Pre- Chapter Note - This is a prologue chapter. The full story begins in Chapter 02. So, this and Chapter 01 are the setup for the story.

MADDY
I realised he might not immediately get the point, so asked again, before he could answer.

“Do you want to get used to it, Mr Strachan?”

He actually laughed, and I could see his grin in my imagination, shining out of his helmet,

Stop it! Bad mind!

Neil’s next words set me laughing with him.

“What is it you say, Maddy? The answer is ‘Oh my yes!’, of course”

Chapter 4: In The Shadows

After another exhausting night, I stirred awake to find my mother enveloped in an exuberance I had never witnessed before. Her eyes sparkled with an infectious joy, a radiant light that seemed to illuminate the entire room.

“Good morning, Mom,” I murmured, still taken aback by the sheer brightness of her demeanor.

“Oh, my darling, good morning to you!” she replied, her voice a melody of happiness that danced in the air.

NEIL
I pointed at Maddy, who smiled as she accepted her dish.

The waitress indicated a dessert menu, I thanked her, and she was off to another table.

“No cuddle, then, that time?”

She knocked back most of her second glass---where had the first one gone?---then looked up at me once more.

MADDY
I settled back against him as we continued down the lane to our digs, his buttock flexing against my hand, his own hand on my hip, and I was feeling almost blissed out. Sod what they had said at school, sod what had been written in the Register when I was born, this, the here and now, or there and then: it was right, fitting, proper. And I had the right dress with me, and shoes to go with it, because my own paranoia had been so worried there’d be a dress code for the dining room.

NEIL
I could feel my face burning as she asked me, but she was sitting in such a relaxed way I could do nothing else but try my best. I had tried not to stare at her breasts, but I knew they were there, and my body was telling me exactly how well it knew the same thing, and I had no idea what I should do about that. Her question, though, wasn’t ‘what did I want?’ but rather ‘what might we want?’, which was a very different thing altogether. She was being so incredibly open about it; all I could do was try and match that, even though I could never do so.

Breathe, Neil.

My head hurt, my eyes felt that they were hanging out in the air and my mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. I blinked several times, the image before me was still blurry and I realized I had no idea where I had ended up last night. I was in someone elses bed, I don’t think it is mine since it seemed much softer. It also smelled better, almost like flowers.

NEIL
I couldn’t really sleep that night, my nerves all over the place. What if I got another stiffy while talking to her, for example? I woke again at about four, and realised I wasn’t going to drop off again. I rolled over in bed to light up my computer, and yes, there was a room in Durham. Before I could chicken out, I booked it. I doubted that the B and B would complain, as they would keep my money for the extra nights, and kept the space to fit in another guest.

Pete was the school gay boy. Well, actually he wasn’t. Gay that is, in the sense of happy etc. He was probably the gloomiest student in our high school. He made no secret of his liking boys though. It was so blatant that it had become a trope. We didn’t talk about gay people, we talked about pete people. We soon learned to live with his ooogling. Pete was definitely not a menace to anyone. He was the most non-aggressive person I have ever met. Besides, he was such a puny kid that the threat factor was in negative numbers.

MADDY
“Riiiiiight… Now, we both prefer monochrome, but you mentioned colour. Shall we get the pudding served, so we can clear the table to look at your portfolio?”

He hoovered up the ice cream I offered, so it wasn’t long before the table was cleared, dishes left soaking for the moment. That was what I normally did, but he didn’t need to know any of that. His portfolio was a large folder of paper prints, and one set caught my eye, as while it looked monochrome, there was a tiny dot of colour down near the bottom edge. I stood on the brake several times, but we got there, and in summary, the bite-sized chunks made perfect sense. I could feel the commas and full stops reasserting themselves in his speech.

“Are you ready for this?” I asked Linda.

“I’m ready,” were the last words she ever said with her body’s mouth.

“Ready,” some of Linda’s family members said.

Linda’s torso was perched on top of a small table with a pillow on it, with her rear legs on the floor and her front legs stuck to the sides of her head in preparation for the pairing.

An aging queen returns to her old stomping ground for a final hurrah and is joined by someone starting their journey.

Chapter 4: Running with Sis

NEIL
My school days were long past, but they still rode me hard, revisiting when I least expected them, or perhaps when I was least able to handle the memories. I was deep in a sump well below Castleton when something triggered my memories and switched on the classic fear/flight responses. It took me several minutes to put them back behind their wall, as I lay in the cold and dark, seeing and hearing the other boys as they threw whatever they had learned from their parents at me. Thank god I was always so much bigger than they were at all ages. Sticks and stones would never break my bones, but what I understood of their words still bloody hurt.

It was sheer bedlam in the casino, a group had booked the whole casino and hotel for seven days straight, we are talking major money here. No info on the group was shared down at our level yet, but it was rumored they were major high rollers. The problem was quite a few employees were on vacation, something the casino allowed, in fact encouraged, right after the Christmas holiday. So the powers to be were down interviewing everybody to see who could work extra shifts to fill in the gaps.

This story is a standalone entry separate from the previous What It Takes to Survive story. Feel free to start here!

Bristol, England—1628

Mother had been quiet the last few days. I knew something was wrong; how could I not? My mother, who was always laughing, hadn't shown so much as the tiniest smile in days.

I hadn't ever seen her this distant for as long as I could remember.