Kaleidoscope Eyes Pt. 01

Kaleidoscope Eyes, Pt.1 by Flavian

Copyright © 2020 by Flavian

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Any references to sex by characters in this story involve ONLY persons 18 years of age or older. Warning! There is reference to Non-Consensual sex—if that is not to your liking, then feel free to pass on this story; I will understand. Also, there are some mild racial references that are not necessarily PC, but, unfortunately, reflect attitudes that still exist in rural Virginia.

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to blackrandl1958 and her crew, including Qhml1, Stev2244, DFWBeast, Laptopwriter, HDK, Girlinthemoon, and SleeperyJim, for giving my initial draft of this story a thorough review—and a very-well-deserved slicing-and-dicing. Thanks to all of you; but especially Randi for inviting me along on this adventure and for being honest with me. She really insists on trying to make me a better writer and I appreciate it. ~ Flavian.

****

"License, registration, and proof of insurance, please."

The Deputy said this almost nonchalantly, with a sound of boredom that I am sure he felt at having me pulled over for a routine traffic stop; just one more miscreant in a—no doubt—steady stream on any given day. He was probably flipping a mental coin as to whether I was going to be one of those who argued with him at the indignity of being pulled over; especially since my rental was sporting out-of-state plates: Pennsylvania, in this case.

Well, I HAD been doing a bit over the speed limit, employing my usual "Interstate-plus-seven; surface-plus-four" rule when I had set my cruise control. I guess four miles over the speed limit of fifty-five in this stretch of U.S. Highway 58 in Virginia, a divided four-lane of pretty good quality, was just a bit too much to tolerate here in Greensville County (I had seen the sign in the median when I had entered the county a few miles back).

Anyway, he had been waiting for me, or someone like me, to be speeding along in his part of the road; in a median cross-over just behind a big enough mound to hide him from long-range view on this hilly section of the east-west highway. When he had pulled out and "lit me up," I had done my civic duty by giving the appropriate turn signal, but I had continued for another few hundred meters and turned into the parking lot of a convenience store before actually stopping. I wanted to show him that I was safety-conscious by getting us both out of the almost continuous flow of cars, pickup trucks, and semis on the highway.

After taking my documentation, the young Deputy spent the next few minutes filling out the paperwork on his portable lap-desk. He returned to my driver's side window and handed me back my license, corporate insurance card that my company uses with rentals, and my rental agreement for the Toyota RAV-4 that I was driving.

The Deputy then began reciting an obviously well-learned litany about how Virginia has a Commonwealth-wide web site ("The URL is at the bottom of your summons, Sir") where the "alleged" violator can see the court date (hopefully matching what the Deputy had scrawled on the citation) and elect to attend or waive court, but paying the court fees, along with the fine, in either case. One could even use a credit card.

"Mister Holloway," warned the Deputy, "please drive at or below the posted speed limits from now on; it's for everyone's safety," he concluded perfunctorily. He looked a little more closely at my face for the first time. I was partially shielded from clear view by the shadow caused by the SUV's roof; coupled with the fact that I had on sunglasses.

"Sir, have we met before?" he asked, but without any really discernable emotion that might indicate his concern, one way or another. Must be bored, I thought.

I looked at the thin metal name plate that he wore across the left pocket flap of his uniform shirt, and my jaw tightened.

Samuel D. Chaves.

"Well, Deputy Shah-Vez," I said, deliberately mispronouncing his name, "this is not my usual neck of the woods. But, the world is a small place..." and I let the sentence trail off. I also kept my sunglasses on, deliberately, now that I had seen his name.

"It's pronounced CHAY-Viss, Sir," he said with mild annoyance. "You be safe now; you heah?" With that, he tapped once lightly on my roof, turned, and returned to his Dodge Charger Deputy Sherriff's Interceptor. I could see the livery of the Greensville County Sherriff's Department on the side as he pulled out, paused for a break in the traffic, and turned to head back to his speed trap nest.

I had not wanted to voice any recognition to him. But, in my mind, I was saying, "You bet your country ass I remember you, Sam Chaves, and five years has not cooled my anger one little bit, either!'

I simply needed to let it pass. I was still scheduled to meet with my mother, who was also my boss, for dinner in about three hours, and I needed to be practical. I could not get into a personal beef, and with a law enforcement official, at that, and expect not to be detained in this part of Virginia, a place where I'd had no interest in returning since...

Well, anyway; no sense getting into a dust-up after five years. Right then, I just wanted to take a leak, suck down some Diet Coke, maybe have some munchies, and hit the road again, maintaining the speed limit, of course, for the next two hours, as I envisioned my last leg of the drive into Norfolk.

****

As it turned out, I would have had to go inside the 58-2-Go Mart, anyway. The sign on the pump said that I needed to see the clerk to get a receipt for gas, and I definitely needed that receipt for my expense report following my site visit to Fort Campbell, Kentucky. So, after topping off my tank, I pulled up to park next to a big black Cadillac Escalade.

The inside of the store was not quite empty. Along with the store clerk, who looked—unsurprisingly, these days—either Indian-American or of some sort of genetic extraction from somewhere else in South Asia; there were three others inside.

The most prominent of the three was the huge, six-foot-four, at least, over-220-pounds, stern-but-bored-looking guy with the buzz cut and an exposed-carry Sig Sauer P320 (based on my initial quick examination). The other two, female, appeared to be his charges. I mean, he had 'bodyguard' or 'some other type of guard' written all over him.

The younger of the two females could not have been more than four or five years old. She was also as cute as could be: red-brown hair, slender, dressed for summer and with the most prominent dimples one could imagine. Yeah, I could see her daddy keeping a shotgun by the door when she hit puberty.

The question concerning the status of the older woman was answered when the young girl called her 'Grandma' as they were speaking.

'Wow! This was a pretty hot-looking grandma,' I thought to myself upon first examination. She appeared to be dressed nicely in a conservative knit top and comfortably snug, but not tight, jeans. Here hair was still brownish, but showed individual silver strands in and among her tresses.

This woman, however, even though very attractive, appeared to be worn down by life. I could see that she was slender and, even though she was probably in her mid-to-late forties; her eyes appeared to be those of a woman in her seventies.

She also appeared to be totally dedicated to her granddaughter and the young girl's needs and moods. There also seemed to be a vibe of discomfort, almost a tangible trace of fear, emanating from the woman toward the big guy with them.

"Can I have the push-pop, too, Grandma?" the little one pleaded. She was turning quickly and dropped one item of candy that rolled right up against my left foot. I bent to get it for her, stayed knelt and smiled as she approached.

Whatever her grandmother said in response, I completely missed. I was startled into speechlessness as I looked into the little girl's smiling face, now showing visible doubt about interacting with a stranger.

Those eyes!

This beautiful little girl had what geneticists called central heterochromia. Most of the time, heterochromia is simply the result of genetics and caused by a benign mutation affecting the way pigment develops in the irises.

There are variations in how this shows up. One could be 'complete', where the two irises are different colors, or 'segmental', where a patch of a different color appears in one iris. But this little girl's irises were 'central', where the irises matched, but each had a ring of color, different from the irises around the pupils.

She had dark, dark brown eyes with golden flecks, but each eye had a purple ring to it, with slightly less than an eighth of an inch of purple around the pupils, but inside the outer layer of the gold-flecked dark brown irises.

I took pity on her hesitancy to speak to me and simply held out the treat to her and said softly, "Here ya go, Sweetheart."

She snatched the colorfully-wrapped sucker from me; and, with a soft, "Thank you," she ran back to her grandmother; who looked at me—or through me, but not really noticing me—and smiled with her lips, but not the rest of her face.

'Grandma' hastily paid for the items they were purchasing and, said, "Let's go now, Mara."

With the big guy silently accompanying them, they headed out the door and got into the Escalade; but not before the guy turned to give me a brief, intimidating 'Terminator' stare from behind his Oakleys. He then turned and went out to join his charges.

I watched them drive off and turned to find the restroom. I was still a bit stunned, but I really needed to take a leak. Thankfully, the men's room was not in use.

After voiding my bladder, I breathed a sigh of relief as I zipped up and turned to the sink. I washed my hands and then them using the loud blower. My thoughts overwhelmed me and I was lost for a moment.

I finally removed the sunglasses I had been wearing even before I had entered the store and looked at myself in the mirror. I sighed with my newly-gained insight about how my life had just taken a very unexpected, but dramatic, turn.

I had a momentary flash of something my friend, Sandy, had said to me once, in a rare moment of fatalism for guy who usually had such a positive outlook.

"Yeah; life's a bitch; and her 'stripper name' is 'Karma'."

I noted that my six-foot-even height was balanced by my still-toned and lightly-muscled 195-pound body. I was still in great shape, but not bulked up. My light-brown-almost-dirty-blonde hair was a bit longer, since I had begun to let it grow out from the buzz cut in which I had kept it styled until I had separated from the Army four months earlier. I was also trying out the mustache-and-goatee combination that would not have been allowed by my Army task-masters up until my discharge. Those visuals were not what had my attention at that moment.

Both my eyes were grey, but each had a thin ring of brown around the pupils, along with gold flecks in the grey areas—central heterochromia—just like that little girl's.

****

I grabbed a Milky Way candy bar, as well as the Diet Coke (hey, some sort of caloric offset there, I guessed), and I approached the counter. One other person had come in to pay for gas with cash. He was a local farmer, I guess, from the way he was dressed and from the older Ford F-150 parked right out front.

"Thank you so-o much, Sir! I see you next time; yes, no?" sing-songed the now-obviously-Indian-American clerk, whose nametag read, "Jelani."

The man, in his fifties, I would guess, simply shrugged and said, "Yeah, sure, Lonnie." Stuffing his change in his jean pocket, he headed out the door.

I heard the clerk mumble under his breath in very clear, Southern-accented English, "Yeah, sure, ya old redneck." He looked up at me and started to ask me in that stereotypical sing-song of Indian-accented English if I had found everything. I just smiled and set my two items on the counter as I reached for my wallet and pulled out my debit card.

"How hard is it to put up the 'poor immigrant' front for these yokels?" I asked him with a knowing grin, which he returned with a wink as I looked briefly out the glassed front of the store and saw, across the highway, the slightly weathered sign... welcoming travelers to the town of... Simonton.

****

Seven Years Earlier

I had had what some might have called a privileged childhood, growing up as an only child just north of Virginia's 'Colonial Capital of Williamsburg,' in James City County.

My father, Donald Holloway, a businessman and a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, came from old Virginia money, having been in Virginia since the 1740s. His family had originally been very successful Tory merchants in Norfolk, but fled when the Whigs had taken over the town and port. The Holloways had taken what they could of their wealth with them and fled inland, just before the town was bombarded by the British Royal Navy on January 1, 1776, resulting in multiple fires that burned for three days, destroying most of the town. The Holloway patriarch at the time suddenly became a fierce and very vocal advocate for the Patriot cause. The family obediently followed his lead. This decision had also kept them from being strung up as Tory sympathizers. You have to be pragmatic sometimes when you are caught up in a war, and when your survival and that of your family is at stake.

My mother, Althea Holloway (nee Althea Adelaide Ward), also came from old Virginia money; arriving from England in 1809. They had made their money in shipping and international commerce, primarily between the Virginia ports and the Caribbean colonies of the European powers. Mom's family, the Wards, like the Holloways before them, had also needed to flee Norfolk much later, shortly after the 1862 naval between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack). After the hulking nautical monsters had both withdrawn following the action, the Confederate forces had realized the futility of remaining in Norfolk, and had withdrawn from the town; scuttling any shipping that was not seaworthy enough to get underway, and burning the shipyard facilities to the ground; all to keep them out of the hands of the 'Godless Yankees'.

Needless to say, the Holloways and the Wards played all the necessary games, and along with their mutual fortunes, they survived and thrived—abundantly so—into the modern era.

My dad had always been a rogue and a philanderer. As a result of his dalliances, my mother had decided to move out of the house when I was twelve, but not to divorce my father ("that just isn't done in our family"). They mutually decided to remain married on paper, but Mom just could not physically stand to be around Dad. I never found out if she ever dated, but there was no real evidence of her doing so.

I chose to live with my dad so that I could stay in the area with all my friends.

My mom's decision to separate took place just as I entered middle school. Dad made sure that she had access to roughly half of his visible wealth (I am sure today that a large portion of his actual wealth was hidden). He retained all of the interests in the family's commercial maritime transportation and logistics interests in Portsmouth and Norfolk in his agreement with her. Then, surprisingly, he had actually hired Mom to run the business operations for him when he got into politics, and then won his first term in the Virginia House of Delegates.

Mom had taken over and expanded Dad's interests, as well as expanding into the lucrative Defense contracting activities with Navy Sea Systems Command in Norfolk, at Langley Air Force Base, outside of Hampton, and at Fort Eustis, in Newport News. The latter two were on 'The Peninsula', north of the James River, which her Norfolk offices overlooked from the southern side of the Chesapeake Bay.

With all that breeding, you would think that I had it made, but I still had to struggle a bit, because it seemed that everybody that I went to school with also came from a family with some sort of heritage and 'comfortable' means.

I wasn't a popular football hero in high school, but I ran cross-country, and our team did pretty well in regional and state competitions. In addition to my school lessons, at which I performed well, but not at the stellar—UVA acceptability—level, I learned from my dad the fine art of being a very convincing and successful seducer. I must have dated and bedded at least twenty-three of the finest girls in my school, and almost all of them from the 'crustiest' of the 'upper crust' families in the area, by the time I had graduated high school.

When I got to Virginia Tech, I had already developed a 'Traveling Alias' as part of my road persona. I was known as 'Rusty Collins' when I was on the prowl and/or barhopping (yeah, I also had an almost-foolproof fake ID). That alias had saved me at least twice during my very first semester, when I'd had to hide out from ladies who were seeking me out, believing that I had committed myself to a 'happily-ever-after' relationship, or some such nonsense.

I could not hide from the Dean of Students. I failed miserably as a freshman that first term at Tech. So, after several shots of tequila one Friday afternoon, a buddy of mine and I moseyed into downtown Blacksburg and I walked into the Army Recruiting Office. I used my interest in all things mechanical, along with my convincing charm, on the female recruiter to get out of being a driver or gunner on an Abrams Tank, and I signed a contract committing me to work in Aviation Maintenance as a Fifteen-Romeo for three years.

After reporting to the MEPS station at Fort Lee, Virginia, near Petersburg, I then spent nine weeks of Basic Training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. That was followed by sixteen weeks of Advanced Individual Training, or AIT, at Fort Eustis, right near home, learning to repair the Army's AH-64D Apache Attack Helicopter.

After that, it was off to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade; which, as it turned out, was within months of deploying to that oasis spot of the world—Afghanistan. I barely had time to join the unit, get the rhythm of daily life there, and fill an unexpected opening in Air Assault School before I was on my way to war.

****

Afghanistan

I had just come off the flightline as the last lift of Apaches had departed on a combat run north of Shindand Airbase. Shindand is located in southwest Afghanistan less than 75 miles from the Iranian border.

"Jake," I said to my fellow Specialist Four, Jake Riley, "I hope you know you owe me at least a case of beer for that fast turn on that APU."

Riley just grinned back at me from his seat in the shade of the protective aircraft shelter installed two years earlier by a U.S. contractor. His left foot was in a cast and prominently displayed as it rested on top of an empty Pelican case in front of him.

"Hey, I can't help it if the higher ups believed all the RUMINT about there being a lowered threat status; only to find out how wrong they were when T-Man started firing mortars our way last week." Jake had not really been hit, but had gotten his foot caught on a jagged piece of metal framing for the shelter that had been twisted by one of the mortar rounds as he had scrambled for shelter from the incoming Taliban fire.

Yeah, he might have been on the bad receiving end of the heavy breathers' belief in optimistic rumor more than straight intel, but I was the one who now had to take up the slack for Jake's being unable to handle ladder work for the next month.

Just about that time, we both heard a shout and saw the running approach of someone in one of those two-piece flight suits that the Special Operations pilots are authorized to wear instead of the one-piece NOMEX coverall-type flight suit that our guys in the 101st were issued.