Desperados

By Ashley Bradley

A boy and a girl meet in an orphanage and form a strong bond. In adulthood, they go divergent paths, but keep coming back to each other. Are they soulmates, or is one a demon sutured to the other? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashley Bradley
• Release date: Apr 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386914419

Book preview

Desperados

Ashley Bradley 

Mike's mother had burned his two other siblings alive. His two sisters, Danielle and Brianna. They'd come to their mother, claiming their father had molested them. She accused them of being liars. In the household Mike grew up in, the punishment for lying was being burned alive in the backyard, like you were barbecue. Not even barbecue. Chicken cutlets are at least usually dead before they hit the grill.

Mike wasn't sad when he got sent away. He was friends with a lot of orphans and throwaways at school. Half his friends were in foster care. Some of them were sad about their position. Some of them had nice parents, it's just they were crackheads, or unmedicated loonies. If only their mom would stop trying to jump in front of cars because she thinks she has mind control and can stop them. If only she'd stop doing that and maybe go on medication and look for a job so they could stop living in the sewers, then everything would be fine.

Mike didn't think like that. Not at eight years old, not ever. He never thought If only my mom wasn't everything she was, or my dad wasn't everything he was, then, then we could really get things going. Mike was glad he was taken away. He didn't live in some fantasy world wasting time thinking about what could be. The reality of the situation, what was, was that he came from a fucking horrific environment, that he never felt safe or happy in. So he was happy about becoming a ward of the state. Some kids felt like they were owned by them, but Mike felt free. Sure, he couldn't just skip out of his foster home all willy nilly whenever he wanted, but he was pretty sure if he did, he wouldn't be beaten with a plugged in, turned on iron like that time he told his dad he'd peed in the bed. He was running late for work, after all. But Mike felt, if it was that serious, how'd you find the time to be beating someone with an iron? Couldn't've been that late...

The only thing Mike didn't like about foster care, was how lonely it was. He'd always been a lonely kid, but he accepted that when he lived with his family. He had a Bad Family, and he knew at that young age, that in a Bad Family, you feel alone. But Mike thought getting to go to a foster home, and being around a bunch of other boys who likely shared similar backgrounds, that he'd be able to make a lot of friends. He was too young, though, to understand that maybe a lot of these boys, with similar backgrounds, would prefer to keep to themselves. Mike sort of understood why one would be withdrawn and distant, but he felt that foster care was the place for...just a total redo. To change everything. His positive attitude, his happiness about being somewhere a lot of the kids looked at as prison, rubbed the other kids the wrong way. What the fuck was he so smiley about? Talking about, Come on guys, let's play hopscotch!. Mike was almost beat once for asking a group of the foster kids if they wanted to play double-dutch. He tried to diffuse the tension by explaining to them that he always played double-dutch with his sisters, that it was really fun. Then some smart ass, one of the older kids asked, Was that before or after your mom fucking set them on fire??.

Before, obviously, Mike said, doing, he felt, a fairly good job of stifling a large amount of crying he wanted to do in that moment.

Fine, he thought, after that final rejection, he'd just stay to himself. And for newly two years, all Mike really had was himself. He had a few friends at school, but he didn't really like them. There was one kid named Trevor who smelled like fish grease