The Girlfriend Game by Nick Antosca

Author:Nick Antosca [Antosca, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Word Riot Inc.f
Published: 2013-05-14T05:00:00+00:00

The Early Years, Before His Great Adventures

episodes from a folk tale

Boy

Margaret Cray married a man, Aubrey Prejean, who had fallen into disfavor with his family and seen a heartbreaking inheritance pass into the hands of his brother. Margaret was a compliant, fearful, dark-eyed woman whose family had come from the bayous; Aubrey was a skillful piano player but also a helpless gambler, eventually twenty thousand dollars worth of helpless. Their twin sons, Connor and Benjamin, were six years old the day some men took Aubrey from the house, clipped off all his fingers, set a Rottweiler on him for a while, and shot him in the head.

They returned his fingers to Margaret in a backgammon box and said, “You bring the money—or we come back for the boys.”

But as soon as Aubrey was dead, his brother Theo stepped in. To Margaret he said, “I can protect you. Do you want to watch those men die? No? Well, something will still be done about them, at least the ones I can find. These people hide out in the swamps.” He also said, “You and the boys will come live with me now.”

The Prejean mansion, Theo’s alone, sat like a king on three hundred acres of rolling grounds that graded into swampland. There were ancient willows and a lake populated by huge, disagreeable swans.

Theo was old at forty, his skin marked by creases and gray swellings that to young Connor looked like papiermâché. The eyes seemed wedged into the face, like jewels embedded in dough.

He spoke with unusually good grammar. Upon their arrival he told Connor and Benjy, “Your father is dead. Around here you can do whatever you want—but I will not be your father. I will just be your mother’s friend.”

Unlike his trusting twin, Connor was filled with hatred toward their uncle. Despite his youth he could recognize in a vague way that the man was stealing his own brother’s wife.

At night his mother took Connor aside and told him, “This ain’t forever. But it’s safe here.” She was wearing a necklace now, a necklace Connor hadn’t seen before.

During the days, he frittered the time away with Benjy, who had a speech impediment from a facial injury sustained as a baby and was happy to be isolated from other children. Uncle Theo had bought them a Saint Bernard puppy to play with but one day it wandered off over a grassy hill and was not seen again. “Don’t ever go off by yourself,” their mother had told them. “Your uncle says there are wild dogs in the swamp. And don’t bother the swans.”

The grounds were wild, unkempt, like a madman’s hair; there was one groundskeeper for three hundred acres, and he was blind in his left eye. Here and there in the high grass, rusty cages hulked abandoned. “Let’s catch us a wild dog,” Connor said, “and put it in a cage.”

His mother said, “Stay close to the house.”

Connor and Benjy turned seven. Gradually the idea that they would be leaving their uncle’s estate faded.

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