By Peter B. and Art Intelli

Chapter One: The Chain

I never knew my parents, they had died when I was very young, and I was raised by my big brother.  I was a terrible brat to him, but he always dealt with me fairly and calmly.  He was everything to me.  Just as our relationship was really starting to click, he was killed in a car crash halfway through my senior year of high school.  Although I somehow managed to graduate, in the three years since then, I have been a total fuck-up.

By the time I reached my early 20s I had already been floating from job to job, barely scraping by, living in one of those run-down SROs with peeling wallpaper and thin walls. The kind of place where you hear everything, but no one talks to you unless they need something. I never had two cents to rub together, just enough to get by. Just enough to stay invisible.

But lately, things had gotten worse. Rent was months overdue, and the landlord had made it clear that tomorrow, if I didn’t pay up, I was out. He didn’t care that I was barely keeping my head above water. In his eyes, I was just another body taking up valuable space.

Continue reading Strongman – Part 01 →