Welcome To The Patreon

Let's jump right in today with the opening scene from the Patreon Series. It's titled "Devil In The Waters," and I've made this post public so anyone unfamiliar with my books can get a glimpse of how this story may play out. Subsequent episodes will be locked for subscribers.

I'm going to post scenes and chapters, and then monthly or perhaps bi-monthly I'll post a digest version, or even wait until a Part is considered finished. This first Part of the story is called 'Dreamscape' . . . 

So without further ado, let me introduce two of our story's characters . . . 

The dream began as though he were waking . . . 

* * *

The coarse whisking of the tent’s zipper roused Kevin from a shallow, painful sleep. Dawning blue-gray light assaulted his eyeballs with the intense zap of high-beam flashlights. He winced and hissed, brain exploding with sharp stabbing pain. His neck throbbed, his brain throbbed, his back was sore.

While he was bewildered, there was a strange sense of place. The tent’s zipper gave it away; the awful sleep; the cold; the damp . . . He lay on a thin camping sheet, inside a sleeping bag that was zipped down to his knees, early morning chill stinging his hot, sweaty skin . . . 

Now the tent was jostling, the nylon tapping and dancing as someone came in. He reached instinctively for Kimmy, aware of a large shape looming over top of them that made him think of a grizzly bear.

“Kimmy, Kimmy,” he hissed, hand snatching outward trying to grab at his wife. She wasn’t there. His eyes fluttered open, and he looked now to see that large shape crouched at the tent’s door and zipping it closed again with sharp, quick tugs.

“What the hell?”

The figure turned, scooting down and squatting, taking Kimmy’s spot next to him. He blinked, clutched at his temples to push away the throbbing pain, trying to make sense of this.

The figure wasn’t a bear, but a man. Familiar yet unfamiliar, distant yet right here in front of him . . . His brain flexed and twisted trying to make sense. As the man’s features came into focus, things began to fit into place. Devin Stone. Dalton High. Class of ’09. Football. Lacrosse. Six-foot-two. Handsome as shit. Bully. “Stone?”

The figure said, “Waters, it’s done. Holy shit . . . ”

He worked up onto an elbow, pain shooting up his collar. He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “What the fuck is going on?”

“Holy shit, Waters, you were not fucking kidding . . . ”

“Kidding about . . . ? What’s happening?”

Stone frowned, brow working low, focusing on sleepy Kevin, making him feel small and transported back to the frightening halls of Dalton High. It was one small piece of a larger puzzle. Now he began to comprehend the hazy periphery of this dreamy story. On waking he’d thought he was camping with Kimmy. He wasn’t. A reunion . . . A high school reunion. The ten-year reunion. Everyone gathering after the event held  in the gymnasium at Dalton for a weekend bash at Tiffany Hanson’s lakeside cottage. Bring your tents, bring your own booze! And he’d had a lot of booze, hadn’t he? His stomach was at once held in a vice and simultaneously a luscious, squirming thing. Acid burned, things rolled over inside him. He wanted to barf, burped instead, tasted bourbon.

“God,” he said, “holy shit, what time is it?”

Stone said, “It’s almost five. Oh, wow, dude,” then ran a big hand through his head of thick black shining hair, “that was close. I almost got caught . . . although . . . ”

“Caught what?”

“It was cold out here, we went inside but we got caught in the can . . . ”

“What does that mean: caught in the can?” Nothing made sense right now . . . 

“The bathroom, Kimmy’s friend caught us, what’s that one . . . I don’t remember her name . . . ”

“Who . . . ? Caught what?”

“Dude. What we talked about . . . It’s done.”

Kevin nodded, afraid to irritate Devin by still straying behind. Best to agree and wait for the storm clouds to blow over. “Oh, okay . . . ”

Devin scowled, but seemed amused, which was a relief. “You’re not getting it, bro . . . ” Now he shook his head and chuckled, “Holy shit, Waters, I’m so glad I sat down and talked to you last night . . . ”

“What do you mean?”

“Waters, man, wake up,” Stone laughed. “You want to hear about it or not?”

“Yes, I want to hear about it—hear about what?”

Stone studied him, a puzzled look on his face. He was an arrogant asshole, never a friend of Kevin’s. Through the early part of high school and public school Devin’d been a bully. There were a lot of times where he’d made Kevin’s life miserable. There was even a time when Kevin’s own mom and dad marched him down to the Stone household to tell Devin’s father what his son was up to. Only Papa Stone didn’t care. Smug asshole. When he and his parents went home that night his mom broke a glass in the sink she was so mad. “Fucking prick,” she’d called Devin’s father, and Mom never swore. That was Papa Stone. Young Devin Stone had always been on the path to full Fucking Prick status.

Devin said, “Are you kidding me?”

“Kidding about what?”

“Dude, right out there,” he said pointing at the closed door of the tent, “that picnic table right up back of your SUV. You and me last night, God, I don’t know, one in the morning . . . ?”

“Oh yeah,” he said, not really remembering, but not wanting to infuriate big Stone. Even at twenty-eight years old now, the guy packed a whack more solid muscle than he had in high school. He had a big frame, large hands, square jaw . . . 

“Well, it’s done.”

“Good,” he said.

Devin tilted his head like he would look out the tent’s door though it was zipped closed. The muscles in his stubbly jaw flexed as he smiled. “She’s still inside, but I’m telling you—we might have got busted.”

“What do you mean busted?”

“Got caught.”

He nodded but the act of moving his head too fast got him swooning with sudden seasickness. He burped, said, “Who’s inside?”

“Kimmy . . . what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Oh yeah, okay,” he said, “Kimmy’s inside.”

Devin scowled at him. “How much did you drink last night?”

“I don’t even remember.”

“We would’ve gone again—fuck, a whole bunch of times—but she shooed me out of there because there were people up in the kitchen.”

“Shooed you out of where?”

“We went in that bathroom, the one on the main floor just past the family room . . . ”

“Who . . . you and Kimmy?”

Devin shook his head. “You really don’t remember?”

“No . . . maybe . . . ”

“Out on the picnic table,” Devin said, scooting a little closer so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice, “You and I had a talk . . . ”

“What did we talk about?”

Stone moved closer so he could whisper and be heard. Kevin could see the cold blue steel of Stone’s eyes. He smelled like sweat and something else . . . Devin said, “You told me your fantasy about Kimmy having sex with another man . . . ”