Through the Wormhole

Max didn’t have a job and he didn’t much care for the idea of getting one either. His somewhat new situation suited him just fine.

 

Max had a new woman, and that woman got a check every month from the government for something or other having to do with her dead husband. So he was content to sit around her house and watch her television and eat her food and live rent free under her roof.

 

There was one problem though, and that problem was something he hated to even think about. She had a brat, a fourteen-year-old brat.

 

At first, Max had tried to win the little twerp over by offering him a beer and inviting him to watch the game on television with him. He even assured the kid that he wouldn’t tell his mom about the beer. Unfortunately, things had not gone how Max had planned.

 

Bryce—that was the brat’s name, Bryce; he had arched an eyebrow and narrowed his eyes suspiciously at Max’s suggestion. Max could see the little jerk judging him, sizing him up, pegging him for exactly what he was—a no good bum.

 

There was something odd about that kid, something not right and Max spent way more energy than he cared to admit to himself seething about that twerp.

 

The kid was a sissy. He didn’t even play football or basketball and in Max’s book any kid who didn’t play sports was a bonafide sissy. Hell, he’d grown up playing sports, even fancied himself to be a professional football player someday, and he would have if not for all the hard work he would’ve had to put in it. Max wasn’t big on hard work. Nope, it suited him just fine to live a nice comfortable life where he didn’t have to worry about anything.

 

Max couldn’t much play football anymore anyway. He had a big beer gut that made him slow and clumsy and the effect of the constant stream of alcohol on his mind had whittled away at his intelligence over the years. When he drank too much it made him mean and angry and more often than not the brat bore the brunt of his nasty insults. He never hit the kid though. No, if he did that his woman was sure to throw him out, so he was smart enough to know his limits.