girl had lost her mind. There was no other way to put it. The girl had gone insane. She had accepted the school’s offer to skip a grade next year, which meant she would be a senior and graduate a year early— this despite the Duke’s very loud and vocal protests. What the girl didn’t understand was the Duke protested out of love. The girl was going to fail, and all he was trying to do was save her the embarrassment. But being the stupid whore that she was, the girl refused to listen.
Still, the Duke was not one to be underestimated, and he was starting to form plans of his own. What it came down to was this: if he could get both Ruthie and the girl out of the picture, then he could raise the boy right. The Duke could teach the boy, just like his daddy had taught him.
It was near the end of summer when the FBI finally responded.
The Duke was the only one allowed to check the mail. He had to make sure the girl wasn’t up to something. He would go through and open her mail. If he found anything other than a notice of library fines, it went straight into the trash. He had to protect his family, and the Duke worried constantly that the girl was plotting against him. He didn’t think she was above whoring herself out in exchange for favors, and there was always the very real possibility that she might snare some gullible loser to do her bidding.
The Duke found it highly suspicious that all the girl ever received in the mail were notice of library fines and a comic book subscription.
The Duke set aside the notices (he would show them to Ruthie first), and promptly threw the comic book away. The girl’s brain was rotten enough as it was, she didn’t need comic books to finish the job.
The letter from the FBI was underneath the comic book and he had almost thrown it out in the trash.
The house was empty. Thank the Lord. Ruthie had taken the girl to the store again. Ruthie was always at the store. The boy was out visiting friends again. He wished the boy was here, though, to share in his moment of triumph. The Duke tore open the letter and read:
“Thank you for your recent letter. First let me state there is no Karl Marx currently teaching at Washington State University. The room number you provided matched a course in World History offered during both the Fall and Spring semesters. The course has been offered for the last ten years, and the instructor, Roberta Hare, is a tenured professor with the University. Further investigation showed that the students were covering a unit on the Russian Revolution at the time of your letter. As no criminal activities were found at this time, we are closing this investigation. Feel free to contact me or your local FBI office with any questions or concerns you may have.
Sincerely,
Robert J. Santiago
Special Agent II...”
The rest was just contact information, which only enraged the Duke further. He couldn’t believe it. The Commies had clearly intercepted his letter and were now trying to blow smoke up his ass hoping he would drop it. Well he wouldn’t drop it! NO SIR! They had done a piss poor job trying to fool him. His letter was addressed to J. Edgar Hoover; only a response from J. Edgar Hoover himself would do. The Duke thought about contacting the local FBI office. Let’s see what happens if he called their bluff, the Duke laughed. But, what if his phone were tapped? What if he were being watched? They had stolen his letter; what else could they do? Though he would never admit it, for a brief moment the Duke was very much afraid. But he had to do something; that something had to be a show of force. The Duke needed to show those Commie bastards he was not afraid.
In order to clear his head, the Duke went outside. The night was cool but the moon shown bright. God was with him. The Duke reached under the deck and his fingers tapped his salvation.
He sighed. When he had checked the bottle the night before it had been filled to the top. Now the bottle was half empty. The girl must have found his hiding place and had been siphoning off his vodka. With a sleeve the Duke wiped the top of the bottle clean. Who knows where the girl’s mouth had been or whose cock she had sucked. Getting some weird disease was the last thing he needed. He had almost drained the bottle when the idea hit him. It was a simple but crafty idea to get back at those fucking Commies.
The following Tuesday morning the Duke called the police. During the night some teens broke into the university. The teens had caught the Duke by surprise locked him in the supply closet and took his keys. He heard laughing and several loud thumps. Trapped as he was, he was unable to summon help. Sometime early in the morning, the Duke made his escape by breaking the small window in the supply closet. He found his spare keys and let himself back into the building. The Duke rushed to confront the teens, but they had fled the scene.
Unfortunately, the damage had already been done, and Professor Hare’s classroom was complete destroyed.
The Duke, humble and respectful to the officers on the scene, confessed that he must have forgotten to lock the entry level doors behind him at the start of his shift. He further confessed that he was having trouble at home, especially with his stepdaughter. The teens might have been some of his stepdaughter’s many boyfriends who were acting on her behalf as revenge for some perceived slight. The Duke couldn’t say for certain, though, as he didn’t recognize any of the teens in question.
When the incident made the local paper, the Duke had to laugh. He had them fooled. He had fooled them; he had fooled them all...
Article IX: “Once in a lifetime...”
Marion had been fooling herself.
She foolishly believed that everything would work itself out in the end. That foolish belief had made her life a living hell.
It was the product of reading too many comic books when she was a kid. She had been taught that while the good guys may suffer, the bad guys would ultimately pay the price. Her habit started when she was bored one day, and for want of something to do, she stole some of her brother’s Spider-Man comics. Stole isn’t quite the right word, though. She, being an immature ten year old, went into her younger brother’s room, punched him in the arm and took his comic books.
Her brother went bawling to her mom, but their mom was too drunk to care.
It was on that rainy day that she fell in love with Spider-Man. She still remembered the story. Spider-Man was trapped under tons of rubble. He had given up and accepted his fate. Suddenly he remembers that his aunt is dying of some mysterious illness and only he can save her. Somehow he finds the strength he needs, and triumphantly lifts the rubble off of him. Then he fought a bunch of bad guys to retrieve a serum that would save his aunt’s life. Spider-Man gets the serum, and delivers it to the doctor just in the nick of time.
The first thing she did after reading the story was to apologize to her brother. Then she asked James if he had any more comics. They spent the rest of the afternoon reading comics together.
So it was that comic books became her religion. It was there, in those yellowed pages, that she learned the difference between right and wrong. That struggle was inevitable, but could be overcome. That evil, and evil people, fool themselves into thinking they can win. Those lessons are what ultimately saved her from ending up like her mom.
When her mother was sober, or at least sober enough to stand, Marion would beg her mom to take her to garage sales for she had learned that that is where her holy relics could be found. Marion would go to the garage sale, pretend to look around, and then say she wanted to look at the comic books to see if she could find any good comics for her brother. It was a lie, of course, but back then people looked at you funny if you were a girl reading comics.
The garage sale ruse lasted about a year, even though James had moved on from comic books to G.I. Joe.
Her mom surprised her one day by getting her a year-long comic book subscription to The Amazing Spider-Man for her eleventh birthday. It was one of the few times her mom actually seemed to care.
Now, Marion was the villain in her own story. She knew things would probably end badly. It was just a waiting game to see what ironic twist would come and bite her in the ass.
After her encounter with Val at the grocery story, Marion thought about calling in sick to work. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving. She was broke, of course, which seemed to be one of the perks of working at this crummy job. This whole getting paid once a month thing was ridiculous. What stopped her from staying home was the promise of a potluck— a potluck where she could steal some food that would keep her afloat the next couple of days until Thanksgiving dinner with Sam. She figured that Sam and Allie would probably load her up with Thanksgiving leftovers, and she would be set for the rest of the week after that.
The potluck was the practical reason not to call in sick. On a more personal level, she didn’t want the bad guys to win. A show of force was needed. She needed to show Val that she was not afraid. And, when it was firmly set in Marion’s mind to go work today, she found she couldn’t stop shaking.
Her car got stuck in the snow and she was fifteen minutes late for work. Her troubles were just beginning. She slipped on the ice and nearly dropped the salmon spread on the sidewalk. She saved the salmon spread, but received a scrapped knee for the effort.
On her way in, she saw Gail and waved. Gail in kind gave her a dirty look. Oh, it’s going to be one of these days, Marion though as she navigated her way to her