It's the hard knock life, for us!
Steada treated, we get tricked
Steada kisses, we get kicked  
It's the hard knock life!

Jay-Z ~ Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem) 

♥♥♥ 

After coffee talks with my mom, I excuse and recuse myself to my room. Where I finally lay my head down to end the day. After the long day that I've had, I should be dead to the world. But it seems an easy sleep is not happening. Instead, I lay on my back and I stare through the gloaming gray darkness at the four walls of my narrow childhood room.

Long gone are posters of smoking hot car-show chicks in super skimpy bikinis, doing hot chick things on cool cars. Thankfully, I got rid of all that stupid sexist crap after Gracie was about two years old, and started walking in my room unannounced. Now all I have left on my walls are some inspirational mojo-moto sports posters about what it takes to win. All about blood, sweat and tears, playing through the pain and leaving it all on the field.

After thinking through my mojo-moto, I stare up at the various strange shapes and warped faces that emerge out on the cottage cheese ceiling at night. My mind is being bombarded by all kinds of cascading thoughts. Trying to think through the maze of insane twists and turns that have led us all to this crazy place. Where relocating our entire lives on some insane whim of Chuckie's, seems like the logical move under the circumstances? And of course, the fate that awaits us, at the hands of that crazy clown.

Which gives me pause to think through, exactly how it came to pass that I ended up in this insane deal with the devil.

So what I owe Chuckie and why?  

The truth is that back in the day, I was probably that perfectly miserable prick everyone thought I was. But then Gracie came along and changed everything for me, in ways I still can't quite comprehend? She was the great catalyst that changed my life completely, and almost all for the better?

I remember the exact moment I found out about my sister, it was December 31st just a minute before midnight. My mom told us earlier over dinner, that she had some big New Year's Eve news. So as the clock on the TV counted down to zero she announced her news, right before the traditional neighborhood explosion of fireworks and holiday gunfire began to go off.

"Happy New Year ...I'm pregnant!" My mother announced to a stunned living room.

I admit I was a little shocked at the time. But not by the hail of gunfire, because that was actually pretty normal for our neighborhood that time of year. Apparently, so was my father at the time, as he just sat there stunned, blinking back at us in utter disbelief.

In fact, he was so stunned that by Jan 15th he took a job in another city about an hour away. By February 15th, my mother was stunned to when she was served with divorce papers. By June 15th, we were stunningly a one-parent household with a hard-working single mother. Then on August 15th, Gracie was born ...and that zenfucked my world hardcore.

One of the last dudes in the world that you'd want to date your sister, suddenly had a little sister? And what was even worse, I was supposed to be a responsible role model to this little ball of blinking big blue eyes? Suddenly there was this tiny little creature that was totally depending on me to watch out for her. And of course, beat the shit out of anyone that meant her harm, which at the time included our deadbeat dad.

What was most messed up for me personally, was that Dick had been a pretty decent dad to me, right up until Gracie came along. Like he was that dad dude? The little league baseball coach guy, but not too coachy? Booster club dad, who showed up at every game and never complained. The guy who taught me to stand up for what was right, and made a point to teach me how to fight my own battles.

I'm not exactly sure of the precise moment when decent dad dude changed into the Deadbeat Dick? But from what little I have learned up to this point, I gather his master plan was to get me through high school and safely off to college. Then bail out on my mom, go live his own life. Fake some midlife crisis, and bang his 20's something secretary to his cheating heart's content. 

But when he found out about Gracie, his big exit strategy on my mom went to hell. I guess, he could fake four more years of marriage, until I went off to college or the army or wherever? But not another eighteen with Gracie? Apparently, that was way too much to ask a deadbeat Dick with dreams to do. So he must have looked down the barrel at the next couple of decades of parenting and just pulled the pin.

Then as if that wasn't douchy enough? He pulled a couple of real Dick moves on my mother during the divorce. Things like freezing all the bank accounts, canceling credit cards and our family health insurance plan. Knowing full well the entire time that we would suffer way more than him. Basically, every single shitty thing he could possibly think of to do, to squeeze out a better settlement out of my mother. In the process, trying to become the biggest piece of douche bag shit he could possibly be, right up until the bitter end. 

Oh, and not to mention challenging Gracie's paternity? 

Yeah, he was such an unbelievable Dick, that he actually challenged my sister's paternity in open court. I mean seriously what kind of a dude does something like that? Just because he was cheating on my mom with his 20's something secretary, didn't mean mom was cheating on him. Because he damn well knew my mom was not that kind of person. My mother was way too Catholic to even consider going to hell as an option, but especially not for breaking her marriage vows.

I think that the shrinks call this "projection of marital guilt", or some such bullshit? Like when you feel guilty about your own infidelity, you proactively project some self-defense accusation on to the partner in question? So that the guilt attached to your cheating ass can be repudiated or turned to blame instead, in some process linked to denial? Pretty much a fancy way of saying my dad was a lying cheating asshole, who somehow managed to turn into an even bigger asshole known as "Dick the Deadbeat Douchebag Dad".

So the end of it all, what did all this crap get him? 

For starters, Dick lost a marriage and a family. Even better, I have to admit that really enjoyed the crestfallen look on his face, when Dick found out from the judge that he was genetically on the hook for child support for the next eighteen years. But in the end, I guess he got what he wanted? To be alone with a chick half his age who spent most of his hard earned money.

So what did we get out of this deal? 

First and foremost, we got Gracie all to ourselves, so that was good. We got the Dick the Deadbeat Douchbag Dad gone. Which turned out to be both good and bad, but for different reasons. We also got the house, with an underwater mortgage, plus my crappy college fund. Apparently, that account was in my name only for tax reasons. So I guess Dick couldn't figure out how to cash out of it without getting caught? 

After I found out about that shit, I immediately cashed out the five grand and gave to my mom. She tried to protest for a minute, until I insisted that she take it for Grace. That football or the Army will pay for college, but that money was for her and Gracie. To be honest, I think that might have actually been the first time that I ever did something truly significant for someone else besides myself? 

Something else we got in the divorce ...we got a Chuckie. So along with the crappy ancestral house we still stay in, we inherited a Chuckie in the divorce too. See when my dad left us high and dry, we weren't very happy anymore, which inadvertently made Chuckie unhappy. Then the divorce made Chuckie even more miserable, because that officially meant his orderly familial life was about to change.

Rule # 14 ~ Psychopaths do not embrace change, unless they are the agent of that change.

[Psychopaths tend to take change very personally, almost like an intentional insult to them. As in, "How dare you decide on your own to make a change in my life? And without asking my permission first!?! Who the Holy Hell do you think you are, Chum? Com'on let's go for a long ride ...just let me get my special talking hammer real fast. You know, so that I can express all my unhappiness in a way, which hopefully you will understand, why you do not ever change my life without asking me first!"]

The thing about psychopaths is that they always have to have a side, that's a serious thing for them. Which is probably why Switzerland didn't have any psychopaths for Freud to study, so he had to move to Vienna? Because I guess the Swiss are apparently neutral in everything? Because psychopaths can never be neutral in any situation with factions, it's like an imperative impossibility for them or something? So psychopaths have to have a side for everything, unless of course they decide to kill you? Then they can be neutral about that, because then you don't matter anymore, you're just some more chum.

So as all psychopaths are apt to do, Uncle Chuckie picked a side in my parent's divorce ...our side. Personally, I think this decision was probably just based on the raw numbers. We had three people on our side, me, my mom and Gracie. Sad to say, but Deadbeat Dick only had two'ish people on his side, him and his new twenty-something secretary/girlfriend. So numerically speaking Chuckie just had to side with us, and thank his crazy Cthulhu Laughing Gods for small favors.

So upside, we have Chuckie and Deadbeat Dick does not have a Chuckie on his side. Which as my former father very quickly found was a huge Rule #1 violation. [Rule #1 ~ You can never trust a psychopath, because they will never trust you.]

So after about two months into the divorce, Dick decided to mess around with my mom on the child support money, just about every chance he got. First, he lagged for a couple of days, until my mother was forced to call and ask him for the check. Then the next month, a couple of days turned into a week or two of "You'll get to when I get to it, so get off my back bitch!"  

Then if that wasn't bad enough? Deadbeat Dick and new girlfriend went to Acapulco to celebrate their first six-month anniversary of freedom. He even had the balls to tell my mother that he decided to skip that month. That would give me the money when he saw me next month on his weekend visit on the fifteenth. So basically over six weeks of no child support? Six weeks straight of peanut butter & Jelly for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That was the final straw for me, and the first time I called in a favor with Chuckie. 

In retrospect, the conversation that ended up ruining my old life went a little something like this:

JAK: Hey Uncle Chuckie ...it's Jack. Do you have a second to talk thru some stuff with me?

UCK: Sure as shit Jackie Boy. What's up with you ...you happy? 🙃🙃🙃

JAK: No not so much. I got a major problem...

UNK: Who?

JAK: Deabeat Dick? 

UCK: Why ...what Dickie do now?

JAK: Deadbeat Dick decided to stiff us on child support again. He went to Mexico with his side slice. Says we ain't getting any money for another month or more? So Mom is working overtime, all the time. But I don't think its enough to cover us across the board. Gracie is growing and eating all the time, but still hungry. And I don't know what to do?

UCK: Okay, got it. So how much is Dickie into you for so far?

JAK:  IDK ... Two months @ 2.25?

UNK: Okay, got it. So in a half an hour, be out on your back porch. Wear that old blue Boston baseball cap and hold a black baseball bat in your left hand. You got a blackout baseball bat, right?

JAK: No. But I can probably spray paint one of the old wood ones real fast, if I have to?

UCK: Okay, forget that noise then. Just make sure you got a bat in hand ...any color will do. But you have to have that baseball hat on. Got it?

JAK: Got it.

UCK: Good, now get going.

JAK: Good to go.

Yeah, I should probably mention that aside from being a criminal mastermind, Chuckie is also a little out there for clandestine spy stuff. But well get back to that when it actually matters again.

So almost an hour later, I am still standing on my back porch with a baseball bat in my hand. Hoping like hell that Chuckie is not going to send me on my very first armed robbery. The old criminal philosophy of: teach a man to commit a crime, and he can feed himself for a lifetime. Which is about when I spot a midnight black Camaro muscle car slowly sliding down the back alleyway. It's not the car itself that sets off my warning radar, but what's emblazoned across the hood of the Camaro. 

A giant green shamrock sigil around smiling skull silhouette, with the triangle of three dots under the clover to symbolize "My Crazy Life". The four-leaf clover sigil on the hood is a sure sign that whoever is in this car is Shamrock Syndicate, or at a minimum very very proud to be Irish. But it's the addition of the smiling skull over the shamrock, that advertises the owner's undying allegiance to the least funniest clown in town. Which of course, serves to remind everyone and anyone just how seriously dead you can get, if you ever even dreamed of messing with this machine?

The midnight black Irish murder machine slowly rolled down the alleyway and stopped up short behind the house. The tinted black window on the passenger's side whines down to reveal two heavily tatted dudes in the front seat.

I recognized both of these guys from Chrismas drive-by past. Two of Chuckie's best/worst collection agents, known affectionately around town as "Nickels and Dimes". These two psychos specialize in beating people up with socks full of coins. And yeah, you probably already guessed rolls of nickels and dimes, their namesakes as well as their trademark. 

Nicky and Damon O'Malley, aka "Nickels and Dimes", were rumored to be two of the toughest kids to ever come out of the Northside of town. Their father Big O was a well known Old Neighborhood guy, who was sent upstate a decade ago for a maybe murder? Who wouldn't be coming back until another decade from now, if ever?

Nickles looks me up and down for a long second, and then tosses a baseball over the chain-link fence onto our little dead grass back lawn. I cock my head over at Nickles, but he just blinks back at me and then nods down at the ball.

"Like what are you waiting for? Pick it up already, asshole?"

Then he waves impatiently for me to pick the baseball up, which of course I do. The baseball is light, way to light to be an official ball. I can also see that some of the regular red stitching seams have been sliced open and restrung with heavy gauge fishing string. So I thumb the lip up to find a tight wad of hundreds of dollars. To be precise, what turns out to be about five grand in hundred dollar bills, all balled up inside the baseball.

"Okay, now you text the Cheese and tell him that you like baseball a lot. You got that, kid?" Nickels scowls over at me seriously. "You like baseball ...a lot."

"Okay, got it. I like baseball...a lot." I repeat the instructions back. Even before the midnight murder machine starts rolling away, I have my cheap cellphone out and am texting Chuckie like a champ.

JAK: I like baseball ...a lot. Thanx U.C. that was unbelievably cool of you to do. I don't know how to thank you for this.

UCK: Yeah, I like baseball too. So you know, I put a little extra something-something in on this pitch just for you Jackie. Cuz you're a good guy watching out for your momz and sister like that.     

JAK: You really didn't need to do that Uncle Chuckie. I'm good to go, its just Gracie and mom... 

UCK: Yeah, I did. But you don't need to worry about that right now. So you just do what you need to do for the girls, between now and whenever. And you let me worry about what I do. Oh, and when that Deadbeat Dick calls you to bitch? You make sure to tell that chum I said: "Now he knows who he owes, so come correct or else!" Got it?

JAK: Oh yeah, good to go.

UCK: Good. Bygones. I'll be in touch. TTYL

JAK: Bygones.

UCK: 🙃🙃🙃

Two days after Deadbeat's Alcopulco anniversary was over, the Dick is blowing up my phone.  Screaming all kinds of bloody murder at me for "borrowing money" in his name from Chuckie. My dad hates his brother, because he says Chuckie is a criminal douchbag. But he's my criminal douche bag banker now, sofa-king-be-it.

"What the hell did you do, you stupid Jackass!?! You borrowed money from Chuckie...in my name? Are you insane!"

Yeah, Deadbeat dad was really riled up over all this inconvenience. New girlfriend was clearly not happy with this turn of events either. Probably because she just realized that Christmas in Cabo was a one and done.

"Like I already told you asshole, first of every month, cash, check or Chuckie, your choice." I snapped back on the attack. "So you know, from now on I'm gonna collect our child support, not mom. So no more lawyers or judges, court orders and all that bullshit. From now on its old school rules, just me and you ...and Chuckie."

"So on the first of every month, you best come correct from now on. Come rain or shine, I better have that check in my hand? Or you're gonna get a visit from you-know-who. And if for whatever reason you run and hide or ditch out, or fuck us off again? I already talked with Uncle Chuckie and we worked it out. He says, he'll cover you from now on. And then Uncle Chuckles will collect what you owe on the back end, at interest."

"So my advice is don't ever be late with my money again, or else? Cause honestly, I don't want to hurt you, dude? But if you ever put me in a bad spot again? Make me choose between your pain and my sister eating right?"

"Yeah, I gotta do what I gotta do ...I got mouths to feed." I shove another one of my former father's quippy pearls of wisdom right back at him. "Yeah, my old dad taught me that. You probably would have hated him, cause unlike you he was a serious stand-up guy."

"Oh, and Chuckie left me a message for you. He says, now know you know who you owe. So good luck with that chum." I informed him of his fate at the hands of the least funniest clown in town.

I know that most people would probably think I am a total ungrateful asshole, for siccing a psychopathic nutjob with homicidal tendencies on my own father, right? Yeah well, what can I say? Other than sometimes you do what you gotta to do to make sure the monster gets fed right.

Because when you got a hungry sixth-month-old at home, who wants that fancy ass organic peach puree for breakfast? But all you have is that crappy carrot medley, and that crap was supposed to be for lunch? Where my fucking fancy peaches asshole!?! Or when she needs the nutrition of a decent dinner, and all you have is tomato soup made from Costco ketchup and hot water? Yeah, you pull the pin on that noise and do what you gotta do, so nuff said on that noise.

That was about three and a half years ago. Lucky for Deadbeat Dick, he hasn't been late on a payment since, so life lesson learned there. So sometimes it pays to have a psychopath on your team ...and sometimes you pay the price of having a Chuckie. Because when everything was said and done, I knew I made a deal with the devil that day for my sister's soul. So I know who I owe. But what I never expected, was exactly how all this was going to end up affecting me so personally.

♥ ♥ ♥

~Author's Notes~

This chapter is dedicated to MaddieBrinn, who is a wonderful writer and a very cool chick, in my humble opine. So if you're looking for a cool paranormal story with some serious mysterious. I would encourage you to drop in and check out her story "They Know Me" at: https://www.wattpad.com/story/170432457-they-know-me