Darkness at the Edge of a Dream

As he hugs me and tried to explain what happened, he sounds like Kurt Russell's character Jack, in the movie "Big Trouble in Little China."

"Molly, I don't see what they're getting so excited about," he smiles. "I never drive any faster than I can see and I was only doing a hundred and..." It's the same thing over and over. I swear that I'm buying his next mustang for him. And I'm going to cure all of this. I'm going to get him one of those four cylinder ones they're planning on building. But Buck's won't have the benefit of the twin turbos.

Buck's face twisted as he looked at the man beside me, who had hidden his gun as Buck entered the room.

I watched as a host of emotions played themselves out across my husband's face. I was expecting rage, jealousy, anger ... possibly tears but nothing prepared me for his actual reaction. His face got very serious as he scanned the intruder's face. Then curiosity resulted in him searching the features yet again before ... he smiled, screamed, and ran across the room closing the distance between them. His arms flew wide and then I realized what he was screaming as he hugged the young man.

"Cap!" he screamed. "I don't believe it!"

* * * * * *

Buck

Life is a roller coaster. It's full of ups and downs. I guess there's a reason for that. It's hard to understand happiness if you've never been sad. Things are never as good as when you're used to them being bad.

My life in particular was a story in contrasts. It just seemed to be equal parts, joy, and pain. Today was another hill on the roller coaster of my life.

I left work early. My current project was stalled. I was ready to move to a full-sized prototype. The only thing I needed was the raw materials. I had 3-D CAD renderings and had used them to generate CNC programs, but I had no metal to work with. The finished product was supposed to be made from a lightweight Zinc alloy. I had ordered several billets of the material, weeks ago, yet none had arrived.

It seemed like a good reason to leave early, stop off and buy flowers for Molly and take her out to dinner. My wife Molly is amazing. She's not a raving beauty, but she's the queen of my castle. Molly is a school teacher. I knew her job was more important than I could ever describe. Molly shapes young minds into the people that they'll someday become. It's almost criminal that teachers are under-paid and under-valued the way they are.

If you saw Molly on the street, you probably wouldn't notice her. She looks just like every other forty year old woman out there. Her waist is thicker than it was when we got together. Her boobs seem to have surrendered to gravity and her butt doesn't stand out the way it used to. But like a lot of women, my Molly looks a lot better without her clothes. When she's dressed, Molly looks a little chunky. But it's because her bra and those terrible skirts she wears to work for comfort, just seem to lump everything together.

Molly's boobs are pretty big and they're all natural. So they tend to sag a bit and rest on her tummy. That adds to the general impression of her being chunky. Her thicker waist and big old butt also add to the impression of chunkiness. But any man who sees Molly naked will definitely want her. Fortunately, I'm the only one who sees her that way and I'm the only one who gets her.

Molly and I are just hitting our stride again after a big life-issue we had about fifteen years ago. There's that joy/pain thing again.

Molly and I got married very young. We were both eighteen at the time and like a lot of young couples; we were faced with heading off to college and inevitably breaking up slowly and painfully over the next few years. Molly had always told me that the two of us were meant to be together. So we decided to both go to the same college to ensure that it happened. Those first few months at college were filled with all kinds of adventures and all kinds of temptation.

After seeing the way some of the women looked at me, Molly had given me an ultimatum. I had to either marry her or lose her. Twenty two years later we're still together, so my choice is obvious.

Anyway two years into our marriage, we were extremely happy. Our plan was going great. It was really coming together. I love it when a plan comes together. It looked like we would both graduate on time, her in education and me in engineering. But along came that bump in the road. We discovered that Molly was pregnant. It threw a huge monkey wrench into our plans. After some hand wringing and a lot of tears, we made it through the near crisis albeit with some parental interaction and support.

For Molly altering the plan meant that she would graduate a year or two later than planned. For me it meant getting a paid internship and working my ass off for my last two years of college. But in the end we did the right thing and made it work for us.

When he was born, we argued over what to name our son. We finally settled on my first choice although I never told Molly where the name came from. We had named him Steve. Molly thought I had named him after a favorite uncle of mine. It worked because she also had an uncle named Steve. Actually I had named him after my favorite character from Marvel comics. I named him after Captain America. Steve Rogers quickly became the focus of our lives. He was equal parts best friend and biggest responsibility for me. Steve was probably the primary reason that I grew up and stopped behaving like a boy instead of a man. I simply couldn't imagine Steve having to do without something because I had done something stupid and lost my job.

We did all of the usual father and son things. I introduced him to comic books, movies, baseball, Mustangs, and all of the other good things in life. I remember swelling with pride as I began picking him up after school each day. Every day brought a small infusion of joy to my life as he looked at the cars parked in front of the school, spotted my Mustang and ran over to me.

But that joy turned to horror about three weeks into the school year as I waited for him to come out to the car. Steve was always one of the first to emerge. So when all, or most of the kids were gone and he hadn't come out my concern grew. I went inside the school and looked into his classroom.

I saw his teacher Mrs. Gonzales and waved at her as she sat at her desk grading papers. I spoke to her and found out that Steve had been called to the office about a half hour before school let out. His uncle had picked him up to take him to the dentist. His mother had called earlier in the day to let the school know that it was going to happen. They had gotten a copy of the uncle's driver's license and he was the man that Molly had assured them would be picking him up.

I quickly called Molly and she had no idea of what they were talking about. Molly left school and rushed over to Steve's school. We called the police. During the time that Molly was supposed to have called them she'd been in a meeting with her school's principal and the guidance counselor who handled her students. Both men verified that Molly hadn't left the room or made any phone calls.

The police launched an investigation, they checked out everyone and everything. They looked at the school's security tapes but fifteen years ago technology wasn't what it is today. The grainy black and white video yielded very little information. The FBI was called in and discovered very little additional information. They did find out that the woman who made the call hadn't called from Molly's office or even her school. The call had come from a pay phone in another area of the city. Our son was gone and both Molly and especially I, sank into a depression.

We both blamed ourselves. We both felt as if we had failed both Cap, as I called him for short, and each other. We went through all of the stages of depression both together and individually. We grasped at straws and turned on each other, almost ruining our marriage. I wondered how the hell the kidnapper knew Molly's name. I think that for a while, deep down inside I blamed her.

For the next five years things weren't the same between Molly and me. We argued about everything and nothing. We didn't trust each other. We forgave each other over and over, only to start the entire cycle all over again. Each of us felt the loss of our son in different ways. And I think that was a part of our problem. Molly, far earlier than I did, perhaps through prayer or whatever; came to terms with it. I couldn't. And that, more than anything else, caused the rift between us to widen.

Molly believed that what happened; had just happened. She believed that the best way for us to move on would be to simply have another child. Several other people believed the same thing. I abjectly refused to even consider it. I couldn't face the fact that our son was gone. I also couldn't believe that Molly could so cavalierly relegate him to whatever fate had in store. It made me hate her just a little.

She on the other hand blamed me for our failure to move on. She was also angered by my reluctance to have sex with her. But I knew that she only wanted sex so she could get pregnant again and try to sweep Steven under the rug. She had already cleaned out his room and removed all of the pictures of him from the house.

On the verge of divorce, we were forced into counseling. So many things came out in the counseling and I believe that those sessions saved our marriage. We had been in love for so long by then, that it seemed incomprehensible that we had never learned to communicate our feelings to each other. The tragedy had brought that out. It was not a matter of a few weeks and suddenly a magic bullet appeared and we forgave each other. We were in counseling for more than four years. We came out of it in bad shape, but infinitely better than we'd been going in.

The one thing that we agreed on was that we loved each other too much to divorce over something that neither of us was responsible for. It had been whoever kidnapped our son that we should focus our anger on, not each other. Over the last few years, we had finally gotten to the point where we could put it behind us. Only a few weeks ago, Molly had brought up the fact that if we did want to have another child, she was reaching the point where it might not be advisable. In other words I needed to shit or get off of the pot.

That had started another argument. "Or else what?" I had screamed angrily. I really misunderstood her.

"Or else we won't have children," she said calmly. She looked at me wondering where my anger had come from. "You know we could always wait a few more years and adopt," she added.

I had taken her in my arms and kissed her with a passion that I hadn't felt in years. "I love you Moll," I said. "Let's make a baby."

She had been amazed by my quick turnaround and wanted an explanation. I told her that I had thought when she said we need to do it now or else, that she'd meant that she would divorce me and have a child with someone else, or that she would just have a child without me, while still expecting to stay married to me.

She laughed for about an hour. She was constantly pointing her finger at me and telling me how stupid I was for even thinking that she would ever divorce me.

Today was the start of that. Molly and I had, after the counseling sessions had ended, resumed having sex. But it wasn't as frenzied, or as frequent as before. It was as if something was missing. It was more like we had sex to fulfill a need that we both shared and to keep our marriage together. But not because of any great desire. And whenever we had sex, as strange as it seemed, I always wore a condom. I guess I was still trying to control whether or not we got pregnant again.

But today, I came home with the clear intention of fucking the shit out of Molly. I intended to shoot so much sperm into her womb that it would come out of her mouth and nose whenever she coughed. I was going to fuck her the way I did in the old days and have her screaming for more.

After leaving the flower shop I had gotten onto the freeway. That day in particular, I wanted everything to go well so I drove an almost pedestrian 85 mph on the freeway. I passed several hidden state troopers. The bastards were parked behind signs and in low lying ditches beside the roads. None of those assholes tagged me today. I decided to burn a dozen donuts as a sacrifice to the traffic gods for my good fortune.

As I pulled into my driveway, I had a sense of excitement. As I opened the door it grew. I saw Molly sitting in a chair with a young man standing over her. There was something familiar about him. Then as I saw his features, it was instantly clear. He had Molly's nose and lips but my hair color and skin tone. Even fifteen years couldn't change that expression on his face. And every Dad could recognize his own child, of so I thought.

I ran across the room as fast as I could and hugged him tighter than I have ever hugged any human being in my life.

"Cap!" I screamed again and again. He hugged me back and that sealed it. There was no doubt in my mind that my son had come home. My mind, my body, and my soul all agreed that my nightmare was finally over. Unfortunately they were all full of shit. My nightmare had just begun. The dream I expected to find with the return of my son was tainted. There was darkness on the edge of my dream and it would change my life forever.

"What!" screamed Molly. "It's not possible!"

* * * * * *

Steve

It took me a while to realize what I had done. On the surface, I knew that I had made sure that I no longer had to worry about Reverend Cletus ever hurting me again. I knew that I was no longer a slave/whipping boy. I knew that I could now for the first time in my life, do anything I wanted to do. I just didn't know what I wanted to do.

Another thing that was resonating through me was the fact that I had with one thoughtless act destroyed the code that I lived by. I was taught from a very early age that I was one of the good guys. I was Cap after all. And the good guys don't kill. I had taken a life. Did that meant that I could no longer be one of the good guys?

As I looked around the church, I put that thought on a shelf for the time being. I thought about my situation and realized that I had several things going in my favor. The first was the fact that Cletus' own actions had helped me. He followed the same pattern in almost every place we'd gone over the past fifteen years. We would move into a small town, Cletus would find them on the internet. He looked for small towns that had a church but needed a preacher. He would take over the church and steal every nickel he could come up with. And we'd continue to do it until he either got caught doing something stupid, or someone caught him and found out that he actually wasn't any kind of preacher.

Cletus did have a certificate of ordination. But it came from a college on the internet that would ordain anyone with fifty bucks and a mail order address. Cletus had been caught a couple of times screwing the wrong man's wife. He always claimed that those small town women came on to him. He also claimed that he was doing the Lord's work exposing whores for what they were.

I also remember what Cletus had told me once during one of his drunken episodes. Cletus talked a lot when he was drunk. That was how I found out how I came to be with Cletus instead of my family. And thinking back on that, I knew where I needed to go and exactly what I had to do.

Maybe I couldn't be one of the good guys anymore. I remember from the comic books that sometimes you can't be a hero. Heroes make lemonade when life hands them lemons. But sometimes life doesn't even give out lemons. Sometimes life just gives you pure shit. There are some people who life just shits on. I've never heard of shit-on-ade. So instead of being Cap, maybe I had to be one of those anti-heroes. Maybe I have to become the Punisher. Maybe it's my lot in life to get back at the people who gave me shit. Perhaps my life was always destined to be short and lonely.

One thing I had going for me was the fact that Cletus never let anyone in any town we went to know that I was with him. In fact we never let anyone know that I existed. So after living in this town for nearly three years, which was a record for us, no one in town knew anything about me.

That meant a couple of really good things for me and bad things for Cletus. But since Cletus didn't really care or really matter anymore, all that mattered was what was good for me. The first good thing was that Cletus only had people in the church twice a week. Wednesday evening for choir practice and Sunday morning and afternoon for services. That gave me three days and three nights to travel before anyone discovered Cletus.

I decided to wait until dark and bury him behind the church. Maybe that way the people in town would think he had just run off. In the meantime I turned on all of the lights and closed the doors. I cleaned up the church as I always did. The only difference was that as I mopped and scrubbed, I was mostly more intent on cleaning up blood and bits of Cletus than I was on cleaning up the dust and debris of the church service.

I searched through everything we had in the church. I found a lot of things that would be useful to me. I found a lot of cash. The keys to Cletus' car and a gun that I never knew he had. There were no bullets in the gun, but it would be useful for scaring the shit out of people.

In another room I found some things that made no sense at all. I found the belongings of lots and lots of people. I found pictures clothing and ID cards and licenses from men and women but also from boys and girls. I looked through them and found a driver's license from a man about my age with hair the same color as mine. His name was Buford Barnes. It was an omen.

I remembered him from a couple of years back. I had dug his grave. He had been killed in a traffic accident out on the highway. Cletus had volunteered to take care of everything for the family. Of course they had given him, or the church, a substantial gift afterwards. I pocketed the license. I ate as much of the food as I could stuff down myself and loaded a lot of dry, easy to eat things like chips, cookies, crackers, canned tuna, and juice into the car.

We had planned on planting several trees in the area behind the church. I planted a tree that night before I drove off. But I planted an asshole with it.

Cletus had taught me to drive when I was fourteen. I stayed under the speed limit and listened to news stations as I headed north. I never heard anything about a missing preacher or a dead one. I was stopped a couple of times, but neither time resulted in tickets. It was mostly just officers checking on a young driver on the interstate alone. I was polite, showed my stolen driver's license, and shared the story of my first solo trip up north to visit my grandma. They ate it up.

"Yes sir, officer," I'd say. "My name is Buford. But everyone calls me Bucky."

There were so many things that I could do, that I had never been able to do before. I went to McDonalds. After eating there for my first time, I couldn't figure it why anyone would ever want to eat anything else. After that I only stopped for gas and more McDonalds as I made my way north.

By the time I got to Michigan, I was buzzing with excitement. I was also buzzing with anger. I guess I never gave any thought to how I would handle the task ahead of me. I just knew that it had to be done. My head was full of comic book concepts like righting the wrong done me, rescuing the innocent and dying a righteous death afterwards.

* * * * * *

Molly

"It's not possible," I screamed. "It can't be him. He's lying. I..."