The Finisher Series: Ruth

By Bert Marshall

My mom once told me that she thought I would grow up and become a serial killer. I think I was seventeen when she said that and I had settled down quite a bit by that time. When I was quite young, I hated to hear her say the words Kevin Jonathan Harris, because it meant I was in trouble. The rest of the time, everyone called me KJ and this nickname has stuck with me all my thirty-fours years of my existence.

I grew up in North Shore, Texas in a predominately black and brown environment and picked up Tex-Mex Spanish at an early age. By the time I was fourteen I had a total of four knife wounds and at eighteen, one bullet scar. I was what people referred to a "gang-banger" or more politely, a disturbed kid. Oddly enough I maintained honor roll status mainly because of all the hot chicks in the advanced classes. I found school too easy and the answers effortlessly came to me while others failed miserably.

I played football, basketball, and baseball for Robert E. Lee High school when we moved to Baytown right after my sixteenth birthday. I took Spanish and with the help of all the cute Latinas learned it could unlock the legs of most girls and on occasion, their mother's also. Hispanic women dress like do because they need constant validation that they are sexually appealing and I learned that my six foot three frame made me look like I was in my late teens and the moms were accessible because I told them they looked as young as their daughters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bert Marshall
• Release date: Apr 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370672646

Bert Marshall

Bert Marshall lives in Baytown, Texas and is a Baytown Sun Columnist, Blogger, martial artist, geocacher, PC repair specialist, Jeeper, hiker, indoor cycling instructor, past Texas State Emergency Care Attendant, Hunter education instructor, and a USAF Vietnam Veteran with two tours (651 days in-country).

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The Finisher Series - Ruth

By Bert Marshall

Published by Bert Marshall at Smashwords

Copyright 2017 Bert Marshall

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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My mom once told me that she thought I would grow up to become a serial killer. I think I was seventeen when she said that and I had settled down quite a bit by that time. When I was quite young, I hated to hear her say the words Kevin Jonathan Harris, because it meant I was in trouble. The rest of the time, everyone called me KJ and this nickname has stuck with me all thirty-four years of my existence.

I grew up in North Shore, Texas in a predominately black and brown environment and picked up Tex-Mex Spanish and the intricacies of Ebonics which contrary to popular belief, has a defined set of language rules. By the time I was fourteen I had a total of four knife wounds and at eighteen, one bullet scar. I was what people referred to a gang-banger or conventionally, a juvenile delinquent. Oddly enough I maintained honor roll status mainly because of all the hot chicks in the advanced classes. I found school too easy and the answers effortlessly came to me while others failed miserably. I do not recall ever doing homework.

I played football, basketball, and baseball for Robert E. Lee High school when we moved to Baytown right after my sixteenth birthday. I took Spanish and with the help of all the cute Latinas learned it could unlock the legs of most girls and on occasion, their mother's also. Hispanic women dress like do because they need constant validation that they are sexually appealing and I learned that my six foot three frame made me look like I was in my late teens and the moms were accessible because I told them they looked as young as their daughters.

My parents were always working and when I was fifteen, I had sex with my gorgeous Latina babysitter. We did it on my parent’s bed and she's the one who taught me about condoms. You get a girl knocked up esse, and you will pay for it the rest of your life. This became our ritual throughout my freshman year. Twice a week my parents would go out for socializing, as their jobs dictated such, and twenty-three year old Carmen Martinez and I would do the nasty and she taught me everything I needed to know to please a woman, including the importance of hygiene and especially the art of oral sex. She made me pay for the condoms too, citing my responsibility if I wanted to play. She also taught me to correctly speak Spanish like a native and for this I am most grateful.

My mom thought I would grow up to be violent and she was right, but not in the way she envisioned. I began boxing at Lopez's famous gym in Baytown halfway though my sophomore year and within six months began chalking up wins. I was a glutton for punishment and although I took some heavy head blows, I was never knocked out and this meant that eventually I would get in the lick that ended the match. Along with the other contact sports, I was in top shape and scored both on and off the field. Mainly because I was handsome and fit, I had no lack of dates, or fights, but truly it was the bed time I had with Carmen and her lessons on how to treat women that got me laid time and time again.

Halfway through my junior year, I switched over to traditional Okinawan Shotokan karate and did very well on the tournament circuit after only about six months. My sensei told me he had never seen anyone advance as fast as I have and I credit a lot of that to him and Mr. Lopez. Great instructors produce great students. I made black belt one month after I graduated with honors and seeing I had already accepted the academic scholarship to Rice University in Houston, I was able to continue my study of karate in Baytown four nights a week and we usually competed on Saturdays.

Although I dated heavily the last four years, I could never be faithful to just one girl because there were always plenty of prime Latina flesh around and all of them would party except one.

Of course she became my prime target.

Her name was Leslie Amon and she was Muslim and although she wore the traditional hijab, the rest of her clothing was western and did nothing to hide her glorious body. It is just possible that Leslie had the best ass in high school and not a single swinging dick could brag that they did her. Her boyfriend was a big Iranian American, born and raised in Highlands and no one had ever braced him that I recall.

His name was Farshid Garshasp and behind his back, the boys call him Gars head. They wouldn't say it to his face though, as he was reputedly a second degree black belt in Judo and walked around with a huge arrogant chip on his shoulder.

He is supposedly a devout Muslim following the Twelver version of the Shia faith, but as far as anyone could tell, he had no religion at all. Leslie is Shia also, but I never heard which branch of the religion she followed, but it sure as heckfire included faithfulness to her boyfriend and maybe chastity.

Leslie's mom was a white Catholic who converted to Islam and her dad, an Iranian immigrant, so Leslie's first name is the same as her mothers and her appearance is a mix of both. This makes for a startlingly beautiful young woman and with her figure, she could get any guy in the school, but who does she focus on?

Me, for some reason.

Guess who picks up on her interest? Of course it is her bully boyfriend Farshid and guess who gets his ass handed to him in front of the entire school after a football game?

Farshid and what followed was the darkest day of both of our young lives.

I hit the guy at least six times before he got me to the ground, but I was up and punching before he could pin me and it was all over the next day in fifteen long seconds when the asshole shot me in the chest before school and then turned the gun on his own head… but it jammed.

I was in the hospital for over two weeks and narrowly survived, but that is water under the bridge and Leslie caught so much flak from the students that her family moved to Michigan. Word is in Dearborn there are more Muslims than Christians and they’ve about taken over the government there. I don’t know and I don’t care, but what seventeen year old kid does?

So upon graduation, I take the summer off and get drunk and chase pussy like every college bound kid does. Come the end of August, I tour on campus and plan to begin my four years at Rice U when my dad intervenes and tells me Texas A&M wants me and they'll bump up the amenities. I decide I may just want to check them out and make a trip over to College Station and that is when I took my first good look at the ROTC program. It was love at first sight.

My four years at Texas A&M were a whirlwind of classes, military training, partying, screwing and more training and through a special program, I spent the summer months training with other country's military elite. I learned how to kill and how to survive and although I wasn't the best at all of it, I excelled in leadership and marksmanship. I graduated three months after my twenty-second birthday and went home to Baytown where my folks lived. Dad was taking a job in Beirut for the United States government and mom was equally busy working on the presidential campaign of our future Democratic president. Both were very proud of me, but so caught up in their own life that I shipped out for Fort Benning four days early and there was no send off or even a graduation party.

It’s just the way it was and I didn’t feel sorry for myself or feel slighted. My parents have always supported me financially and are workaholics. My college degree was something that was expected of me, so what is the big deal? My parents earn a lot of money, but have never padded my bank account wanting me to earn everything. I salute them for that to this day.

Boot camp, AIT, Airborne, Rangers, Special Forces and two years after I was commissioned, I go to helicopter school at Fort Rucker, Alabama to learn the intricacies of a rotary winged aircraft. Low and behold my first day in class I look into the eyes of second lieutenant Leslie Amon and even in Nomex coveralls, she looks fabulous. She sees me too and smiles and my heart skips a beat. Gone is her hajib and it is replaced with the thickest head of black hair only Latinas or Asians can equal.

Then I see her name tag reads Garshasp and I know she married that asshole from high school. What a pisser. The fucker beat murder charges somehow and the shooting was covered up to look like an accident seeing there were no witnesses. It's a full three hours later before I can talk to her and she tells me her husband is already a pilot and deployed to Kuwait. How long have you been in the Army? I ask and she tells me she joined about eight months ago and marvels that I already have my 1st LT bar, Ranger AND Special Forces tabs.

You are amazing, she says and is more beautiful than I remember.

How amazing am I, Leslie? I ask and she bats her eyes and writes something down and puts it in my hand as the class resumes. Her phone number and address! Her husband is in Kuwait and she gave me her address and that can only mean one thing. Thank Allah she is staying off post, or the neighbors would talk and in the Army, a returning soldier will kill a man who messes with his wife, whether she is willing or not.

The class let's out at 1630 hours and I watch her get in a red Corvette and drive off. I am staying in the officer's quarters since I am not a regular student and everywhere I go people see my tabs and salute or in the case of officers my rank and above, they give me the nod. Never mind that I've never been in actual combat, but most all of these guys know when you are in Rangers and SF, you are going to get in the heat of things for damned sure.

What I want is to get into the panties of Leslie and the clock approaches 2200 and I drive my Ford F-150 eight-year old pick-up truck to her condo and knock on the front door. It's open!

Leslie is sitting on the couch in what can only be described as Come and git it! and whatever reluctance she had against sex is long gone. Now like I may have insinuated, I am not a religious man and this is my first married woman and holy smokes is all I can say. Forbidden sex is like a stolen watermelon. It is the sweetest sweet you can devour.

We shower and out of prudence I reluctantly leave and she tells me she too has wanted me all these years and I kiss her and head back to the post. That was the one and only time I slept with my high school crush as eyes are everywhere on an Army post, but we traded secret looks through-out the school. I guess she felt her marriage was more important, as she played the good wife the rest of the time I was in school.

----

I turned thirty-four the very day my military career ended. I had been in sixteen years and was slated for Brigadier General and was passed over a second time due to mental fatigue, which is a polite way of saying I am fucked up in the head due to too many combat missions. The US Army will not promote me out of a possible combat situation and they need to let me go because I am not promotable according to the psyche evaluations. Hell, anyone with nine Purple Hearts can tell you that mentally, combat stress takes just as much out of you as metal ripping through your flesh.

Unless I have my shirt off and you ignore the fact that I am missing the little finger on my left hand, you wouldn't know I am chewed up by shrapnel and AK-47 bullets and this doesn't include my four knife wounds and the lone bullet hole when I was eighteen. I start every morning with forty push-ups and one hundred crunches before the agony of my wounds and stiffness goes away. That is my life right there.

I walk out of the Michael E. DeBakey Center in Houston, Texas and it is as hot as Panama and just as humid. Fucking June in Houston ain’t supposed to be this hot already, I mutter and an old veteran in a wheel chair looks at me and laughs.

At least you can walk, right?

Yes, sir. I guess I have a lot to be thankful for, but until now it wasn't obvious.

The cancer, son?

No, no. It's not anything like that at all, sir. I gave the army my life for sixteen years and now they tell me I am too fucked up in the head to go to a foreign country, meet interesting people, and kill them. It’s the old saying and evidentially quite true.

That's the army for you, he says and chuckles. Korea for me. The frozen Chosen. That was a war mind you, even though they called it a skirmish.

Dang it man! I guess I have very little to complain about. Give me the tropics any day over freezing my ass off.

I see they got one of your fingers. They got all ten of my toes. The old Vet grins and I get tears in my eyes and reach down and place my hand on his boney shoulder. Hang in there old Vet and I'll adjust my attitude. Thank you for the wakeup call. I walk out and get in my new Ford F-250 4X4 diesel truck and head for Baytown. My old truck had started to smoke a bit. I guess two hundred and fifty-two