Chapter 1

No you haven’t read the by-line wrongly. This was written by Saxon_Hart. So any rumors of my demise or incarceration are not true ... if there were rumors.

This story has been an animal with a mind of its own. I started writing this over fifteen years ago. I can no longer recall exactly when, but there is an Easter egg near the end of Chapter one. It’s a line of dialog that mirrors a popular meme that was prevalent on social media near the time I started this.

This story has been put on the back burner more often than grandma’s succotash, and at one point it was so far off track that I deleted over fifteen pages. The biggest issue was I didn’t have an ending, so I had no real direction. As time wore on I had at least a dozen endings, most of them involved characters dying or everything was so forced that it was ridiculous.

Finally a few months ago I had a “Eureka” moment and figured out an ending. Of course, as I was polishing dialog for said ending a previous ending came to mind so I went that way as well. So there are two ... um three endings for this one, each will be offered separately so you can choose one, or read all three.

A few words of warning: First this is long. Three chapters plus three ending hopefully published a day apart. Second, you might have to suspend disbelief with some things. I know things don’t really happen like they do in this story, but I made things work for my purposes. Third, I hope any Nevada readers don’t mind, but one town is a product of my imagination, in a real location. Another town is used, but I have never been there so I am hoping I didn’t mess with the geography too much. Also there is some violence. I don’t get very detailed with the violence but it is there.

I want to thank my super editor kenjisato for helping to clean up my many punctuation errors. I truly believe he made this much better than it was. Also anyone along the line that has read this and encouraged me to keep on with it, know you are deeply appreciated.

Final fun fact; when I began this adventure I had two things to work from. One is the joke that opens the story, and the other is the method of revenge.

I have at least three mor things in the works at the moment, hopefully the next will copmoe out around early fall.

Please enjoy, and every comment is appreciated.

S.H.

Brighter Days

There is an old joke that goes something like this ... A guy is sitting in his favorite bar when his buddy comes in. The buddy sits down and says, “Damn Joe, I haven’t seen you in a week, whatcha been doin?” Joe says, “I had to attend my wife’s funeral.” Joe’s buddy says, “Damn, I’m sorry Joe. What did she die from?” Joe says “She died from gonorrhea.” His buddy thinks for a moment and then says “Gonorrhea? You don’t die from gonorrhea.” Then Joe looks at him and says, “You do when you give it to me.”

That joke played through my mind as my doctor told me that I had a case of gonorrhea. “Gonorrhea? How the fuck could I have gonorrhea?” I hadn’t been with anyone but my wife Darla since she and I hooked up five years prior. It was painfully obvious to me that I had picked up the lovely condition from her.

I was pissed off, but the doctor still managed to make me feel lower than dog shit. “You’ll need to inform Darla,” he said, looking over his glasses at me. “And I’ll need a list of your lovers. They’ll need to be notified as will the health department. And before you say it; it is impossible to catch it from a toilet seat.”

“Hand me a piece of paper, Dr. Sinclair and I will give you the list,” I said, as evenly as possible. I truly intended to look for a new physician as soon as possible.

He gave me a pad and a pen and left the room. I assumed he was leaving to give me privacy in which to list out my harem of one. I wrote my wife’s name; Darla Marie MarshallTurner and I wrote my home address. He returned five minutes later with a syringe.

I pointed to the paper on the table. “There’s my list Doc.” In my mind I added, “You pompous fucking asshole!” He picked up the pad. I enjoyed the look as his face went from “holier than thou” to “I like my crow sautéed.”

He looked like he was about to open his mouth again, so I shut him up by asking, “Is this shit curable, Doc?”

“Ah, yes Jeffery. I’ll put you on a course of antibiotics starting with an injection and you will be well on your way to...” He paused and looked at me, thoughtfully. “I hate to bring this up, but we may want to run a battery of tests for other social diseases.”

I knew he meant HIV, and I was even more pissed. All I wanted to do at that moment was choke the final breath out of my cheating-whore wife, and whomever she’d been gallivanting around with.

I seethed as the good doctor stuck a needle in my arm and drew blood, then, had me turn around and stuck another needle in my butt cheek. “Fucking bitch!” I accidentally said out loud, as Dr. Sinclair gave me the injection.

“Oh. Didn’t mean to hurt you, Jeffery,” he said, in a pacifying voice. “There. All done.”

I guess he thought I was talking to him.

“Thanks Doc,” I said as I left the office and went out into the hot Nevada sun. My work truck was parked across the street since I had opted to see the doc about my burning sensation on my lunch break.

I started the truck and sat there pondering the new direction my life was taking as I waited for the air conditioner to make the cab a bit less like an oven. Darla and I hadn’t had the typical marriage. Hell, we hadn’t even had the typical courtship.

I had been on a date with Sarah Young and we had gone to the carnival. This date however wasn’t the typical boy and girl courting. I was with Sarah because she wanted to make Royce Champion jealous. Royce was a large individual so Sarah had a hard time finding a guy who was willing to play along. Besides, Sarah and I had been best friends since kindergarten and “Show me yours and I’ll show you mine” was as sexual as we had ever gotten, unless you count three minutes of making out in a tree house.

I was not the biggest guy around. At five foot ten inches tall and a hundred and fifty eight pounds, I barely qualified as big, but my size had never mattered. I was known as a guy who wasn’t afraid to throw down with anyone. Part of that stemmed from a legend.

One evening as I was coming out of the movie theater, two cars full of guys from Reno pulled up in front of my buddy and me. They jumped out, yelling and carrying on, and telling anyone who’d listen that they were there to kick my ass.

Instead of running away, I moved toward the group. I knew I’d get my ass beat, but damn it, they were going to know they’d been in a fight. Just as I had sized up my first targets, my cousin Mike jumped out of one of the cars laughing his ass off.

He’d brought all of the guys to Denton, a small town in the Reno and Lake Tahoe area just to see if he could scare me. He stopped the prank before anyone got hit. Later in his life, he wouldn’t stop a prank in time and he’d end up in prison.

Not a single punch was thrown between myself and the eight guys, as a matter of fact, the only damage done was a depletion of the beer supply at Ron’s Gas and Grocery. But before the weekend was over, everyone had heard it from someone who was there, or witnessed the brawl in which I, sent four of the guys to the hospital before the rest ran like cowards. Even sorely lacking any truth I was now a guy that no one fucked with, thus I was perfect to make Royce realize he wanted to be with Sarah.

As we walked around the carnival, Sarah’s head was on a swivel looking for a sign of Royce. I was reminded of the guys in hunting videos constantly looking around for the sign of deer. As it was, I spotted Royce just before Sarah did.

At first, I thought he was alone. He didn’t take any particular notice of me, so I assumed that he hadn’t seen Sarah. Royce was moving on an angle to take him away from crossing our path, so I turned my attention to a little blonde in a crop-top and cut-offs trying to knock milk jugs off of a stool with a baseball.

I was watching her delectable ass in those shorts, and feeling my cock starting to wake up when Sarah said, “Oh, hell no,” and started moving off through the crowd in the direction of Royce. I tore my eyes from the blonde’s ass and chased after Sarah. She was moving quickly and I soon fell behind.

I had underestimated her speed and soon there was a pretty good crowd between us. She wasn’t hard to find, though; after a moment, I just followed the sounds.

“Who the fuck is this whore?” I heard Sarah yell over the carnival sounds, as I caught up to her.

“Whoa. You dumped me. Remember?”

“No, I said I needed some space, I never said for you to go out and fuck some skank.”

I came to the clearing in the crowd to find Sarah screaming in Royce’s face. Occasionally, she’d wag a finger in the face of a short-haired blonde standing beside Royce. I hoped that this was a joke. Sarah had Royce’s date outclassed so much it wasn’t funny. She had a face for movies and a body that any red-blooded male had to drool over. She’d been one of my best friends since kindergarten, so I was one of a very few men who could be around her without trying to get into her panties.

Royce’s date had short, spiky blonde hair which had been dyed at least three different colors, none of them naturally occurring hues, either. She wore a pair of ratty denim shorts that were too short to be capris, but way too long to be shorts, and a denim vest that had gone out of style when the punk era ended.

She wasn’t someone a guy would go out of his way to fuck, but I had to admit, she did have a cute face. A sprinkling of freckles over her nose added to her allure and she had almost black eyes. They were definitely eyes you could get lost in.

Sarah was getting very loud and Royce realized that they were attracting a crowd. “Come on, Sarah,” he hissed. “Let’s take this somewhere a bit more private.” He grabbed her hand and led her away.

Sarah looked back at me and smiled. I just shrugged, and went to see if I could find the blonde in the Daisy Duke shorts.

I was moving toward the milk jug booth when I noticed that I wasn’t alone. I glanced sideways and saw Royce’s date was matching me, stride for stride. We got to the game booth and I didn’t see the blonde anywhere. “Damn,” I said aloud.

“Damn? Why say damn now? Why not go get your girlfriend back from Royce?”

“My girlfriend? No,” I chuckled. “Sarah is one of my best friends. I was just here to let Royce know what he was missing. I wouldn’t count on a second date with him if I were you.”

“Well, technically, to have a second date, you are required to have a first date.”

She laughed as I got a questioning look on my face. “I was here with a couple of friends when Royce asked me to walk around the carnival with him. He knew she’d be here and he didn’t want her to see him alone, so he told my friends he’d see to it I got home safe.”

“Trusting friends,” I said.

“I guess so, seeing as how Royce is my cousin.”

As we walked around the carnival she told me all about herself. Her name was Darla, and at age twenty-three she was three years older than I was.

She lived in Truckee, California, but was considering taking a job at a local bar.

By the end of the night, I thought she was a pretty cool chick and I did like looking at her face; especially those eyes. However, I still had no plan to bed her. I wasn’t even all that disappointed when Royce and Sarah showed up, after obviously discussing their situation horizontally, and offered to see Darla safely home.

Darla thanked me for a nice evening and went away with the love birds. I went and got an old family friend to buy me a twelve pack of Bud and went home to get sauced.

Darla didn’t cross my mind at all over the next few weeks. I was pretty busy cutting wood for the winter. I’d cut three cords during my off time. I’d stack one for myself and sell the other two. Before fall, I had four cords, which was more than enough for winter and I had some money stashed away.

I wasn’t old enough to work in either casino in town, so I bided my time by slinging hash in Joe’s Greasy Spoon every morning, Wednesday through Sunday.

I lived in a cabin that my great-grandfather had owned and passed down over the years. When my parents had owned it, they only used it as a summer retreat, but the place had been kept in good condition. They had rented out their house in town and moved to Phoenix the summer after I graduated high school, and I had moved into the cabin.

My utilities were few. I had my own well and I had three small windmills to produce electricity. All I really had to pay was my taxes. I truly had no intention of getting emotionally entangled with a woman. My best friend Ramon Gonzales, however, had different feelings.

Ramon and I had been best friends since third grade. I had entered third grade, but Ramon had been held back. I never liked kids calling him stupid so I got into a few fights. Later, he was diagnosed with a learning disorder and got the help he needed to excel in school. He graduated third in our class; I was twelfth of twenty-four students.

In the middle of our freshman year, Daisey Perez moved to Denton. She had been kicked out of the school in Incline Village, and her parents had to drive her every day to Denton. She was a walking wet dream, and every guy in the school wanted to date her, but most of us were instantly disqualified because she “didn’t date gringos.”

She did hit it off with Ramon. He helped her get through her classes and they became an item. She never liked the fact that I was his best friend, and I have to admit, I was a bit antagonistic to her at times. Finally, during the summer of our senior year, we came to a truce. For Ramon’s sake we would try to get along; in his presence, at least.

Ramon got a full-ride scholarship to Stanford, but after graduating eighteenth in our class, Daisey was forced to go to work. She worked at a small burger joint four days a week and worked at the movie theater four nights a week. I knew she was missing Ramon when she found excuses to talk to me. I guess talking about the love of her life with a gringo she despised was as close as she could get to the real thing.

I moved into my family’s cabin that summer, and Daisey was a constant visitor. During her visits, she fell in love with the house just down the road. She and I did agree on one thing; the location of the cabin was perfect. It was far enough out of town that nobody bothered you but you were still a five-minute drive from the conveniences of town.

I knew when Ramon was on break because I wouldn’t hear from or see Daisey. I wouldn’t see Ramon much either because he and Daisey would be making up for lost time. I did get to see him on New Year’s Eve, and we did hang out for a day when he was home on spring break.