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The Righteous Way Chapter 95
He only hoped Brian, of all people, would at the very least let the fantasy play out, for fun, for the sake of their friendship and the eternal hope Tommy's sanity might stay in tact. Sometimes a little hopeful magic, the unreal, is necessary and essential to living in the cold, harsh reality of certain worlds within this wide and terrifying universe human beings inhabit. Tommy understood this element of life, very well. He thought Brian did, too.The trail he'd been walking suddenly opened a little out into a clearing. Just beyond was Caribou Lake, long, still and vibrant as an oil painting, with its stoney waters and the tall grass circling the edges, and further past were the boggy, floating patches of earth over on the lake's thinner pieces. Tommy stood at the fringe staring on into the horizon, tuning his eyes to the places far at the lip of the water.No lights, nothing except the brilliant moon gave off any visible presence across the entire lake. Tommy heard nature, unmoving,
The Righteous Way Chapter 96
The small cabin was now full of muddy bootprints. Tom paced back and forth about a half hour before waking his sleeping friend. His young mind imploded, caving in all over itself in every corner, Tom was wholeheartedly convinced he'd found the rumoured buried treasure of Peter Easton. He needed Brian awake, alert, ready.“What's goin' on?”“You were wrong,” said Tommy excitedly. “I knew there was a big ole treasure out there some place – and I found it!”Brian rolled in his bunk, frustrated and tired. “You're just mental, b'y.”“Get up!” Tommy shouted and stomped his foot.“Tom, I've had enough of this shit – okay? Lay down, forget it, and get a bit of rest. Ya looks like a can of smashed assholes.”Brian lay on his back, his mind going to other places where he didn't need to pretend and act like Tom's delusions were worth the time of day; he would give anything to be there, somewhere, anywhere instead of stuck listening to more nonsense about pirate gold and treasure and Peter fuckin
The Righteous Way Chapter 97
Brian decided it best to save his breath for the walk out from the station, especially considering Tommy planned to dig in three different places all around the area. He kept seeing more money, enough to dive into like Scrooge McDuck, and the thought made everything else fade away.But Brian's conscience, the well of his soul, wouldn't let him rest comfortably. He knew letting Tommy's delusion go on was risky; for days on days now, near a week, Tom has talked of nothing aside from the treasure, pirates, and all the like, and it slowly consumed his sanity, each day that passed. He kept on letting Tom pursue the dream of a legend that most likely was not true, in the slightest, and his spying conscience eyed him, judging, and made him feel as if his entire body were slowly being torn into quarters, drawn by horses, his every fibre wrenched in pain. Yet nothing stopped Brian. He certainly made no real efforts to curb Tommy's lust for treasure hunting.He went on watching Tom, who took hi
The Righteous Way Chapter 98
Brian understood. He knew now, and along really, what Tommy felt wasn't a mental illness, a real delusion making him paranoid and insane; they both felt it, in different ways. It was the yearning for a new and different life instead of the shit existence they'd both experience up until now. While Brian and Tommy tried to create their own identities and shape the future of their lives, no matter how savagely they fought to do so, they were and always would be inhibited by the families which gave them life, shackled to a dirty destiny. Their parents each were destructive and heartless people; more concerned with their own lives and failed expectations and schemes than bothering to worry about the tiny, lonely humans they created from thin air, leaving them to grow into ungardened plants with no discernible paths ahead of them aside from anguish, despair, torment, and days on this wretched earth long and hard as the road to Hell.This gauntlet of living is what truly made Tommy lie and c
The Righteous Way Chapter 99
The car parked a few lengths away from them. Two men got out of the driver and passenger sides; they looked normal mostly. One man – tall, tattooed and fairly muscular, the type who spends his free time lifting weights and self-obsessing over the tone of their muscles, bronzed and starved to death – went to the trunk, as the other – smaller, not much, than the other, and with the look of still being in high school due to his teenage way of dressing, but donning a cane in one hand, limping considerably and aching from an obvious back injury – looked to be moving slowly towards Alex and Staunch. They both walked towards the waiting Firebird.Staunch and Alex each got out and greeted the men.The smaller one extended a hand. “You Alex ?” He shook Alex 's hand. Turning to Staunch he asked, “And that must make you – what's it – Stench?”Alex cackled a dry couching laugh. “It's Staunch, actually.”“Shit, sorry.”Staunch looked calm, but underneath a volcano boiled, bubbled fierce in
The Righteous Way Chapter 100
Then, Staunch saw the wide birch shooting up near the lake's edge. His heart pumped in short bursts, rapid, and then short, slow again; a combination of nervous fear and the traces of meth still beating around in his brain. Alex stepped ahead of Staunch, who straddled behind wanting to stay but needing to follow. The hole sat only feet away now, closer with each and every stumble. Any minute now they would be right upon it. Stopped for a breath, frozen even in the pulsing rays of daylight, Staunch collected his emotions, his swollen and frayed nerves like wounded and exposed electrical wires, and he caught up to Alex . The two men stepped in around the birch alongside one another, with its hollowed middle, and Alex knelt, no words, at the edge of a roughly bore hole in the muggy earth; a hole where once they deposited all their stolen goods, a hole now empty, void.“Why'd you push me in the fuckin' trees like that?”“I just told ya,” Brian said, “there were people comin' and I di
The Righteous Way Chapter 101
Back over under the Canopy and its branchy cover, Tommy and Brian stopped in an inlet of trees and alder bush. They were scared. Still, the boys were beyond determined to be done with the whole situation. Only trouble was neither of them, with all their heart, wanted to relinquish their hold on the money, those pieces of jewelry, all of that. Even as all the trouble of the world might perilously be wavering only inches above their heads, like one of those cartoons were an anvil hangs on a thread about the coyote's head, all Brian or Tom managed to see were the endless possibilities the contents of that bag could provide them; the images of a future path different than their own dominated them, overthrew those young and impressionable minds.“We could just toss the duffel bag in the woods someplace,” Brian remarked; half sure of himself, half kidding himself.The look gave his friend spoke enough on its own.“This is fucked up.”“We can't just get rid of it – not now,” Tom told him.“Y
The Righteous Way Chapter 102
He lived on a decent cul-de-sac in Grand Falls, down near the river. Out back of the house sat a spacious garage separate by a large concrete pad, itself leading up into the long driveway. In the garage he had a nice spot for all his woodworking equipment: table saw, bench, racks of drills, hammers, handsaws, wrenches, and plenty of storage space for fresh wood and the like. At the back of the garage stood a door, behind the door, a room, and in that room were secrets. Locked away with only him and the stale air of the garage's workshop, those secrets grew, multiplied like mould in the dark, and he had a place where his wife would not disturb him; she left him to his business, and without her knowledge his rotten secrets, only coming out when he wanted her there. The man even installed a state-of-the-art security system for the entire property, including the garage, which came with intercoms; often, he would simply call his wife on the intercom to let her know it was fine to bring him