Isaac Byrne - The Tolerant

Earl shuddered. Not in fear of the threat. In revulsion from hearing his deeds put to words.

The kid sat down beside him, like they were friends or something, and went on in a soft voice. “Believe it or not, I know a little bit of what you’re going through. I’ve hurt people, too, see, innocent people who’d never done anything to deserve it. I know what it’s like to let getting what I want overwhelm doing what’s right. Hell, maybe that’s why you drink so much, to help keep you from having to think about it. But me… I was lucky enough to be given an opportunity like this. So I want you to think of this as a clean start for you, too.”

“Clean start—you’re trying to tear apart my family!”

“A marriage you held together with fear and violence. They didn’t love you, Earl. They tolerated you, because they had no choice.”

“Sure they did,” he grumbled.

The kid ignored him and went on. “Now you can take this chance and start fresh, do some soul-searching, sober up and become the kind of man who can be proud of how he lives his life. Maybe someday start a new family, treat them right.”

The kid shrugged. “Or maybe you won’t, and you’ll keep being the man you’ve been, move on to terrorize someone new. I hope not. This is a great opportunity you’re getting, and I only offer it once. We’ve done wrong, both of us, and we can’t unbreak what’s been broken. Other people are going to do what they will—plot revenge, run and hide, forgive and forget. That’s up to them. You only get a say in how one person handles his mistakes, Earl.

“In the end, the only one you have to be able to tolerate is yourself.”

As tears began rolling down the older man’s cheeks, the kid patted Earl on the shoulder, took the clipboard, and walked away. Near the door, he paused and turned around.

“Oh, and me.”

Morgan Lazlo took a deep breath as she heard the car pull up in the driveway. Her step-son was home for his winter break from school. Three weeks with DJ in the house.

There had been a time when she’d found the boy tedious, an irksome reminder of her husband’s passing. The two had seemed so unlike one another. DJ had always been meek, timid, a disturbingly unabashed nerd. Socially hopeless and seemingly with no ambition to be otherwise. She could hardly remember him talking about girls, much less bringing any home. She’d always suspected that even if she hadn’t set any rules for him, he wouldn’t have gotten into trouble.

His father… Well, suffice to say the apple seemed to have fallen pretty far from that tree. Sean had been a tour de force, wild and unrestrained and persuasive beyond what she’d ever seen in another man. She remembered when they’d first met at a single’s bar, how he’d just walked up to her and grabbed two handfuls of her tits right there, then pulled her out to his car and fucked her right there in the parking lot. How she’d just felt so overwhelmed, unable to resist.

It had always been like that with Sean. If he wanted something, he took it. Objects, women—hell, their first house together hadn’t even been for sale and he’d talked the owner into selling it for peanuts. It was a thrill a minute with him—they’d been proper swingers. (Sometimes she almost wished she could have him all to herself, but she didn’t want to be one of those wives, always nagging her husband to stop screwing other women or bringing her places where she’d wind up fucking other men.)

DJ had always silently held it against her that his step-sister was born mere months after his father’s passing, but she’d never told him that it had been Sean’s idea for him to fuck Lauren’s dad. Whose name she didn’t even know. She’d just done it to make Sean happy. That was why he married her, after all—lots of women just hooked up with him, passed it off as a crazy one-time thing, but Morgan had gotten turned on—like, crazy, out-of-her-mind, insatiably comefuckmerightthisfuckingsecond turned on—at every outrageous demand he made of her. He’d loved her for it.

Then he’d gotten sick, and then he was gone. She thought to reunite DJ with his birth mother, but had no idea who that even was. Besides, it had been Sean’s last request, to look after his son. Even after he was gone she just couldn’t say no to him. So she’d settled down, lived off his considerable assets, and raised his boring son.

Only suddenly, he wasn’t boring any more. Something of his dad had evidently rubbed off on him after all. The confidence, that wild party—and, of course, the endless parade of hot women in his bed. That top-heavy blonde from school. Lauren’s friends (who’d always struck her as prudes, but that wouldn’t have stopped Sean either). Lauren. And, of course, Morgan herself.

Fuck it had been good. She’d probably frigged herself off a few dozen times just thinking about it. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed Sean, the way he could push people around, get his way, take charge of any situation. She’d missed a man who could just demand the world—and get it. Could just make her his bitch, any time he wanted, without even asking.

The girls were expecting him; they were waiting out back in the hot tub, each sporting the sluttiest bikini they could find. (Morgan knew because that had been DJ’s request, and she’d been included in it.) The girls were only too happy to comply, enjoying their youthful dalliance. She’d talked to them all about birth control, but beyond that, there was only so much she could say on the subject. Even if she didn’t enjoy it every bit as much as them, she wasn’t such a bad step-mother as to deny DJ his fun.

It was all pretty harmless anyway. In the years ahead, this would be a fun little story to brag about at bachelorette parties, how they were once young and uninhibited and had a four-way with a dangerous older guy. Jody was going to Brown in the fall to study political science, as it apparently didn’t impinge upon her feminist values to get tit-fucked while her whole family listened in. (Yes, she’d heard all about that one. Lauren’s door was thin.)

Brianne and Lauren were both entertaining notions of following in DJ’s footsteps at State. That was a load off for her; weirdly, even if he sometimes treated the girls like his personal fuck toys, she still trusted him to make sure they kept on their studies.

She heard a car door slam shut outside, and her cunt was wet before DJ even walked in the door. In the time it took him to set down his bags, untie the string holding her bottoms on, and bend her over the arm of the couch—all without speaking a single word—it was gushing.

What a good boy—a real chip off the old block.

“Lights out!”

Somewhere one of the guards pulled the lever, and throughout the cell block darkness asserted itself. Ashley Vandoren—Prisoner #50511—settled in for her fourth night in prison. The fourth, and 9,127 nights to come. With no possibility of parole.

The judge had been lenient, her lawyer assured her. He could have given her a life sentence, or even the death penalty. She’d pled not guilty, of course. What she’d done had been necessary, logical, and victimless—ending that cunt’s life was no different than swatting a mosquito. Whatever the consequence, they couldn’t make her say that she’d killed a person. Emily Turner hadn’t actually been a person, not in any real sense. She was a wet hole for men to shove things in, a configuration of flesh to do Ashley’s bidding. When it was her mistress’s will that she die… she’d done so. Like a good girl.

Still, the police had found the suicide note saved to her computer, and the pills in Ashley’s purse matched the chemicals in Emily’s system from the autopsy. The asshole himself had even shown up to testify, told the whole courtroom all the things she’d said after she sucked his cock. The things she’d communicated during the blowjob, with her eyes. He’d spared no details, and pretty soon the whole courtroom looking at her like her chest was two amazing tits and no heart.