret, for his part, was not upset. He just had a better understanding now. He had thanked her and asked her not to say anything to anyone about what he said and she assured him she wouldn’t. For which he was thankful.

At 15, Garrett grew into a strong young man. He had a full head of brown hair but took his father’s blue eyes. He stood 6’1” tall and weighed a substantial 180 lbs. He wasn’t cut or ripped, but his muscles did have definition from his part-time job at the feed store, which was more of a warehouse than a store; the place was bigger than a Walmart Supercenter. He worked hard most days after school, loading and stacking building materials, grains, and farm supplies.

Garret, for his part, was a good student. Sure, he never made straight A’s but he never made below a B. He considered himself moderately intelligent once he reached his teens. But because he had two older brothers and an older sister, he learned early on that money for college meant for the older three, not the youngest. Sure, he brought up college sometimes in his middle school years, but for some reason, no one ever paid him the slightest bit of attention concerning it. He never even got so much as a “That’s nice, Dear” from his mother. They just ignored everything he said pertaining to it.

That didn’t mean that they hung on his every word and phrase for other topics. Many times, one of the three older siblings would shoot down his words with snide comments and belittling remarks. At first, he gave as good as he got. It even went so far as physical fights erupting between him and at least two of his siblings. The strange part is that even though one of his older brothers was slightly bigger, they had never been able to get the upper hand. His sister, though, kicked his ass in the beginning two out of three times. To be fair, though, she did have him beat by at least fifty pounds for a while.

When Garret first turned 15, he had been building muscle, and his height was slowly inching upward. One day, his sister picked a fight, and it led to the usual wrestling and trying to make him submit. But Garret stood his ground this time and didn’t give an inch. He kept his stance and grappled with the Cro-Magnon female for a few minutes until she was red-faced and screaming at him. Then she slapped him, hard. Garret snapped and gave her a roundhouse to her left eye, knocking her out cold. All hell broke loose with their Dad jumping in and trying to strangle Garret as Garret threw him backward with both arms. His mother jumped between them then and slapped him, yelling at him that he wasn’t supposed to hit a girl. Garret just yelled right back.

“Then next time, tell the crazy bitch to keep her fucking hands to herself!”

This shocked Sue and Frank, but they quickly turned to their precious daughter and fretted as Garrett was quickly forgotten.

After they got her back from the hospital, Sylvia grinned with a swollen eye at Garrett. Garrett knew the minute he saw her what that smile meant.

As of that minute, they were at war.

Garret was grounded, of course. No mention was made of how she started the fight, how she was demanding he apologize for not going to the rally in support of Mandatory Anal Reassignment surgery for Males, or some other kooky ultra-feminist shit he didn’t bother to remember. No, no mention of how she grabbed his hair and jerked him to his feet, no mention of the claw and scratch marks. Nope, because he was a guy, or maybe because he was the youngest, he was in the wrong.

The simple truth was he didn’t care. He didn’t give one damn about her politics, her idealism, or her beliefs. He simply didn’t believe the same thing she did, so in her eyes, he was the enemy that must be destroyed.

He sat in his room that day after being banished upstairs, staring at the wall. He let the pain fade from the scratches that had crusted over, running through his mind the situation and came to the final realization that he was not in the wrong. He would not be denied the respect he had earned through his grades, his deeds, and his manner in the first fifteen years of his life. No matter the cost. Only his family treated him this way; therefore, he had to conclude that they hated him. And since that was so, he had no obligation to his sister or any of them from that day forth. He further brooded for a while then he became resolved. As the great Genghis once said to the Shah of Khwarezm, ‘You have chosen War... ‘

The first salvo she fired was her feminazi friends harassing him in the school hallways constantly. Three or four man-hating bitches got right up in his face yelling and screaming at him, poking him in the chest with their razor-sharp nails. Calling him everything they could think of and he was pretty sure they invented some new insults. He endured it like a champ, just ignoring them, planning his counter-attack, and a couple of times, literally walking over them (which got him a trip to the principal’s office with them, with them claiming he threw them down but was cleared after officials reviewed the footage from the security cameras). The next day, when they started in on him with their shame tactics and vitriol, he did what any red-blooded male afraid for his life and his self-respect would do. He pepper-sprayed them.

He actually got arrested that day for bringing a non-lethal weapon to school. But when the DA reviewed the footage from the school security cameras,’ he declined to prosecute, which did not go over well with the girls’ parents. There was talk of lawsuits for a few days, and his father ended up having to pay for their ER visits, but little else ever came of it. Except for Garret being suspended for a couple of days and once again being grounded for another week.

Team Garret Won the First Battle, but the war raged on.

He had to admit, her next assault was really rather clever, if quite disgusting. He opened his locker that next week and jumped back; it was like opening a closet stuffed with basketballs, all tumbling out at the same time. Only it wasn’t basketballs, but testicles from a wide assortment of animals. And since it was a Monday and the locker was ingeniously zip-lined with plastic, it was quite the mess and smell that spilled and tumbled out into the hallway. His sister had been nearby with her friends, laughing hysterically as opposed to those running and screaming from the smell and sight. They actually closed the school that day and called in the Health Department who hosed the place down and started tests to make sure there wasn’t going to be an outbreak.

Needless to say, their parents weren’t pleased. The school, in their infinite wisdom, had a habit of shutting down their security cameras’ over the weekends, so there was no way to tell who the perpetrators were. Carl thought the whole thing was hilarious, of course, while Brian was too stoned to care, leaving the family conference to continue listening to death metal in his room with the blacked-out windows. Sylvia just smirked as she watched her mother and father chew out Garret. Both telling him to stop causing trouble and learn how to de-escalate before things got out of hand. Of course, they never said a word to their precious daughter, even though it was a well-known secret that she was the instigator at school and at home.

Garret just sat there, not saying a thing. His countermove was already in the works. He grinned back at Sylvia, who stared back with her evil smile.

Two days later, when the Junior High girls were on the softball field, Sylvia was stepping up to the plate grinning at the skinny girl about to pitch when suddenly they heard music. They all twisted and turned, looking for the source. One girl from band class recognized it and said someone was playing Flight of the Valkyries.

Then suddenly, they heard an engine racing as Sylvia’s silver 2012 BMW 3 Series Convertible hopped a nearby knoll as it made a direct line for the lake across the empty soccer field. The top was down, and it looked like two stuffed sheep were sitting upright and wearing pink visors in the front seats. A twelve-foot pole was bolted onto the trunk with a banner that flowed behind it that read ‘IT’S GOOD TO HAVE BALLS!’ in bright red capital letters.

By the time it crashed and sank into the lake, Sylvia was on the warpath. She had taken the bat and was beating the bleachers to death, screaming. She finally exhausted herself and curled into a ball, sobbing.

Of course, the police were called, and Garret, now a Legend, was the main suspect. Sylvia, still hysterical, bordering on psychotic, demanded he be arrested. But no one knew anything, and no one could prove anything. The cameras covering the parking lot showed a man in coveralls wearing a ballcap, gloves, and sunglasses with a beard getting in the car and rigging it. And Garret was in class when it happened. So they had very little to go on.

After school Garret went to work and slipped his buddy Julio some cash.

“Best five hundred I ever spent,” He told the man, grinning. Julio just chuckled.

“Garret, you think of some crazy shit, man.”

Unfortunately, that stunt was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Their parents agreed that the situation between the two couldn’t continue, and the school was fed up serving as a battleground. Everyone knew by now two of the Henderson kids were having their own little war, but no one could prove anything. They said the principal was close to expelling both of them regardless of evidence.

So Garret was being shipped off to live with his grandparents. They told him Sylvia had been sent to her aunt’s for a week to let her cool down, but when she got back, Garret had to be gone. Garret just shrugged.

“Glad to go.” He told them after they laid down the law.

His indifference made both of them blink.

“Well, uh, yes, it’s for the best.” Frank was nodding, a little bemused that his son was taking this so well. No doubt, thinking his insurance company would breathe a sigh of relief with his youngest leaving the area code.

“Yes, absolutely. You and your sister are worse than oil and water; you’re matches and gasoline,” Sue said snidely, giving him a look of disgust. Garrett got up and crossed his arms and looked at her for a moment and then thought, to hell with it.

“I can honestly say you all deserve each other. The blind leading the stupid off the cliff into hell. Have a nice trip down.” His face finally showed his contempt for both of them at that moment as he walked around them and went to his room to pack, leaving them both speechless.

Garret knew this was an excuse to get him out of their lives and have their perfect family without him around, even though the perfect family for them consisted of a college-failing oldest son who was eating himself into an early grave. A loser-by-choice who chooses to hang out in graveyards rather than make friends. And a daughter who would gladly guillotine a man’s dick if he disagreed with her politics. And the only one with a work ethic, decent grades, and becoming a halfway decent man is exiled. Ah, yes, the perfect family within their sights at last.

He had packed and was boxing up a few other things to ship to his new address when he heard his mother on the phone in her room. His door was almost shut, barely a half-inch open, but he heard snatches of her conversation. He was not the type to eavesdrop, but suddenly, he heard her talking about him, so he listened.

“ ... finally getting rid of him.” He heard her in a low voice.

“ ... leaving today. Yes, it won’t be a problem. No honey, it’ll be just fine now, you’ll see.” He just shook his head. His mother was probably on the phone to that demon-spawn she had before him. He guessed it took Satan three tries before Sue birthed his perfect Disciple.

His father dropped him off at the airport with a plane ticket, all the cash he had in his wallet, and a ‘good luck’ before he drove off. Well, Garrett expected it. After years of indifference, it still would have been nice to actually talk or at least get some semblance of concern from the old man. He made his way to his gate, boarded the plane, and hoped for the best.

He had never met his grandparents. He had spoken to them on the phone a few times but never met or really got to know them; they were more or less strangers to him. He knew something had happened between his mother and them, but he had no idea what it was. He only hoped that they were nothing like his family.

When his plane landed, he walked over to baggage claim and waited for his suitcase to come up. He noticed an old guy in overalls, an old t-shirt, work boots, and an old oil-stained ballcap waiting near the exit doors. He looked familiar for some reason. He couldn’t be sure, but now the bags were starting to come up, so he quickly located his and started to make his way to the doors.

When he got closer, the old man looked at him, and his eyes widened before coming over.

“Garret?” He leaned forward, asking. Garret blinked and said yes.

“Hi, I’m your Grandpa Gabe! It’s great to see you again, son!” He then grabbed him up in a hug that was very unusual to Garret; he couldn’t remember the last time anyone in the family had hugged him for any reason.

“Again?” Garrett blurted out, his eyes a little wide, as the sudden display of family affection was alien to him.

Gabe released him and stepped back, nodding with a smile.

“Aye, we were there when you were born, both me and your Gram. You’re the best of that lot, let me tell you.” He chuckled.

Garret honestly didn’t know what to say or do. Gabe sensed it and patted him on the back.

“Come on, son, let’s get ya home.” He waved for Garret to follow. Garret followed along with the old man he now knew to be his grandfather. When he started up the old Ford truck, he asked Garret how his life had been, how he was doing in school, etc. Garret answered as best he could, but honestly, it overwhelmed him for a moment. This was the first time a family member had ever asked him about his life other than snide remarks and sarcastic comments.

On the ride to his grandparents’ place, Garrett answered everything he could, and Gabe, in turn, told him about his life as he drove.

Gabe Long was a retired welder. He started at a local machine shop right out of high school and slowly worked his way up the ladder, taking classes when needed. After ten years, he got hired to work for NASA welding parts of the space shuttles, more specifically, their fuel tanks along with other smaller parts. He had been retired for the last nine years after the doctor told him to start cutting back because of high blood pressure. So, at 53, he had taken his retirement after 25 years of welding for the government, and now he and the missus had settled down on the farm they bought.

Garret enjoyed the ride and the conversation. Gabe was a likable guy he found. Honest and dependable, he hoped his grandmother was just as impressive as Gabe was.

Garrett wasn’t disappointed. Martha was a small woman, only five feet tall, but she had a bright smile as she ran out to the truck when they arrived. She was humming with excitement when Garret got out. She ran over and stretching on her tip-toes, she fiercely hugged his neck. When she pulled back, he glanced down at her, her smile lighting up her face as he smiled back. She had green eyes and was a greying brunette with a small bust. She wore a country dress that looked a century out of date, but she was a gorgeous woman at 59. She couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds, but she was fit. He felt it in her arms when she hugged him.

“I’ve waited so long to do that, son,” she said as she smiled, tears trickling down her cheeks as her hands roamed over him. She patted his arms and chest, feeling the muscle, and then slapped his stomach as she giggled like a schoolgirl, noticing the firmness there.

“You’ve gotten so big and strong and manly. And from everything I’ve heard, you have become a young man to be proud of!” She stood back, looking him up and down. Gabe had come around to join them, and he nodded in agreement.

“That he is, only fifteen and already so grown up!” He chuckled as he put his arm around his wife’s shoulder, looking proud.

Garret was a little speechless. He didn’t know these people, but they were more accepting and approving of him than any of his other family. He didn’t know what to say or do. Martha seemed to pick up on his discomfort.

“Don’t worry honey, we understand you have to get to know us. We’ve been hoping and praying to someday see you again. Not quite like this, but we’re thrilled to have you here.” She said as she smiled and patted his shoulder.

That turned into the defining moment when Garrett’s life suddenly changed for the better. His grandfather was a kind man, always helpful, and taught Garrett everything he knew, from farming to welding to running heavy equipment. For the first year, each day was a new adventure and a new experience.

The new school was pretty bland. But smaller schools always are; he didn’t have much trouble fitting in, and he only had one more month to go anyway before the year was done.

His grandmother also imparted life lessons to him. She taught him manners, rules, and what women liked to see in a man. To Garret, it was eye-opening, and he felt he had been sorely missing out all these years. After being there a couple of weeks, Garret asked her about it, and why they never visited. And she told him the truth.

“We wanted to sweetie. But your mother wouldn’t allow it. She...” Martha looked up for a moment and then sighed.

“She just didn’t want us around, is the honest truth. She bluntly told us she didn’t want to be around us anymore, so she stayed away and never let us visit. It might be our fault in a way. We spoiled her far too much. She was the baby of the family, after all.” She sighed as she patted his arm.

As she started to walk away, she sighed again. Then turned back.

“I was waiting until you had become a bit more settled in, but ... I suppose I should tell you so you won’t be surprised if they stop by. You have two Aunts as well: my daughters Josie and Kay. They were your mother’s older sisters. You’ll meet them soon; they are quite different from your mother.” She smiled as she reached out and rubbed his arm a moment, then went into the kitchen to start cooking dinner.

Martha told him her full story later that night as they sat around the kitchen table, talking after dinner. She and Gabe had met right after high school at a café she was working at, waitressing. It was the typical boy meets girl story that led to the two getting married. After they had been married for a few years and had three girls, money was getting tight, so she got a job as a secretary for one of the local credit unions. They had made ends meet until Gabe got the call from NASA and took the job. They had moved down to New Orleans for Gabe’s job at the Michoud Assembly Facility, also known as ‘America’s Rocket Factory.’ She didn’t go back to work then as Gabe was making eight times what they both had earned combined and they were blissfully happy there.

The kids were going to private schools, and the other government wives welcomed the new couple into the fold with get-togethers, birthdays, and cookouts. The events were wonderful, and she filled her days with female gossip and raising her children.

Martha had always been proud of her husband and how he provided, but was even more so when they moved. Sometimes, he had to work long hours, but that was a part of life. They both bore the burden and kept going. She loved her life and her family, and she also loved being a mother, maybe to the point of spoiling the kids. Which was what happened with her youngest.

After Sue was born, the doctor warned them not to have anymore, as the last pregnancy had been particularly difficult. The doctor recommended tubal litigation, and at first, Martha refused. She so badly wanted to have a little boy but Gabe argued for her to get it done. He too, wanted a son, but he wasn’t ready to risk Martha’s life over it and convinced her that, in the end, it was for the best. So Martha had the surgery and then showered her youngest, Sue, with love and affection. Knowing it was her final child, she spoiled her far too much. And as a result, she lost her.

Sue had grown up thinking the sun rose and set with her. And that led to her being selfish and entitled. She had been a strong-willed young woman, but combined with a sense of entitlement, she had a hard time attracting the opposite sex. She went out on dates when she was older, but they never bloomed into anything like a relationship. She was too controlling and never compromised. At first, it seemed like a good thing to Martha and Gabe, but over time, they saw it as more of a detriment to her personality. But she found Frank, who was smart and capable, and they seemed to love each other in their own way. To Gabe, it seemed more like Frank was rather timid compared to his daughter’s more domineering personality. But it was their life, so they never interfered.

Then, the distance between Sue and the rest of the family grew. They got married after college, and as Frank’s business grew, so did Sue’s disdain for the family. She came up with excuses as to why they couldn’t come for the holidays, couldn’t visit on birthdays, wouldn’t invite the family out, etc. After she was married to Frank for four years even the calls stopped. Her mother left messages, and very rarely did she receive any calls back. Finally, after hearing from one of Sue’s friends that she was in labor at the hospital, Martha and Gabe took off and flew out to visit.

She threw them out of the room when they came in and saw her breast-feeding little Garret. They guessed it was the stress and hormones still coursing through her system, but she had told them in no certain terms that they weren’t welcome around her anymore, and she was her own woman. And that she refused to be the proper little wife that sits at home mooning over her man, waiting for him to walk into the door.

“Now, do you understand why I haven’t been around or been eager to call you back? I won’t have my children growing up with those archaic ideals planted into their heads. You still can’t take a hint, so I’m spelling it out for you, Mom and Dad: Stay away. I can and will take care of myself without you. Now, please leave and stay out of my life.” She had told them bluntly.

They had both been shocked and extremely hurt at their daughter’s words who was sitting there looking at them with nothing more than annoyance. Martha had left in tears, and Gabe followed her with a sad expression. They didn’t speak to her for a year after that until Martha couldn’t stand it anymore, so she called every week. She eventually got Frank on the phone, but he wouldn’t talk to her. He just answered to tell her to stop calling. It was several years later that Sue relented to let Martha and Gabe speak with the kids, with Garret being the only one to want to talk. The rest didn’t after being poisoned by Sue.