Chapter 1: Release

The prison transport bus dropped Cade Harrison off in the middle of the city. He slowly began the fifty block walk back home to his old neighborhood. His chin was covered with three days of stubble and he smelled heavily of tobacco smoke. His thick sandy brown hair looked as though it could use a good washing, and his steely grey eyes appeared empty and hollow.

As he rounded the corner of Merchant Street on the last leg of his journey, his nostrils were filled with the old familiar smells of the neighborhood. Some things never changed. The brownstones that lined the narrow street had been divided and renovated on the inside into various sized dwellings over the last sixty years. The outside of the buildings looked about the same as he remembered, aside from all the boarded up windows and the heavy colorful streams of graffiti.

Cade soon found himself walking beside the old tenement style houses that had been erected just beyond the brownstones. He continued at a steady pace until he came upon the house he had grown up in. Finally there it was, looming large before his eyes. As he approached the old run down house, he noticed two unkempt children running around inside the yard. One was a boy about eight-years-old, and the other was a girl who looked to be about five-years-old. In the back of his mind it registered that the two children he saw were likely his.

He looked up just in time to see a thin woman with dark hair appear in the doorway of the house. "Get your asses back in here," she yelled at the children, but they paid her no heed and continued to squeal and run around all the more.

Cade realized the woman was his wife Callie. She hadn't changed much since the last time he had seen her. He slowly opened the rickety wire gate and began making his way up the crumbling cement walkway toward the house. The woman looked up at him in disbelief. "Cade?"

He nodded.

"Cade's home!" Callie called, and soon other people from inside the house began to gather on the rickety old porch. The two unruly children in the yard stopped running around and stared. Cade could barely remember who was who anymore, but he recognized his mother Annie, and his step-father, Seth. Those were two people he would never forget.

"God dammit!" Seth said with a frown and then he leaned over and spit his chew into the dirt of the front yard, where there was supposed to be grass.

Cade's mother Annie immediately rushed out to greet her son and excitedly threw her arms around his neck, "Oh my God! Welcome home."

Cade slowly embraced his mother as she bounced against him with excitement. Cade had been in prison for close to five years, so it had been a long time.

"I'll be god dammed," Seth shook his head with disapproval, "I guess it's about damn time they let your ass out of that fucking place."

Cade had forgotten what a shit hole his home had been. The only time in his life he had ever felt somewhat normal was during the six months he had spent in foster care while he was growing up. Other than that, he had run the streets and become a hoodlum. From a very young age he had always been in trouble with the law.

Callie had nothing but bad memories of her life with Cade. They shared a violent past, but part of her still loved him, and she hadn't bothered to divorce him.

Cade noticed a boy on the porch who was about sixteen-years-old. He assumed the boy must be his youngest brother Quinn. Cade's other siblings and step-siblings appeared to be long gone. Quinn sneered at him, "He's not getting his room back," Quinn said emphatically.

Seth snickered, "Of course not!" Quinn had the distinction of being the only child that Seth and Annie had produced together, so he always received preferential treatment from them.

Cade turned as a thin, pale, blonde haired girl slowly made her way out onto the front porch to join the others. Her eyes were cast down nervously and Cade realized she must be his daughter Ashley. He had heard that Ashley's mother had died about three years ago from a drug overdose and the child welfare system in all their misguided wisdom had sent Ashley to live with his mother and stepfather.

"I hope you brought some God damn money with you," Seth said, "There's nothing to eat in the house."

"They don't give money to prisoners," Cade said, even though he had applied for a release grant prior to his discharge and had some money tucked deep inside his pocket.

Seth suddenly realized Ashley had come out on the porch. "Ashley Goddamn you," Seth raged at the shy eleven-year-old girl and then he chased her back inside the house and Cade heard the familiar sound of the belt. "I told you to clean up this place," Seth raged in between smacks.

Cade tightened his jaw. There was no doubt in his mind that Ashley would have been better off almost anywhere else besides this God forsaken house and neighborhood.

Cade wasn't sure why Callie was there. He had warned her to stay as far away from Annie and Seth as possible. His eyes fell upon the two children who had been playing in the yard. His son had been a toddler when he left for prison and the little girl, allegedly his daughter, hadn't even been born. He wasn't entirely certain he was the father of either of the children, even though Callie claimed he was. Cade looked at the two urchins, "What are their names again?"

Callie laughed, "You never did have a very good memory for names. This is Jessica," and she pointed to the five-year-old girl, "and you remember Harley," she put her hand on the shoulder of the eight-year-old boy. She nudged them toward Cade, "This is your daddy." The kids shied away from Cade and held onto their mother.

Cade chose to ignore the children for now and he followed his mother inside the house. The stench inside the house caused Cade to wretch a little and he felt as though he might vomit.

"Cade honey," his mother Annie appeared to be sober, but he couldn't be certain. "Can I fix you some Campbell's soup?" She offered. Cade looked around at the filthy kitchen. There wasn't a clean pan or dish in sight and he wondered what she would cook the soup in and after that, what she would serve it in.

"For God's sake Annie," Seth said with venom, "You want to fix your jailbird son soup? What about me? I'm your husband for Christ sake."

Cade could hear Ashley sobbing from the bedroom, and he briefly wondered if he should do something about it. But at that moment, he felt nothing inside; no sympathy or empathy of any kind for anyone. Mostly he felt dead. That's what being in prison had done to him.

Callie decided it was time to break the ice. She took hold of Cade's hand and led him into one of the nearby bedrooms. It was obviously her bedroom and she shared it with her kids, "C'mon, I haven't even seen you in ages," she smiled seductively once they were inside the bedroom and the door was shut. The room was filthy. The bed was a mess and there was clutter everywhere. Callie looked up at him with half-closed eyes, "It's good to see you again baby."

Cade could tell she was trying to come onto him. "C'mon," she said and she began to unfasten his pants, reaching inside and pulling out his dick. She quickly knelt in front of him and placed his soft dick in her mouth and began to suck him. He pushed her away, "Stop it," he said in annoyance.

She looked up at him in surprise, "You used to love it when I gave you head."

"Leave me alone," he said quietly and then he reached down and tucked his dick back inside his pants and zipped up his fly, and took out a cigarette. "How long have you lived here?"

"Awhile," Callie said vaguely. "I tried to stay away like you told me, but I had no place else to go."

Cade suspected she had slept with countless men while he had been in prison, since she had slept with plenty of men before he went to prison. Her dark hair and bloodshot brown eyes made him wonder if she was high; for some reason he couldn't tell.