I consider this a more playful effort than the last few stories - a reworking of something written and posted to a now gone, but fondly remembered web site. As always your comments and emails help inspire me - I want your comments both pro and con. Enjoy!
The characters of this story are fictional and exist only within the confines of the story and my imagination!
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I am not ashamed to say that I'd let my life spiral completely out of control after my wife left me for a goddamn graduate assistant she'd met and opened her legs for while studying to be a grade school teacher. Sherry had been my life since we first met as high school freshman at the big consolidated county high school in our home town in rural Kentucky. She was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen, like a well stacked Sandra Bullock and I was head over in heels in love with her from the day we first sat next to each other in Freshman English. We'd married two weeks after we graduated from high school and for six years, I'd thought we were the happiest couple on Earth.
We'd both been working at a local textile mill that made uniform shirts -- mostly for the military, but for service jobs too. There wasn't much money, but we were happy. Then as the economy began to slide, Sherry decided she wanted to be a teacher and while it was a stretch money-wise, I supported her one hundred percent.
She was in her second year when she met the pretty-boy, some long-haired guitar strumming son of a bitch who worked as a graduate assistant with one of her professors. Before long, she was staying extra hours and it wasn't until I came home from work one Friday night and found most of her shit missing from our trailer that I even had a clue she was fucking someone else. The break-up was ugly, concluding with me making pretty-boy not so pretty when I beat the shit out of him outside the local university's graduate student apartment complex.
I enjoyed whipping his ass, but it cost me eight months in county lockup and when I got out, I was divorced and discovered that my job that my supervisor promised would be waiting for me had moved out of the country along with the rest of the factory. Sherry and her new love had already busted up and she'd moved in with a geology professor. Go figure. And now I can't stand to see a Sandra Bullock movie either.
I've gotten by doing pick up jobs around town and by drinking a lot. Haven't had a whole lot of use for women, but when the need got too great, Greta, the waitress down at the 'Step Right Inn' has been more than willing to oblige. Ain't love -- she's pretty much been willing to oblige anything on two feet with a willing dick. The drinking and smoking and too much time on my hands led me to getting pretty out of shape damn quick.
Before my marriage crashed and burned, I thought I was an okay looking guy. Six feet tall, stocky like my daddy and grandpa before me, but factory work had kept the weight off and the muscles on. Now a year after getting out of jail I was developing quite the beer gut, the trailer looked like a trash dump and my closest relationships were the cans I pulled out of the twelve pack cases of cheap beer I made sure I kept plenty of around the place. Most of my friends and family wrote me off as a lost cause, some blaming Sherry and others saying all I needed was a good, swift kick in the ass. As it turns out, two of my relatives had a different opinion and that's where my story really begins...
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It was one of those cool, dreary days we get here in Eastern Kentucky in late March -- with an on and off drizzle and the promise that real spring will never arrive. I was watching Regis & Kelli with a wicked hangover and only a couple of cans of cheap beer between me and likely death. I was wearing grungy sweats and debating whether I should shower or not before I made my way up the road to the convenience store to re-supply.
I heard a car pull up in front of my trailer and cut off. Next came the slamming of two car doors and I groaned as I realized I was about to have company. It couldn't be good news -- I hadn't had any of that in longer than I could remember.
My hangover kicked into overdrive as someone began pounding on my front door. Then a woman's strident yell added to my misery. "John! John Hill you wake up in there and open this door. Do it right now!"
Somehow I managed to get to my feet and stagger towards the door, wincing as I finally hollered back, "I'm coming, so stop your damn bellowing!" I opened the door, ready to chew someone's ass out for bothering me, but then felt my face go red as I said in a much meeker voice, "Oh...hey Aunt Wanda."
My late daddy's younger sister, Wanda stood there frowning at me. Over her shoulder grinning at me was her daughter, my cousin, Katie. My aunt gave me a disapproving once over and then poked me in the stomach and said, "You forgot your manners, John? Let us in!"
I retreated, allowing them access, a bit embarrassed and preparing to catch hell from my aunt over all the beer cans and bottles and empty pizza boxes lying around. I couldn't remember how long it had been since I'd ran the vacuum cleaner, but I figured I could probably grow corn in the dust and dirt piling up around me. I walked a little unevenly back to the safe haven of my busted spring couch and sprawled heavily down to wait out a bitching out from family.
Aunt Wanda and Cousin Katie marched in and stood in front of me, hands on hips as they scanned the room. Katie grinned down at me and said, "Hey, Cuz -- Ain't seen you around much lately. You okay?"
Aunt Wanda turned and scowled at her. "Hell no, he's not doing okay. Look at this shithole!" My aunt turned and frowned down at me. In a voice that seemed to be growing louder and more painful by the moment, she barked, "What the hell's wrong with you? Your momma would have a stroke if she saw how bad this place looks. Your dear daddy would drop over dead again if he saw how you've let yourself go!"
Katie covered her mouth with one hand, unable to muffle her amused giggle. I shook my head, immediately regretted it and reached out for the last beer in the house. Before I could crack it open, Wanda snapped, "Boy, you open that damn beer and I'll tear your damn head off!"