Chapter Five

I got a disease, deep inside me.
It makes me feel uneasy baby.
I can’t live without you.
Tell me, what am I supposed to do about it?
Keep your distance from me.
Don’t pay no attention to me.
I got a disease…
Disease
Matchbox 20

David bounced between foster home and the orphanage for the next year as far as he was concerned each place was worse than the last and he didn’t need any of them.  They certainly didn’t want him so fuck them.  Four months after his 16^th birthday David Jackson was arrested for the last time as Juvenile Offender when he was caught boosting cars for a local chop-shop ring. He’d been stealing fancy rides for months and getting away with it….no problem.  Then one day he made the mistake of stealing this really sweet Mercedes, just so happened it belonged to the wife of the Chief of Police.  For that grand-daddy of a mistake and considering his rather long record, David Jackson spent the rest of his minority in Irving MacAllister’s Home For Wayward Boys and did not emerge until after his 18^th birthday.

MacAllister’s was a shit hole that housed anywhere from fifty to a hundred boys warehouse style. Everything was ordered and there was no tolerance of anyone who stepped out of line even the slightest bit.  The military atmosphere should have helped David but it and the other ‘guests’ as the security guards liked to call them only made him harder.  He’d been busted for some pretty petty shit next to some of the other guys living with him, some of them actually got busted for rape and not the arm twisting kind but the bloody and bone busted kind.  Others were here for chronic drug habits instead of rehab that their parents couldn’t afford. Did they stop using? Fuck no they just got more creative about it. So long as you were over 16 you were allowed to smoke at MacAllister’s (it was the 70’s) and if you put a little toothpaste on the cigarette paper and let it dry a few hours…man! You got one hell of a buzz from it. Not to mention that most of the guys took up the rather tame hobby of building model cars or airplanes or trains. Not that they were so inclined but that model glue was something!  Hell they’d huff gas in the shed out back if they were on yard detail. Anything to get off, to relieve the boredom and misery of their lives and make their time at MacAllister’s pass more quickly. 

School was mandatory at MacAllister’s and the boys all attended classes from 8 am to 12pm Monday to Friday.  David and most of the other guys earned a high school diploma by the time they got out for all the good it did them even though it did say it was from the local high school and not from Juvy.  It was just a piece of paper it meant nothing but if you went to class and you graduated before your time was up you got a few special privileges like being able to go into town, supervised of course, twice a week including one Saturday. David liked getting out of the place, town was the only place a guy like him could even hope to see a chick there wasn’t a single female anywhere near MacAllister’s.

Up until he got busted Mary had seen to it that the brothers spent time together once a month or so, Davy figured she thought they were family so they shouldn’t lose touch but that David shouldn’t have a big influence on his goodie-goodie brother either. Danny was always on the honor roll and always so helpful.  David knew he shouldn’t begrudge his brother that but he did anyway.  Many years later as he had nothing but time in Hades to think and reflect on his life he’d come to the realization that he and Danny weren’t so different after all.  Their parents died and they needed a way to handle it, David acted up and got into trouble to cover the pain and uncertainty of his life while Danny buried himself in books so he wouldn’t have to look at any of it.  What a pair.

Two years in MacAllister’s and they let him out. David promptly left Illinois never to return.  He wandered the countryside from coast to coast doing honest odd jobs and pulling even more dishonest ones.  While in Rhode Island he landed a job painting house and then was arrested for breaking into cars and stealing stereos for which he did three months in the county lock up.  In Florida he was arrested for selling alcohol to minors and got away with a fine and a weekend in the city jail. In Alabama he was busted for armed robbery and did three years of a ten year sentence.  Finally he ended up in Texas where he settled for twelve years or so. Well, eight of them he spent in John B. Connelly, Jr. Maximum Security after getting busted with four kilos of heroin.  Now David, while he did a full array of drugs, never got hooked on smack. He figured it was dangerous to sample the goods you sold when it came to shit like that and he needed to keep his head about him.  Too bad one of the regulars he sold to got busted and then rolled on him for a lighter sentence. The cops set him up good and there was no getting out of it when they showed him the video tape of him selling heroin to an undercover narc.  David pled guilty for a reduced sentenced of his own and rolled on those higher up the food chain than him.  Thankfully those higher ups went to a different prison or he might never have made it out of John Connelly alive.

No matter how you looked at it eight years in a Texas State Prison was enough to make a beast out of the most docile of pussy cats!  David did the crime and he did his time as quietly as he could. But there was always someone bigger and badder than you just waiting for your ass to walk around the corner and John Connelly was full of them.  In places like that you couldn’t get away from them no matter what you did or how hard you tried and in the end you had to go along to get along and to his great shame David ended up doing just that.  He wouldn’t say that he’d been anybody’s bitch but he’d been treated to the same as he’d done to Mary and several girls at school. Strange, David found that he didn’t like it much on the other end.

When he got out of John Connelly instead of being remorseful for what he’d done he vowed never to let such things happen to him again and to that end and to the goal of forgetting about it David didn’t hesitate to pick out females to victimize.  He didn’t pick just any old chick, nope she had to be a looker for one he could get 7’s and below on his own but as for the 8’s and up well, he actually preferred watching and stalking them before he struck.  Although he’d never be arrested for it, if pushed hard, David would have to say that he’d raped somewhere between ten and fifteen really hot women over the course of his life.  Now, of course, if he had been caught they would have strung him up for it but he was always very very careful when it came to such things.  He never left a DNA sample behind (and if he had they might have ended up arresting Danny which would have been a real hoot!) most of them never even saw it coming never mind see his face. 

While holding a woman down and bending her to his will made him feel infinitely better and certainly outrageously powerful in the moment in the end it only made him feel worse and sent to him the nearest bar where he would promptly drink himself into oblivion.  But he couldn’t stop. No matter what he did or tried or told himself sooner or later he found his feet on the front walk of some pretty mama’s house and then…..there was screaming which lead to begging and to crying and he was in control.  It was the only time he ever felt that way like he had even the smallest measure of control over himself and his own goddamn life. David was a real "Look, ma, top of the world" kind of guy.

Two years out of John Connelly he was holding down a respectable day job working for the local cable company. David set up cable television and cable internet in some of the finest homes in Corpus which lead him to his night job of breaking into houses stealing whatever caught his eye. During the night and then in the day (which scared him) David started having the strangest dreams.  In them there was little diminutive red head with big green eyes, she was so pretty she made his mouth water.  In the dreams she called to him by his name and she wasn’t afraid, most chicks who looked like her wouldn’t give him the time of day in fact they’d cross the street if they saw him coming but not this one.  She smiled and held her arms out to him, she kissed him, made love to him—the girl had thee sweetest little pussy he’d ever had wrapped around his throbbing cock— and she told him she loved him.  Even though it was a just a dream he’d wake up hornier than a toad only to jack off in the shower. The dreams were so vivid and so real something about them made him stop wanting to hold women down, at least temporarily they did.  He went almost a full year without stalking a single woman---well not seriously anyway. He’d followed a few around and checked them out good but that was it.  The little red head, she was the one he wanted and she wanted him.  If he could just find her he was sure his life would turn around.

Then one night when he was shooting pool at the Crow’s Nest, his favorite bar in Corpus Christi, (where he’d picked up that accent of his) this absolutely HUGE man walked into the bar, plunked money down on the table where he was shooting and called him by name. David looked up and at first was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the man with the olive skin, long black hair and onyx eyes.  “Seein’ as how I dun’t knew yer, how do you know me?”

“Word gets around; I got a job for you.  Sit down; let me buy you a drink.”

“I don’t drink with men I don’t know.” David returned a bit brazen but so what? The guy was big and had muscles on shit but who cared?  Not him.

“My name is Ari, and I’m going to pay you a lot of money.”

“Fer wot?” David stepped away from the table and rested his cue on the floor so that it stood up straight at his side.

Ari reached into his pocket and brought out a photograph. “For her.”

David looked at the picture and instantly recognized the woman as being the one in his dreams. His mouth dropped but not as far as it would before the night was over.

“She’s my daughter, her name is Callestah and I want her to come home.  She’s with him.”  Another photograph produced from the pocket of his black leather jacket.

Danny.

“Look familiar? Either of them?”  The twinkle in his eye said he already knew they did. “If you go and retrieve her for me, I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars.”

David just about felt his jaw hit the floor.  “Let’s have dat drink.”

“I knew you’d see it my way.” Ari said.  “I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care if you kill him, but I want her in Athens by the end next week, do you understand?”

“Yup.” David knocked back the last of the Jim Beam in his glass along with the last of the Budweiser in the bottle.  “Why me?”

“Why not you?” Ari returned with a sly smile. “You’ve no love loss for him, do you?”

“Nope.” David said, “None at all.”

“That’s what I thought. End of next week, David.” Ari handed over a small card with a phone number on it. “Call me before your plane leaves.  I expect to have her unharmed, again, am I understood?  I know of your penchant for bending women, you will not bend her or I will bend you.”

By the looks of the guy that was not something David would enjoy but he didn’t know if he could keep a promise not to hurt the little thing.  “I’ll do my best.”

“You’ll do better than that.” Ari warned.

“You got it.”

It wouldn’t be until after David died and subsequently came back to life that he would find out that Ari was not Ari and he wasn’t even the red heads’ father but her brother. In the end, even if he had known at the time it probably wouldn’t have made any difference. Before they left the bar David was twenty-five thousand dollars richer, had a plane ticket to Colorado in his breast pocket and a little bit of extra money to buy those two plane tickets to Greece.

David traded in the plane ticket to Colorado for cash and drove his old Duster from Texas to the great state of Colorado where Danny and the hot red head were currently knockin’ boots.  One he didn’t really like to fly and two he wanted the time to think and plan.  Like Andrew Hartley, David Jackson came equipped with his own Happy Kit and he was afraid to take that on the plane. He was sure he could score in Colorado but who wanted to go through the trouble of making connections and hooking up when there were so many other things to do?  Besides the trip wouldn’t take too long if he drove straight through which is exactly what he did.  David didn’t figure getting the woman away from his brother could be too difficult, after all, Danny was probably still the same little wimp he’d always been. The chick probably had him pussy whipped and who could blame Danny on that one? How did the little SOB ever get so lucky as to end up with a looker like her anyway?  Yep he had lots of questions and he was going to get lots of answers in the very near future.

Pulling into Colorado Springs late one night he took a room at the Motel 6 and staked out Danny for the next few days. He was very surprised to find his brother the brainiac working for USAF and that was one organization David did NOT want to be involved with or have pissed off at him so he’d better be careful.  So he was.  He watched and he waited and he plotted until he had it all settled in his head.  Using his skills as a Cable Guy he got into Danny’s house with no problem. Oh, yeah, well, of course, he’d had to kill the Cable Lady first—he hadn’t meant to do that, really he didn’t, he just wanted to subdue her but there was a fine line between subdued and dead when it came to putting pressure on someone’s wind pipe.  He almost quit right then and there, for all the rotten nasty low-life things he’d done over the course of his life murder was new to him.  Shaking head to toe he stuffed the Cable Lady’s body into the back of her van, stole her shirt, ripped off the name tag and drove to Danny’s house where the woman who was calling herself Calla Jackson let him in without much trouble though she did say that they’d requested a woman. David didn’t have to be told what that meant, nope all those years in prison gave someone a real education all by itself. Women often requested that repair people or installers from the phone company, cable company, electric company and the like be female when they themselves had been victimized by a man or two.  The little red head had already met at least one David Jackson in her life and she didn’t want to meet another.

Well, she wasn’t going to get her wish on that one.  That was good for him because she gave him a berth while he worked, hell, she wouldn’t even stay on the same floor with him and David installed cable, internet and two web cams along with several listening devices all without detection or even suspicion.  He was very surprised by how calm he was through the whole thing and that was because he had been almost certain the woman would recognize him, well not RECOGNIZE him, they were only dreams in his own head but that she would see the resemblance between him and Danny. She hadn’t.  David’s hair was long and bleached from the Texas sun as was the beard on his chin but still….shouldn’t she have suspected something?  Then again, why look a gift horse in the mouth? He thought as he climbed into the cable van and drove off. He ditched the van and the body several miles from Danny’s house down an old dirt road by a pond.  He didn’t bother cleaning it up or wiping it down because in the back of his mind David was hoping it would be discovered quickly and that Danny would be a suspect.  One thing they don’t teach you in prison is that while identical twins do have identical DNA they have very different finger prints.  If that van had been found quickly David would have been caught and sent then it would have been Go Directly To Jail Do Not Pass GO Do Not Collect Two-Hundred Dollars.

Back in the Motel 6 David took one of the longest hottest showers of his whole life as though that could wash the Cable Lady’s blood from his hands.  Robbing and raping were one thing, selling drugs and boosting cars all of that was all fine and good but murder was something else altogether.  It left a bad taste in his mouth. David wondered if the Cable Lady, whose name had been Mary it said so on the name tag he ripped off, if she had a family or a husband or a lesbian lover waiting up for her. Someone who would stand at the graveside in a dark blue suit to mourn while they tossed a rose and handful of dirt on her coffin like he and Danny had done when their parents died.  David was not a religious man by any means but murder was an unforgivable sin and he just hoped that Calla Jackson was worth the trouble. Turned out she was worth all of that and more.

For a few days David sat back and waited and watched Danny and his little chickie via the web cams he’d set up and as far as David was concerned his brother’s sexual technique left a lot to be desired. That pretty thing she deserved a better banging than that!  Ari said unharmed so that left one option and it was a damn good one. At trip to the barber shop and the local eye glass shop in the mall and wouldn’t ya know it?  Voila! David Jackson looked just Daniel Jackson.  He visited the house three days in a row while Danny was at work and banged the shit out of that little pussy.  While he hadn’t consciously thought about it other than getting his rocks off his actions had the added affect of causing a rift and great of deal suspicion between them.  It put her off balance so when he waltzed in an announced they were going on a trip she didn’t give him much trouble.

Well that was until they were forced to land in Connecticut. David never did know just what set her off or caused him to suspect that he was not Daniel but something did and that was all that mattered.  When she tricked him that set him off. No one got the upper hand on David Jackson unless their name was Meat or Big Bubba or something like that and even then Meat and B.B. best be sleeping with one eye open.

Something else he never understood was how it all got so out of hand, so ugly and so violent so quickly.  Yep, he’d held down his share of women but he’d never broken a bone and damn near never left a physical scar on any of them but he beat Calla within an inch of her pretty little life he just couldn’t stop in fact the thought never crossed his mind as he swung at her again and again.  She fought like a wild woman but she was small and weak no match for him and he never understood how she fought so hard for so long or why she stopped so suddenly…well not until they sent him to Hades anyway. There things got explained in infinite detail again and again and again.  That’s a story for another day.

Danny and his friends from the USAF showed up and broke up the party; Danny even went so far as to shoot him! Little bugger!  Danny’s heart was bigger than his want of revenge so instead of making damn good and sure that David was dead he went to Calla as did the rest of them and David hung back in the shadows and watched the strangest scene play out.  If he didn’t know better he would have sworn he was tripping his balls off when Hades and Aphrodite came into the dilapidated room.  He hung around long enough to watch most of what happened next then he took off. A nice old guy picked him in the cold and the snow but that old guy was sharp. Once David climbed into the cab of his truck the old geezer got a good look at the scratches on his face and the blood on his clothes.  What choice did David have but to kill him? None.

Halfway out of Connecticut and a familiar face suddenly showed itself.  The next thing he knew was….well….to be honest the next thing he really knew and could remember with any clarity was standing on an island with Danny on a warm summer night. They were talking about the past and then they saw the strangest bird ever.  Turned out it wasn’t a bird but Eros and he just happened to be the brother of the pretty little thing calling herself Calla Jackson.  It wasn’t long after that that Daniel Jackson ended the life of David Jackson with a bullet to the head.  No fooling around that time, Nossir! Danny wanted to make damn good and sure David wasn’t coming back.

Eh, the best laid plans of mice and men, hey?  Little did any of them know that close to twenty years later an intergalactic war would break out on planet Earth and that Hades the Lord of Death and the Underworld would release David into the Upper World once more at the request of his Brother Poseidon Lord of the Seas or that Hades would later refuse to take David back. 

So here David sat on the warm beach of a Greek island gazing up at the stars wondering what was going to happen next.  It seemed to him that no matter how you sliced it, truth was definitely stranger than fiction. One day he was an unforgivable bastard and the next he was Uncle David and keeping watch over a woman he’d once brutalized so mercilessly. The same woman who not that long ago had opened those lovely arms of hers and made love with him just like she did in his dreams of so long ago.  He was here watching over her children, his nice and nephew and trying, for once in his life, to do the right thing.

“David?  Are you all right?”

He turned around to see Tula standing behind him.  “Just thinkin’.” He replied. “Nice night, huh?”

“Very.” She agreed. “May I?” He moved over so that she could share the rock he was sitting on.  “Do you worry about your brother?”

“Yep.” David said with a sad smile.  It had been days since Daniel came to visit with Calla and they had no word from him or anyone else.  He looked over at Tula; she was a pretty woman who looked like she’d done a lot of living in her forty years on planet Earth.  “You cold?” There was a light breeze to the night and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She didn’t pull away from him instead she moved closer and put her head on his shoulder.  “What are you doin’ out here, anyway?”

“I was looking for you.” She said.

“Why? Is Callie all right? She ain’t gone missin’ again has she?”

“As far as I know Calla is sleeping.  I just thought you might like some company.”

Well wasn’t that a kick in the head?  “Sure would.”  They sat there gazing up at the stars and talking in hushed voices until the sun came up.

End Of The Life Of David: Blood Ties II
By Moon Mistress
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True Colors: Ares & Callestah A Love Story