Pirate skulls and bones
Sticks and stones and weed and bombs
Running when we hit 'em
Lethal poison through their system  

M.I.A. ~ Paper Planes

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December 15th ~ 7:27 AM 

It is way too early in the morning, to be stuck in the small bathroom trying to do something with the tangled mound of morning curls that is my kid sister's hair. The daily battle with the Medusian nest of snakes that is Gracie's hair is a study in caution. Just one wrong move on my part and I can inadvertently set off a chain reaction that will end up with all of us having a very bad day. My sister going to preschool is hard enough on us as is. But Gracie going to preschool with an Irish attitude problem is going to be twice as hard on everyone else. 

I truly believe that there is some sort of strange sequence of supernatural events that happens to her hair at night, the defies scientific explanation. Personally, I suspect the dark forces of the Fair Folk have been hard at work conspiring against us again. Because somehow between the time she goes to sleep to when she wakes up, Gracie's perfectly pristine cute curls seem to coil themselves into a tangled knot of hissing, spitting pit vipers to meet me in the morning.

So I am stuck struggling to get the nest snakes ready for school when the first text of the morning comes in. I spot my cell phone silently flashing on the edge of the sink, and I almost ignore the incoming message ...almost. But as I learned a long time ago, the first thing in the morning is the perfect time of day for shit to go sideways. So I take a timeout in my morning battle with Medusa's many snakes, lean over and skim the first text message.

UCK: Jackie it's me. I need you to come see me today up at my house. Cause I got to call in an ask from you today.  🙃🙃🙃

As soon as I finish reading the text, I start to feel a slight shiver attach itself to my spine. Those three little telltale upsidedown smiley faces at the end of the text are the standard signature for the least funniest person I know ...my Uncle Chuckie. The double usage of the word "today" in the message is his personal crazy code to move my ass ASAP. But it's that "call in an ask" part at the end of the message which is what really has me troubled the most.

Knowing my insane uncle this message could mean a myriad of things in the moment. None of which are particularly good for me and mine. Truth is that my Uncle Chuckie is probably the last person in the world that anyone actually wants to see on purpose. The sad fact is, that his not-so-funny face probably has been the last thing that more then a few people have seen. People that were stupid enough to get cross-ways with Chuckie have a very bad habit of disappearing off the face of the earth. 

The sad reality is that I've been living on borrowed time with Mr. Smiley Face now for a couple of years already. So today is the day that I finally find out what the devils due, for the choices I've made and the favors I've made in trade. I mean I always knew in my heart there would come a day that the butcher's bill would come due. That I would eventually have to pay Chuckie back for all the stuff he's done for us for the last three years plus. I just kind of hoped it would be sometime after high school was over ...or maybe a murder? 

I finally give up fighting the losing battle with my sister's hair. Pull the entire mess back out of her eyes, and just slip her "Bad Hair Day" black bandanna over her head and tie it off tight. It's not a particularly pretty look, with her hair sticking out at odd angles around the quick fix. But at least the snapping snakes will stay out of her eyes for a while.

"Okay Gracie, I hate to say ...but it looks like you're going as a pirate princess today, cool?" I offer hopefully. 

"Arrg ...I freaking love pirate princess day!" She blinks big up at me with her unbelievable bright blue eyes and smiles wide, showing off her all her front teeth. That light bright smile she beams right into my heart, burning all my bullshit away to ash. I remember why we do the things we do. That it's all for her and her continued health, happiness, and well-being.

"Awesome, so go dress appropriately, please?" I attempt to offer her a subtle suggestion. "I'm thinking those black and white pin-striped tights? Maybe with the super cute dancing skeletons skirt, would be too cool for school?"

"Ummm ... I'm thinking pirate princess with my rainbow die-tie?" She muses over her choices.

"Tie-dye Gracie...not die-tie." I correct her odd accent automatically.

"Yeah, well ...I like mine bester." She sniffs hauteur and trundles out of the bathroom off to get her pirate princess ensemble in full effect.

After I quickly handle of my own morning bathroom business, I head down the hall towards some much-needed cup of coffee. Passing my sister's room on the way down to the kitchen, I pause for a second at the open door. She is sitting on the edge of her bed with a furious frown, struggling with the stalkings she picked out for her ensemble. An orange stretchy number that barely fit last Halloween when she went as a pumpkin pirate princess. I am reminded yet again that she is growing like a weed, a weed we have to feed.

"Gracie, why don't you try those black and white striped leggings we got a while back?" I attempt to offer her my unsolicited fashion advice again.

"But I like these ones?" She blinks back up at me, practically daring me to start the war I will never win with her.

"Okay G, have it your way." I shrug and keep moving down the hallway towards the kitchen.

I know I probably just gave up a little too easily on the argument that doesn't have to happen? Namely, not having yet another fashion fight with a four-year-old fashionista. Primarily because I already know this is a war I will never win. My sister can be seriously stubborn when it comes to this kind of stuff. One way or another she'll either make the old orange ones work for her, or she will eventually give up on her own. Either way, it will be because she made the choice herself and not by having the decision forced on her.

When I roll down the hallway and into the small galley kitchen, I find my mother already making Gracie's lunch. I hug her hello in passing and make a grab for the last of yesterday's old cold coffee.

"Good morning Jackie." My mother singsongs over at me. "I could have sworn I just heard something about going pirate princess again today? You give up on her hair already?"   

"Morning mommy," I smirk back. "And yes, I have conceded victory to Miss Medusa and her many spitting snakes."  

"Well, at least you tried, right?" My mother rolls her eyes over. "I got the BP & J out, you want that I should make another lunch for you too?"

"Thanks, but no thanks." I shake her off. "Which reminds me, we need to talk real fast before Gracie comes out for breakfast."

"Why, what's going on Jack?" She stops in mid-jam swipe and slowly turns around on me, with butterknife still precariously in hand. 

"I just got a text from Chuckie. I have to go see him up at his house today-today." I emphasize the importance of the double-secret today code, so she will understand this little trip is not an optional.  

"And did Charles say what he wanted?" She frowns back at me.

My mother always calls my uncle "Charles", instead of Chuckie. As if somehow by using his Christian name he will actually act like one. Yeah well, good fucking-luck-Chuck with that one! Psychopaths like my uncle Chuckie don't believe in God, at least not one that we would recognize anyways. Their God is like some secret wacked out death god, like Cthulhu or The King in Yellow? Or some other equally insane secret shit, that only makes sense to them on some primal level. Who fills their insane brains full of dark voices that tell what they really want to hear. Namely that everyone is really out to get them ...and it's A-okay to get them all first. Oh, and while they're at it, to just go ahead and do all the sick shit they like they do for fun. Cause after all, other people aren't really real ...not like them and their insane Laughing Gods.  

"Not really, only that he needs to see me today up at his place ASAP." I shrug her off. "The drift I got was that it's some unspecified manual labor thing to do at his house? Like maybe move something from here to there?" You know...like maybe a dead body?  

I mean com'on lady, like seriously? We're talking about a paranoid psychopath with homicidal tendencies here, who truly believes that the government is out to get him? Do you really think he spelled out the driving directions to the location of the shallow grave, that he wants me to fill up with some chums corpse until shark week rolls around? 

"I don't know, Jack?" I can see that she is already starting to worry herself into a twist over this. "Can you really afford to take another day off of school this semester? And going to see Charles on short notice is..."

"Mom stop, please." I sigh and shake my head. "You and I both know when it comes to Chuckie the possibilities are endless. Especially when we have no idea what's going on with him yet?"

"So trying to outguess what Chuckie is thinking is a waste of my time and yours. Especially, not with Gracie around and you on your way out to work. I think it's just better for both of us that I just go along and see what he wants. Respectfully, let's not waste the time to think through things and just do. Respectfully." I try to emphasize the pointlessness of trying to out-think this insanity, by throwing in that extra "respectfully" there at the end. 

Especially when we both know full well that I really have little or no choice in the matter. Because regardless of her concerns, I'm going to see Chuckie "today today" with or without her okay. She knows it and I know it, it's just another one of the sad realities of our situation. So saying the "N.O." word to Chuckie at this point is not really an option for me. After all, this is the same psychopath that hunts down deadbeats for a living and beats them half to death for fun. The concept of "No can do" on favor owed to him is not anywhere in his insane operational manual. 

"So the only question is am I taking the car for the day? Or am I taking the bus there and back?" I add for effect. "And maybe getting home sometime late tonight, way after Gracie is already asleep?"

Something which we both know is not going to go over well with the four-year-old pirate princess in the other room. Her bedtime story-time is a very serious thing for my sister. Without my usual stunning rendition of The Cat in the Hat, Gracie will not go down for the count without a fight. As evidenced by this last summer's first fight night while I was away at football camp. Which finally only ended in defeat when my mother was forced to call me up at camp, to have me read TCITH over the phone to Grace. And every night after that, for the remaining two weeks of training camp. Something which the rest of my teammates took a great deal of nightly amusement from.

"No, you take the car." She shakes this thought off. "I can get a ride home from work, if need be. But when Gracie gets out of Wonder Years at three-thirty that's going to be an issue for me."

"No worries, I got Grace. No matter what's going on with Chuckie, I'll make sure I am back in plenty of time to pick Gracie up." I assure her. "Come hell or high water." 

"Okay, just make sure that you take at least fifty dollars out of the kitty for gas." She nods over the bright black Chinese porcelain cat, whose big eyes roll side to side when you pull its paw.

"No worries, I got gas covered," I reassure her.

"Jack, you never know what might come up? So take the money anyway, just in case." She adds a final portent to an already dangerous situation. "And please promise me that you will be extra careful with Charles today. At least until you find out what he wants?"

"Always." I agree.

With that piece of parenting said and done, she returns to making my sisters very specific "no crummy crust" PB& J sandwich. So I start carefully crafting a text to let Chuckie that I am good to go and a confirmation of my pending arrival time.

Rule # 5 ~ Psychopaths will never keep their word, but they will always expect you to keep yours.

[Psychopaths by their very nature have a thing about order and definite time. As such they are either habitually early or habitually late to where ever they are at. There is no in between with them...no flexibility. So if you say, "see you at five o'clock". That's a promise to be there by five on the dot to be seen. See you after five depending on traffic? Is not necessarily a promise of being on time, but rather an assurance at the attempt of timeliness. So when dealing with someone like Chuckie who is never ever late to anything, it's always best to build in the flex. Ergo traffic crossing the border into Insanistani ...something that he can logically accept is out of my control, and therefore not definite.]

JAK: OK-GTG. So depending on traffic at the border check, I will see you in two hours? Okay with you? 

UCK: Yeah. Drive safe. 🙃

JAK: No worries. I'll call ya if it looks like I will be later than two hours. Okay?

UCK: SYS🙃🙃🙃

"SYS?" I stare down at the final word on the subject. 

Oh Holy Hell! "Today-Today" and now "See ya soon" in the same thought string? I already have a sinking feeling this "Today-Today" thing is not going to go good for me at all.

Not two seconds later, Gracie finally shows her face for feeding time at the zoo. Thankfully making her own decision to wear the black striped leggings with her favorite "Die-Tie" pirate flag shirt. After an almost nutritional breakfast, consisting of a bowl of Cheerios with blueberries and banana slices, and we are back to the bathroom again to brush our teeth. With that crucial dental duty done, everyone is out the door and loaded up into our crappy old Honda civic. With Gracie securely strapped into her child-safety-seat in the back, I flip the radio on the girl power station that she likes, and we are off to face our respective days.

I make the twenty-minute drive over to her preschool, The Wonder Years. Which seriously has to be the most unoriginal name for a preschool ever, but maybe that's intentionally so? Probably because The Wonder Years is an all girl's preschool, run by a bunch of militant lesbians for their test tube kids, baster babies and foreign adopted love children. So the entire pre-school is a designated male free zone, and there are zero guys involved with Gracie and the other girls at all. Even the handyman and security guards are big ass burly tattooed biker chicks. We only got into Wonder Years because my mom was a single parent going through the aftermath of a bad divorce. They even let her volunteer for some school nursing shifts instead of paying full price for Grace.

To be honest, no matter how lame the name, I actually love this place. Primarily because I know that the Wonder Women will protect my sister from all the bad dudes out there in the world. Even I can go only as far as the curb, to watch over her as my sister joins the gaggle of giggling girls going in the front fence. The three big badass biker babes in the windbreakers who guard the entrance gate just nod over at me and I very respectfully nod back at them. They only seem to tolerate me in so far as I am Gracie's big brother, who always watches out for her. And that's about all the leeway I am ever going to get from the Wonder Women.

After we safely see Gracie off to her day, I drive down and around the block to drop my mom off for her nursing shift at St. Mary's Hospital. With that final drop off duty done, I head out of the streets and onto the freeway. Away from the City towards the great unknown that is the insane world of my Uncle Chuckie. Which gives me time to think through exactly how it came to pass that I ended up in this deal with the devil. Even more importantly, what the hell its gonna take to finally pay off all the favors I owe this killer clown? And just maybe end all this insanity once and for all?

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~Authors Notes ~

This chapter is dedicated to StevenBrandt who is a wonderful writer and a very cool dude, in my humble opine. I'd also like to thank Steven for allowing me to use of his insane "Laughing Gods". As they are his creation and the sole providence of Steve's crazy cool mind. So if you're between Gods at the moment and you're looking for someone new to follow? Drop-in and check out the Laughing Gods at : https://www.wattpad.com/story/57689691-warriors-of-the-hollow-world