"I know a lot of good tricks!
I will show them to you.
Your mother,
will not mind at all if I do."

The Cat in the Hat ~ Dr. Seuss 

♥♥♥

As soon as dinner is done, my mother takes Gracie in for her daily bath-slash-splash-time, while I start on the dishes. Then the pirate princess is off to bed on a wing and a prayer, and of course the obligatory daily re-reading of Cat in the Hat. I throw in an additional reading of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, just to finish off the sleepy pirate princess for the night. After Grace goes down for the count, it's just me and my mom for coffee time ...with a healthy dose of reality.

"So now tell me about what Charles wanted today?" My mother immediately starts off the coffee time talking.

So I start off hitting the high points of most of what happened today with Chuckie. Beginning with the expensive new school that I will apparently be going too, in less than a month from now. I am not even halfway through the story and I can already tell that my mom is all kinds of not thrilled with this thought. Just the mere thought of moving out of her own house, that she has lived in almost her entire adult life? Not to mention relocating Gracie, jobs, schools, and bullshit ...all because Chuckie wants to call in a favor? Yeah, not good, and honestly I don't blame her at all.

"I'm sorry to say this, Jackson," She shakes her head slowly. "But I think you need to tell your uncle that this is not something we should be doing."

I knew this initial resistance was coming, but I also know how to work around it.

"Yeah, I don't think that's a good idea mom." I counter back politely. "You didn't see what I saw today. This is a thing for Chuckie now..." ...whether we like it or not.

"But please hear me out on this first for a minute, before you pull the pin on this thing?" I start slowly explaining my way through the insanity of all this. "I get how you might look at this whole thing sideways, cause I definitely did too, at first. That Chuckie is calling in an ask, or worse, doing something without asking and just assuming it's a done deal."

"But Chuckie's done a lot for us ...sometimes whether we liked or not?" I stare down at my cracking knuckles. "Bottom line, he's always been there when we needed him. And even more importantly, he's always not been there when we needed him not to be too." I emphasize the obvious, that no one wants my insane uncle just hanging around their house for no reason.

"I know this a major favor for him to be calling in on us. But I also think in Chuckie's weird way, that this is him try to help us out too, without it looking like charity?" I start on the list of upsides to this deal with the devil. "The house is good, and the neighborhood is exactly the kind of safe place you want Gracie to grow up in. It's gated, guarded, and they even got a ton of those stupid Kids-at-play signs all over the place."

"So Gracie gets to live in a huge house, in a safe place with lots of cool stuff. Like a mile square of green park, with duck pond right around the way? So she can get outside in the fresh air a lot more. Learn to ride a bike...and maybe even make new nice friends?" Of course, after she is done explaining to them that she is clearly in charge of everything ever.

"And the new private school is seriously no joke. I've already checked it all out online, and you should too." I nod to the open laptop with the St. Andrew homepage up, showing plenty of pretty pictures of prestige. "The place is seriously good academically and scholarship-wise. One of those places that politicians and rich people send their kids to. Tuition is covered by Chuckie, and all I have to do to get in is agree to play football there next year?"

And of course, pretend to be this girl Sio's fake new badass boyfriend? Who beats the shit out of anyone who looks at her sideways? Not really seeing the downside yet, right? Well, save for the fact that the girl in the mix clearly can't stand my ass? Oh, and Chuckie is in the mix, so there is always going to be a downside for someone. Maybe even me?

"Chuckie says the nursing job he lined up for you is decent, and pays more than you make, for a lot less hours. Not to mention the added income from renting this place?" I add for a little icing on the crazy cake. "An extra two grand a month cash guaranteed is way too good to pass on."

Of course, I leave out the part where the new tenant will be urban marijuana farming inside our ol' ancestral shithole. As I am pretty sure Chuckie meant that to be kept at "need-to-know" anyway. And sadly my mother is not in the circle of trust, let alone in the need to know that particular detail of Chuckie's evil master plan. And after all, it's not like urban pot farming is really even that illegal anymore?

"And let's be honest here for a second." I try to put a nicer spin on this sales pitch from hell. "If it was anyone but Chuckie holding all this opportunity out to us? You'd think this was a gift from above, right?"

"But because it's Charles, so it's a gift with more strings than a spider's web attached." Her eyes narrow suspiciously.

My mother is wisely suspicious of anything involving Chuckie. Sure, she might be karmic kind, calling him Charles and everything? But my mother is also no dummy. She can call Chuckie "Charles" all she wants, but we both know that won't change the true nature of the killer clown.

"Yeah, I met some of the strings today." I agree with her take on the stakes. "Right after our little field trip to see the school, Chuckie takes me over to meet this lady and her daughter. Who coincidentally also goes to St. Andrews too, right?"

When I finish retelling her the abridged tale of the meet and greet on the green with Mrs. Mickey. Obviously leaving out the part about the chum-scum in the mix, Bobby whatever-the-hell-his-name was? There are things my mother can accept about my reality with Chuckie? But then there are some harsh realities that are just too much for her to know about. Pretty sure the "or else" threat of turning scum into chum, is way too much for her to handle at the moment. But stranger still is her odd reaction to hearing Moira Devlin's name in the mix.

"Moira McMicheals Devlin?" My mother muses over something I considered a lot lower on the hit list of issues than Mrs. Mickey. "Now there's a name I never thought I'd ever hear twice again in this life?"

"Trouble?" I ask the obvious, seeing she clearly cool with Chuckie.

"Her? No, not so much." She shakes me off. "But her husband Micheal definitely could be, depending on the situation."

"Do tell." I find myself suddenly interested in the strange story of Chuckie's first friend. 

"Michael Kilpatrick Devlin, everyone called him Micks or Mickey D." She dredges up some historical facts from the distant past. "He was a pretty tough teenager, who grew up a couple of blocks down and over from your grandparent's old place. He had a reputation around town as being someone you didn't cross lightly, and expect to see the sunset again."

"Sounds oddly familiar," I reply dryly. "So what's the family history there?"

"From what little I heard here and there, Micheal and Moira were fated together when they were practically children." My mother starts sharing her old wives' tales. "They married right out of high school and then Micheal joined the Army. They had their first girl shortly thereafter. Very shortly ...if the rumors were to be believed?" She waves off the obvious implication of a traditional Irish shotgun wedding. "Not that I am judging."

"Of course not." I nod along. Truth be told, my old mom used to be kind of judgmental on things like that. But now we all know better than to judge other people's troubles, as we have more than enough of our own, thanks to deadbeat Dick dad.

"After Micheal finished his military service, they moved somewhere north across the state line for a while. A couple of years later, Micheal got sick and they came back for a minute." She sighs sadly. "Which was when I met him, in the cancer ward at St. Anne's."

So I guess Chuckie was telling the truth about Dead Micky's cause of death after all?

"He passed six or seven years back, maybe a little longer?" She instinctively crossed herself against speaking ill of the dead. "Micheal said he wanted to come back home and die, where he was born. Some kind of old Irish Traveller superstitious geasa, about dying on hallowed ground and not passing down a blood curse on his child?"

"Okay, that's definitely different." I file that particular piece of information away for later.

"Your father and I went to the wake to show our respects. It was a traditional Irish wake, which is the reason you didn't go." Translation on Traditional Irish Wake: a shitton of drinking, crying, cussing, screaming, keening, and fighting.

"That wake was one of the few times I've ever seen your uncle and father sit down and drink together, since our wedding." She frowns at the memory of her own troubles. "Truth be told, that was not a fun funeral at all. The fights alone in the back alley parking lot alone were enough to call the police in. But of course no one called the police ...so they just went on for hours."

Yeah, no kidding? Seeing no one in their right mind would call the cops on an Old Neighborhood Irish wake. Not unless there was a murder? And even then, someone might call ...maybe after a day or two? But only if they got the A-okay from one of the Green Kings. Just to get rid of the rotting corpse, cause the smell was bad for business.

"So Chuckie and Micky, what's the story there, if you know?" I inquire almost innocently.

Something I am admittedly curious about, is how exactly did Chuckie end up with an actual real friend? Because up until today, I assumed the only "friends" Chuckie had was his equally insane dog and of course all the dark voices in his head.

"At the wake, I asked your father about the history between Charles and Michael." Her eyes go a little stonier than before. "According to what little your father had to say, when the boys were kids they didn't actually get on too well. Between the two of them, they stirred up a ton of trouble together. Even being from different blocks back then, was pretty much pro forma cause for fights."

"Then one night, I think when they were in high school? Charles ran afoul of a group of boys from the Northside for some reason?" Yeah, probably because they didn't know enough about Chuckie back then to be truly terrified.  "Michael stepped in and saved Charles from something or someone? Apparently, for no other reason than because they were sorta from the same place. After that Charles and Michael were close, almost inseparable even. At least until Michael got married to Moira."

"It was one of those things from back in ..." She drifts off to a dark place in the past.

"...the Old Neighborhood." I finish her thought for her. "Yeah, I heard some of that talk today."

"That godforsaken neighborhood," My mother sighs sadly. "It's been gone and turned to rubble, rebuilt twice over in the last twenty years. But the hold it still has on those kids from the old days will last until the grave. I swear on a stack, sometimes it feels like they were all cursed just for being lucky enough to survive that place."

"And the girl Siobhan ...Moria and Mickey's daughter?" I try to nudge her a little back towards a happier time and place.

"Right, I remember her from the hospital. A little raven-haired waif of a girl, with a seriously crooked smile and brightest green eyes you've ever seen." My mother smiles sadly. "Loved her father intensely, she screamed and keened like a banshee when he passed."

"She must have gotten braces then, cause she smiles straight as an arrow now." I inform her absently.

At least when she is not throwing a shit fit over her life being forcibly "fixed" by an evil killer clown with a particular penchant for turning scum into chum. As for the screaming like a banshee part? I can only pray that she is past that phase of her life, or hopefully finds someone else to get especially angry on besides me? Cause those haunted eyes of hers are seriously sort of scary, and still sort of wyrding me out.

"I guess I should've mentioned that part of the price tag on this ask is that Chuckie wants me to watch out for her, at this new school from now on? No worries, easy-peasy." I assure her of something that even I am not sure of.

"Watch out for what exactly?" My mother side eyes me sharply. She is no dummy, so she must sense something more to this than the curse of "easy-peasy".

"Don't know exactly, he was a little vague on that part? Maybe boys? Maybe girls? Maybe nothing besides just watch out for her in general?" I shrug off the particulars of the scum-to-chum fear factor. "Apparently she is something of an artist? So I'm guessing that maybe she's one of those head-in-the-clouds chicks that can't cross the street by herself?"

"Anyways, the way I figure it if this girl suddenly showed up at Sparta without knowing a soul? I'd watch out for her as a matter of course without thinking twice, right? The fact that Chuckie is practically insisting we make a better life for ourselves in the process?"

"And as far as favors for Chuckie go? Looking after the daughter of his dead friend ...at a seriously decent school?" I point to the St Andrews computer page again. "That is kinda hard to argue with, after all he's done for us."

Which I am thinking is intentionally so, because that is precisely how psychopaths think. They make it nearly impossible to say no to them. [Rule # 7 ~ Psychopaths will always think of everything all the thru, way before you do.]

"I don't know about this Jack?" My mom slowly rocks back and forth thinking through this all. "I have a dark feeling about all this."

Oh no shit, you too? And here I was thinking I was the only one that saw the bloody hand of the killer clown reaching out for my soul.

"Yeah well, I'm thinking this is one of those things we have to do what we have to do. Just roll with it and let the chips fall where they fall." I intone the incantation that will pretty much seal this deal with the devil. "So it is what it is for the minute, come hell or high water."

"Come hell or high water." Her eyes slightly sorrowful as she repeats this incantation, and finally acquiesces to the inevitable.

"Promise me one thing, Jackson. No matter what, you're not to go into Chuckie's life. And you're not to turn out like your father, either. You're your own man Jack ...no matter what." She adds for good measure. "So swear to me that nothing that could put your future in jeopardy comes of this thing."

"Wholeheartedly agree with all that," I assure her of her worst fears. "Besides, it will piss deadbeat dad off to no end, when he finds out were living in luxury over at Chuckie's place."

"I'm passed that phase in my life, Jack." She sighs sadly. "You really need to leave that anger and ill-will behind, as well. Mark my words son, holding on to all that hate won't do you any good going forward."

"Well, let's hope I can meet you there someday ...the weather sounds just lovely." I drone dryly back at this particular piece of parenting advice.

And that is the last we are going to seriously talk about the situation for the night. Because since the day my deadbeat Dick dad walked out on us, we've gotten very realistic about the things that really matter. That"Come hell or high water" line, has become a serious thing for us in the last couple of years. So now it's my turn to intone the hellish incantation, on this insanity with Chuckie.

Back when my parents were still married, my father and I used to argue about a lot of stupid stuff. We even had some pretty serious heated arguments over pretty much nothing, with yelling, and screaming, and door slamming, and everything else. Sad to say that was mostly on my part ...at least the door-slamming thing.

But since my deadbeat dad bailed out us a couple years back? And I suddenly became the so-called "man of the house", at like thirteen years old? Yeah, we don't do that heated arguing thing at home anymore. My mother and I have both come to see and agree, that there are things in life that just suck. And regardless of our feelings about them, they must get done no matter what.

"Come hell or high water", soon became the signal to end any pending argument that didn't have to happen. Especially one that wasn't actually going to solve anything anyways. The prevailing philosophy being, there is no reason to waste the energy to fight the good fight about things we can't change. So let's just handle what we can, and do the best we can to make it slightly less stressful on the person actually dealing the problem. So when hell or high water comes a calling, at least we know that the rest of the house has our back, no matter what.

♥♥♥

~Author's Notes~

In Irish mythology, a geas or gaesa (pl) can be compared with a curse, or paradoxically, a gift. If someone under a geas violates the associated taboo, the infractor will suffer dishonor or even death. On the other hand, the observing of one's geas is believed to bring power. A beneficial geas might involve a prophecy that a person would die in a particular way. However, the particulars of their death in the vision might be so bizarre that the person could then avoid their fate for many years. Often it is women who place geasa upon men. In some cases, the woman turns out to be a goddess or other sovereignty figure.

The geasa is often a key device in hero tales, such as that of Cúchulainn in Irish mythology. Traditionally, the doom of heroes comes about due to the violation of their geas, either by accident. Or by having multiple geasa and then being placed in a position where they have no option but to violate one geas in order to maintain another. For instance, Cúchulainn has a geas to never eat dog meat, and he is also bound by a geas to eat any food offered to him by a woman. When a hag offers him dog meat, he has no way to emerge from the situation unscathed; this leads to his death.

This chapter is dedicated to Twinning94 who are some seriously good writers and very cool chicks, in my humble opine. The sharp comments and insights on my stories are some of my all-time favorites. So if you are looking around for a seriously cool bad boy character, their Bash in Texting Prince Charming is one of the best.
https://www.wattpad.com/story/97631071-texting-prince-charming