Monte Cooke was upstairs in his workshop, quietly working on a circuit board. He heard a creak on the stairs. “That ain’t right,” he thought.

He pulled a drawer out quietly and grabbed the old 38 revolver he kept there. It could only be one of two men. Both of them made up the Burroughs brothers. The brothers had been our small town’s scourge lately. They had moved here three years ago. I imagine they were pushed out where they had lived before.

Someone always thinks they are too smart to earn a living. This described the two larcenous trespassers well. If one was in the house, so was the other. I slid around a parts cabinet and crouched behind it with the old revolver pointed outwards.

I heard the door squeak as it opened. There are lots of squeaks in an old wood home. My heart was pounding, and my mouth was dry. I knew I was about to get in a gunfight and possibly take a man’s life. Worse, he might take mine. He crept around, presumably looking for me in the cluttered workshop. There are many shelves and cabinets. I had my gun aimed for where he would come around.

He saw me, but I was a millisecond quicker. I shot him two inches just right of the center of his chest. He had to move his gun towards me, and I didn’t have to move. I was lined up already. His lifeless body fell to the floor.

I kicked his gun away and got behind the hollow core door at the top of the stairs. The dead guy was Caleb Burroughs. I heard another person coming up the stairs. I figure it’s a 99.5 percent chance it’s Jaylen, Caleb’s older brother.

My heart is pounding hard now in fear, and I wish I had peed earlier. I heard the stairs squeak as Jaylen tried to sneak upstairs. I thanked my stars; I didn’t mind an occasional squeak in the old farmhouse and had left the squeaks be.

I saw him pass the door crack where the hinges are. I shot two times through the door where I knew the bulk of his body was. He’d paused when he saw his brother on the floor. That’s all the time I needed.

I moved back quickly from the door in case he had any life left in him. I hid behind a file cabinet while I waited. There were two sounds: Jaylen’s raspy breathing and my heart pounding like hell.

The breathing slowed to a stop. I took a chance and checked. Jaylen was done for. I stepped around him and went downstairs to pee in the hall bathroom. I was shaking as I peed. My nerves were utterly frazzled.

I did not have a bathroom upstairs. My upstairs workshop started life as an unfinished attic. I had not wanted to rip out walls just to put in a toilet upstairs.

When I finished, I went and poured two fingers of bourbon into a glass and dropped in a handful of ice. I waited as the ice cooled the booze enough and took a good swig of the harsh drink.

I went into the living room and sat. I thought about what brought me to this point. It all revolved around Bonita Mullens, my former housekeeper-cook. I had taken her key away when I threw her out.

Like a dumb-ass, I had not changed the door combination yet. That was stupid. I live fifteen miles outside of Taylor City. I had not set the perimeter doors to alarm either. I shook as I realized I had screwed up and needlessly risked my own life.

I had thrown Bonita out two days ago. We had a big screaming fight over her giving my money to the Burroughs brothers. She claimed they were extorting money from her, MY money. Everyone in town knew she gave away her pussy. There was no big secret.

She had arrived in town one day with no visible means of support. I’d taken her in to cook and do light household chores.

Personally, I’d never screwed her bareback. One good thing about the slut, she preferred you use a rubber.

I was livid when I figured out she was stealing my money. There was a constant drain of housekeeping money. I was eating beans and rice. She should have been serving me steak or lobster every night for that money.

Bonita had always had an itchy crotch. I had known it. She said the Burroughs had caught her in a car with another guy. Big deal. Everyone in town knew she was a loose woman. There must be more to the story. She wouldn’t tell me, so I had to kick her out.

They were draining my money through her. They must have figured they would go around the middleman now that she was out on her ear and take my money anyway. The idiots thought they could extort or rob money directly from me.

Stupid ass Bonita had to know there was no secret in our town. Everyone in town knew she was a slut and a whore. I had let her move in and take care of me despite that. She cooked and cleaned for me, and later, she sometimes slept with me.

A seventeen-year-old who visits your room in a white see-through nighty is a challenge. How does a horny guy turn that away? He can not.

I remembered that night, I was reading in bed. I like to do that as I read and slide gently into sleep. Bonita had been here for several months. Up to this point, she had been a perfect housekeeper and cook.

The first night she visited me, I was blown away. Bonita is a slender honey blond. I could see the light pink circles in the middle of her small tits. They are cone-shaped and soft-looking. Her bush is plain to see and is a shade darker than the hair on her head.

She asked, “Can I sleep with you tonight? I’m cold, and I feel very lonely tonight.”

I thought, “I bet you do.”

For an answer, I slid over and patted the bed beside me. My mattress was an old and saggy Queen size. It sags in the middle, so she was more or less pushed towards me. Being tall and slender and with a perfect face, Bonita looks elegant. Except for her teenage taste in clothes, she would be a serious hotty.

I never promised Bonita anything. I did not love her. She obviously did not love me. She could have stayed here forever as my housekeeper. She would still be here if not for her stupidity in giving my money to the Burroughs brothers.

The Burroughs were well known for extortion. They made all their money from shady dealings. There were rumors of drugs and gambling.

Unfortunately, we had no law since the Big Bankruptcy in 2033. The federal government had failed financially. When it failed, it failed miserably. The country was flat broke. Naturally, all the money being funneled to local law enforcement dried up immediately.

The federal government stopped all money coming down to the state and local levels for everything! No police, fire, money for education, or roads and infrastructure, all of it. Now, the state and town could only handle a few of their most important responsibilities.

In the South, an ingrained spirit had already been at work to de-fund law enforcement. They are unresponsive. It had continued to degenerate through the 2020s and early 2030s.

We wanted law and order, but that wasn’t happening. Crime all over was through the roof. Criminals had rights, while everyday citizens did not. It got so the typical response time was over 40 minutes in an actual emergency. They were even slower getting to my place way out in the country.

This passion to de-fund the police was not about the police officers themselves. It was because all local government had become entirely inept.

Policies where arrested people were released on no-bail just minutes after being put in a cell. DAs prosecuted good people while they let the bad ones go. It really had people angry and disgusted.

The system had become incapable of responding. If you called 911, you only got dozens of questions without a practical response. In a small town like ours, this has been a big topic of discussion for quite a long time.

Many people carry guns regularly now since the conservative Supreme Court has banned all gun control laws. The country had reverted to behaving like it did in the Old West. You were responsible for yourself.

The Supreme Court’s rulings really went into effect the first time a republican president got into power in the late 2020s.

The President had a long battle with the ATF. They got reigned in hard. They were now more of a small administrative organization under the OMB, without any badges or power.

In the deep South, like our town of Taylor City and many rural and Western areas, local governments decided they could afford few cops.

When there were guns involved, some cops drove around with sirens blazing. They did that for 5 minutes before they even approached a crime scene.

Why risk yourself if the perp would be out in the morning?

DA’s did nothing to stop criminals in the super-liberal states and cities. The public and the police were utterly appalled. In my little southern area, we eventually had one cop for our county. We had a sheriff.

I took pictures of the Burroughs brothers where they lay with their guns. If you do stupid things, you win stupid prizes.

I wrote a quick email to the sheriff and sent it to him with several pictures attached. They depicted the guns and the stairway up to my workroom.

I decided to get rid of the two bodies now that I had calmed down. I took a power screwdriver upstairs. I pulled the door off the frame. I removed its hinges and doorknob. I moved one moron at a time to the door and thumped my way down the stairs with him. I slid the door sideways. The front door is a couple feet from the stairway. With my big wheelbarrow, I took him out to the backyard.

After a rest, I took the other moron down and out back. I dug a shallow grave three feet deep. Both of them went into the shallow grave together. I poured two bags of lime over them. I added three bags of concrete ready mix on top. After wetting the concrete well, I shoveled in the dirt. Tomorrow, I will add a wood marker.

Nowadays, you take care of yourself. We had always had guns living in the country. We have wild animals, rabid animals, and the occasional angry stag during mating season. I had carried a firearm religiously since the Big Bankruptcy.

Ours was amid another undeclared war when the federal government went broke. Iran had a new Ayatolla who decided to bring back the old Persian Empire. To do that, Iran went on a binge. Iran took over after attacking several neighboring countries. This included Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Azerbaijan. Then, they began nibbling at Turkey and Saudi Arabia. That’s when the U.S. got involved. Turkey is a NATO country.

That’s what created the U.S. bankruptcy. The U.S. had already been overstressed financially. In the early 1990s, with Desert Storm, we could afford to move a hundred thousand men overseas. Since the 1980’s our industrial capacity has slowly shifted overseas. Much of it to China, Taiwan, Viet Nam, India, Indonesia, and even Pakistan.

Most U.S. manufacturers are small mom-and-pop outfits. There were a few foreign corporations like Stellantis. Our country had become seriously hollowed out.

You can only squeeze so much blood from a grapefruit before it’s dried up. The value of the dollar tanked. Wall Street crashed AND burned. The people could not be taxed more. They were already broke. The rich had their money hidden out of the country, so everything went bust. Many of the rich left for overseas islands. A lot of them got murdered.

We had a severe constitutional emergency. Rank and file Americans were done with both parties. The elite rich that had run the U.S. had no touch with reality. Profligate spending, and runaway inflation which was clearly caused by greed. There were monopolies everywhere, which royally fucked over the American people.

Few sitting senators and representatives were reelected. Both political parties crumbled. When the dust settled, a new slate of people ran the government. They were primarily rebels from the No-Labels Party and the Libertarian Party. Fringe was in.

The new guys decided unanimously to get out of the warfare business. Since 1951, the country has been in a constant state of war worldwide.

After six months of wrangling, they completely reset the government. They got rid of much of the armed forces.

They passed three significant amendments to the Constitution. First was a balanced budget amendment that meant no federal debt after 2038.

A second amendment made significant changes to how the military was run. The original Constitution made provision for the armed forces for our own protection. That was it! No mention of the wars we were constantly embroiled in.

Having natural physical barriers at both coasts, i.e., the oceans, how much armed forces did we really need?

Isolationism set in. Buy American became ultra important. We changed our laws on imports. Oil, Gas, and Coal. By now, it was grossly apparent the green movement had been a giant boondoggle.

The whole green revolution was the next big issue. The e-cars were absolutely worthless up north. Their mileage was bupkis in winter. People had frozen to death when their batteries quit in them. Neither windmills nor solar panels delivered steady electricity. You couldn’t store enough electricity to get the job done. Not economically, anyway.

It all came down to the amount of charging units per vehicle. When the Biden administration doubled down on electric cars, there were a few thousand charging stations. That quickly began to fail miserably. There were over 300 million cars and less than 100 thousand charging stations by 2030. What a colossal screw-up.

Then there was the cost. The average price for an e-car was double what a new gas car cost. They lied about the savings. Turns out the electric companies are money-making corporations. Adding more power generation and transmission equipment, as it turned out, was too expensive. The government made promises the people refused to pay for. It all skyrocketed, and they rebelled.

People driving e-cars long distances had to replace their batteries every few years. Nobody really got good at recycling batteries with an affordable method. Poisonous batteries were stacking up. The whole idea contributed to the country’s financial failure. The big three automakers were no more.

That was a mess. You can’t tax enough to build a duplicate electrical delivery infrastructure.

What changed everything was when people discovered the carbon issue was made-up bullshit.

The so-called climatologists were being paid by government grants. The grants paid them to come up with predetermined outcomes. The outcomes government and big business wanted: Go Green!

The climatologists tended to like their cushy jobs at XYZ College. They fricken lied their asses off for Uncle Sugar’s money.

The atmosphere in 2022 had been .03 of one percent carbon. That would be 0.003 percent. That’s a terribly tiny little figure. The whole CO2 thing was based on a teeny tiny fraction of a percent. It’s a real, nothing burger.

Global Warming

Global Warming AND Global Cooling are all simply part of the natural order of things. The media had been fanning the flames for decades over the so-called effects of global warming. The major TV companies and newspapers faded away. People began having a sizeable national dialog on social media. Yeah, the temperature got hot at times. It got cold at times.

Without the press to come up with bullshit statements like “Hottest July 4th since 1947.’