Serpent's Trail

*Author's Note: Any and all persons engaging in any sexual activity are at least eighteen years of age.

Disclaimers: This story has been edited by myself, using Microsoft Spell-check. You have been forewarned.

*****

AND THE SERPENT SHALL CRAWL UNTO ITS BELLY

Driving down Wesley Drive, Mike Morrison looked at each house. Of the eleven houses from the corner to his house, Mike had framed eight of the homes. The remaining three had been built by John Piercy, a local contractor.

There was a rivalry, but not an aggressive unfriendly rivalry between Piercy Construction and Curtis Construction, Inc., the company Mike worked for. On one occasion, John had run out of concrete three quarters of the way through a pour and Curtis sent his own crew over to help John finish the pour.

"Of course, we know that southeast corner's the only corner that'll still be standing after first good snowstorm," Lyle Curtis had joked as they were pulling out of the lot.

"Aw, your ass, Curtis," John had laughed.

The two companies also met for the Fourth of July picnic in Jordinaire Park, competed in barbeques, softball, and horseshoes. Then, all sat together to eat, sat together to watch the evening's fireworks.

Mike was puzzled, but unconcerned when he saw John Piercy's Mercedes-Benz SUV in front of his house. He recognized the SUV because of the plate reading 'Piercy1.'

Mike steered into the garage, looked again at the SUV, and then lowered the door of the garage.

"Hey Rhonda; what's John Piercy doing here?" Mike called out as he entered the house.

"Livingroom," Rhonda replied loudly.

Mike entered the living room, preparing to shake their visitor's hand. But the scene he saw made him withdraw his hand.

Rhonda and John were seated on the small couch together. Rhonda looked uncomfortable as Mike entered. John had a smug expression on his face.

Michelle and Mickey were sitting on the long couch and both children had excited looks on their faces.

"I uh, so what's going on here?" Mike asked Rhonda.

"I uh, uh, Mike I, there's no easy way say this," Rhonda mumbled, looking at the floor, their two children, the coffee table, anywhere but at Mike.

"Then just spit it out," Mike ordered, voice growing hard.

"He's got a swimming pool," Twelve year old Michelle interrupted.

"And a boat," Mickey added. "Said he'll take me out on Merilee Lake and everything."

"And me too!" Michelle shrilled at her ten year old brother.

"See, uh, Mike..." John started.

"You. Don't say another word," Mike interrupted the man, voice hard.

"Mike, don't make this harder than it has to be," Rhonda snapped.

"Oh! I'm sorry! Didn't realize I was the problem here," Mike said sarcastically.

"Now, there's no need for..." John said harshly.

"Said not another word out of you, Snake," Mike growled.

John moved to stand up. Mike shoved him back, hard.

"Mike! Don't you dare!" Rhonda screamed.

"I'd thought you'd be a man about this, but I can see," John snarled.

"What is it about 'not another word' is so hard for you understand?" Mike asked, backhanding the man across his sneering face.

Mike almost smiled at the stunned expression on John Piercy's face. Almost.

But his family was falling apart, right in front of his eyes. His daughter, his sweet angel was tossing him aside for a swimming pool. His boy, his son, his tiger was willing to throw him onto the compost heap for a few fishing trips on a boat.

Last time Mike had taken Michelle down to the Y, his daughter spent all of her time ogling the cute boys and posing and preening. She had not even dipped a toe into the pool.

And Mike had taken Mickey to Merilee Lake several times. They'd gone fishing; father and son. Each time, he had to drag the boy with him. True, it wasn't on a boat, but they'd stood on the banks and cast their lines.

The few times Mickey had managed to catch a fish, it had been Mike that removed the fish from the hook. And when they had arrived home, it had been Mike to filet the fish.

After Rhonda and Michelle and Mickey and a glowering John had left the house, Mike sat at the kitchen table with an ice cold Coors and read the petition of divorce. Rhonda was asking for primary physical custody of the children, granting Michael Arthur Morrison, Senior ample visitation with the two minor children. She was also requesting four hundred a month per child, plus half medical, half education, other incidentals to be discussed as needed.

The microwave meal was flavorless and turned to lead in his stomach, but Mike knew he needed to eat. He had been ravenous when he'd walked into his home and also knew he'd need something to absorb the three or four or five beers he'd be having that night.

He had two and a half beers. Mike decided there was no use getting drunk; he had an early morning tomorrow. Wife or no wife, kids or no kids, he had a job that needed to be done.

And Rhonda Gladys Livingston Morrison wasn't worth the hangover. Rhonda had been a somewhat bucktoothed, flat chested eighteen year old when Mike first met her at an Auto Parts store. The girl was muttering angrily to herself as she tried to figure out which battery to get for her Nissan.

"Chart's right here," Mike quietly said.

"Uh huh, but my car's not on there," Rhonda had snapped. "And Tweedle Dum over there is too busy get off his fat ass and come over here."

"So what kind of car you got?" Mike asked.

He located the battery she needed and even offered to put it in for her. 'Tweedle Dum' did glare at her as he rang up the purchase.

"So, where's the car?" Mike asked as he lugged the heavy battery out of the store.

"Seventeenth and Jackson," Rhonda said bitterly. "Had to walk here."

Mike drove his Ford F250 to the apartment complex and installed the new battery. Charles 'Bud' Livingston, Rhonda's father came out and talked with Mike. Bud found out that the twenty four year old man was gainfully employed with Curtis Construction, was a bit of a 'shade-tree mechanic and liked ice cold Coors beer.

"Well, son, going date my daughter, need save up every penny you can," Bud had chuckled. "Girl never saw a shiny thing she didn't just have to have."

"Dad!" Rhonda huffed, glancing at the handsome young man.

Mike Morrison had sandy blonde hair, a strong, square face and light blue eyes. His brawny build and his tanned skin told Rhonda he spent a lot of time doing hard, physical labor, spent a lot of time in the sun. If she had not been so angry when they had first met, she would have flirted with him.

Just when she was working up the courage to start flirting, start thrusting her compact backside toward him, her father came out of the apartment. Just when she had planned to start 'accidentally' brushing against the substantial lump she could see in the young man's tight jeans, her father had started talking.

Rhonda fought down the wince when Mike glanced over at her. His face bore no emotions; just a cool little smile.

"Good to know," Mike nodded to Bud as he closed the hood on Rhonda's car.

Frank Meyers, 'Tweedle Dum' called Mike a few days later.

"Hey Mike, know that snotty little bitch helped with the battery other day?" Frank laughed. "Came in here looking for your phone number. Give it to her?"

"Uh, yeah, yeah, guess so, sure, go ahead," Mike agreed.

Mike found out that Bud Livingston was right. Rhonda suffered from the disease of 'More.' She saw something, saw that it was good, and had to have more of it. When Mike picked the girl up for their second date, Bud showed Mike Rhonda's bulging closet, showed Mike the collection of shoes and boots and sandals and six pairs of flip-flops.

"Six pairs. Six pairs of flip flops. Hey, Rhonda, that's one for each toe, huh?" Bud teased.

On their second date, Mike also found out that Rhonda loved sex. She even had an orgasm just by sucking on his cock.

Anal sex was something Rhonda had to be drunk for. Fortunately for Mike, Rhonda was a cheap drunk. Three cans of beer was her limit. But after three cans of beer, Rhonda would be screaming for Mike to 'fuck her nasty.'

Pregnancy agreed with Rhonda. Mildly attractive when they'd first started dating, Rhonda blossomed as her pregnancy progressed. By the time she gave birth to Michelle Christina Morrison, Rhonda's 31A breasts had filled out to 34C and her flat backside had become a nice bubble butt. Spin class and Pilate and Yoga trimmed the baby bulge of her belly and Rhonda started turning heads when she walked into shops in the Raquel Falls Mall or the slightly trendier shops in the Benhurst Mall.

At first, Rhonda did resent her daughter; the infant was getting all the attention, all the gifts from Mike, from Bud and Gladys Livingston, from Mike's coworkers. She convinced Mike that she needed to get braces, convinced that if she was prettier, she'd get more attention, more gifts, more compliments.

Rhonda had just had the bulky orthodontic braces removed, revealing a beautiful smile when they discovered that she was pregnant again.

"Really? Really? Just got my ass into a four and I'm pregnant again?" Rhonda shrilled. "Mike! Michael Arthur Morrison, you're getting a vasectomy, you hear?"

"Huh. No. No one's cutting on Big Mike's Big Mike," Mike calmly said, gently rocking his sleepy little girl.

Being a mother did curb some of Rhonda's demands, did whittle away some of her wish list items. She seemed to grow into the realization that some of her wants and desires did have to take second place to the needs and wants of her children.

Now, sitting at his kitchen table, Mike poured the remainder of his third beer down the sink, rinsed the can out and threw it into the recycling bin. In the morning, he'd ask Lyle to recommend a good attorney. Overall, he did agree with the demands in Rhonda's petition; she didn't work, so she should have primary custody of their children. He was fine with paying her child support, was fine with paying half the medical and educational expenses. He did wonder how Rhonda planned to pay for the other half; probably had manipulated John Piercy into agreeing to pay the other half.

But Rhonda was also demanding half his retirement accounts, demanding half his home's value, even though Mike had owned the home outright before they'd even met. And Rhonda had not contributed a single cent to the retirement account.

Lyle Curtis stared at Mike when the man approached him about a good lawyer. He listened, face growing redder and redder as Mike talked.

"That, no-good, that snake! That snake!" Lyle thundered.

"Exactly what I called him," Mike smiled tightly.

"I thought, Dang it, now wish I'd said something, God dog it," Lyle snapped as he dug through his wallet.

"Said something about..." Mike prompted as Lyle read one of the business cards from his wallet.

"Picnic, seen John hanging around Rhonda; looked kind of too friendly," Lyle admitted, handing Mike a business card. "Here, that's Trenton's daughter. One kept Mary Lynn from getting half the company when she up and left me last, good God, it already been three, heck, it has been three years. Huh! Anyway, thought John was hanging around Rhonda little too much, but then Rhonda did have on that outfit, you know?"

Mike did remember the outfit. Rhonda had taken a man's button up shirt and knotted it underneath her 34C breasts, leaving her flat belly bare, showing off her new gold heart navel ring. The cut-off shorts also showed off her sleek tanned legs.

Barbara Trenton was a harsh faced woman with a lean, muscular body. She listened to Mike's story, read over the receipts and bank statements, noting all of Rhonda's expenditures as well as her lack of contributions to the household account. She then read over the petition for divorce, made some changes, and faxed the revised documents to Brian White, Rhonda's attorney.

"We'll probably have to go into mediation, but I've got to tell you, Mr. Morrison, looking over the amount of money your wife likes to spend? I'm amazed you managed any kind of savings at all," Barbara confided to Mike. "And the fact that she contributed not penny one?"

"Yeah, well, Lyle's a good man work for," Mike said.

"Uh huh," Barbara smiled lightly.

Barbara's intuition was correct; they did have to go into mediation. Rhonda bitterly contested the revised changes to the petition. She saw the money as hers, saw the house as hers.

During the period of time from leaving, until the meeting with the mediator, Rhonda also made it difficult for Mike to have any time with his children. Any time Mike complained, Rhonda would smugly tell him he should have just signed the original petition.

Lyle Curtis also did his part during this period. He spoke to anyone that would listen, told them about John Piercy's stealing another man's wife, stealing another man's children.

Building supply retailers suddenly refused to extend credit to Piercy Construction. Having to pay cash for bags of concrete, pallets of bricks, rebars, two by fours, two by sixes, cdx boards put a definite dent in John's available funds. But when his bank dragged their feet on fronting some speculation houses in a new subdivision, John was livid.

The weekends Mike did have his children, they were moody, sullen, uncommunicative. Michelle and Mickey did tell Mike of the fun toys John and Mom bought for them, the fun places they'd gone to, the fun things they did.

"We could be water-skiing if we were with Mom and Mr. John," Michelle sneered when Mike suggested going to the Y.

"Yeah, Dad," Mickey said. "I even got a boogie board."

When John Piercy put in a bid for a new office building in Raquel Falls, the board looked at the proposal, then at the smiling John Piercy. The CEO of the company did not smile.

"You, you're living with a woman that you're not married to?" Harley Rittmuller asked.

"Uh, what? What's that got to do with..." John sputtered, the question catching him off-guard.

"One that's already married?" Leon Weischmann asked.

"Piercy Construction has been doing quality work for over twenty years," John yelled.

"This is a four million dollar job, Mr. Piercy," Harley said flatly.

"Four million of our dollars," George Schmidt said. "And we're just not comfortable giving four million of our dollars to a man has proven to be untrustworthy."

"So, thank you, but we've decided to go with someone else, Mr. Piercy," Harley concluded.

John Piercy was livid when he saw Lyle Curtis and Harley Rittmuller, Leon Weischmann and Mike Morrison smiling faces on the evening news. The newscaster spoke of the ground-breaking ceremony that had been held earlier that day.

"Four million. Four fucking million dollars," John muttered bitterly as the four men laughed as all four attempted, poorly, to all use the symbolic shovel together to dig the first shovel of earth.

John's mood went from bad to worse when Ray Mangetti, one of his painters let him know his paycheck had been returned, NSF. Ray had been with John since his first day in business and now stood, smiling nervously in John's office.

"I mean, hey, you know, I mean, shit happens, you know?" Ray said. "Freda? You know, my wife? Swears up and down she sent in the payment, you know? Find it, still in her purse two days later, you know? But, hey, you know, I uh, you know, I need get paid, you know?"

A homeowner hired John to do a basement remodel and John found that all of his workers were now working for Curtis, working on the Raquel Falls Fellowship Baptist Church, or the Rittmuller Office Suites. He had no choice but to tell the homeowner he could not do the job.

Brian White, the attorney that John had hired for Rhonda also insisted on being paid. Rhonda went to use one of her credit cards and found that Mike had cancelled all of the cards. Bud grudgingly agreed to loan Rhonda the money.

"Honestly? Think ought go tell Mike you're sorry, beg him forgive you," Bud grumbled to his daughter. "Uh, seem to remember you married him. Promised forsake all others. Yeah, remember that well; I paid for that wedding."

Michael Schiff, the court appointed mediator looked at the petition Rhonda had submitted, and the revised petition Mike had submitted, paperwork, looked over the bank statements, looked over the receipts, then listened to both arguments. His face took on a dark cast when Barbara Trenton played the tape of Mike complaining about lack of access to their children and Rhonda's smug reply that if he had signed the original petition he'd have more time with his children.

"So, Mrs. Morrison, the children are pawns? Want money, use the children?" Michael snapped.

"Uh, it's not like that," Brian White said. "But Mrs. Morrison does have expenses..."

"Mr. Morrison also has expenses. And Mr. Morrison has faithfully sent in his child support each month," Michael said, indicating Mike's bank statements. "As for Mrs. Morrison's own expenses? Might I suggest Mrs. Morrison get a job?"

Mike's thirty ninth birthday was a month after the hollow victory in the mediation. He called Rhonda on her new cell phone, the cell phone John Piercy was paying for and requested the children come with him to celebrate.

"Nothing fancy, just go to Benny's Burger Bar, you know?" Mike said, forcing himself to sound cheerful.

It still hurt to talk to his wife. Her betrayal was still quite raw. Rhonda had dressed up, had her hair done for the mediation and had looked good, beautiful.

"Your dad wants take you guys to Benny's Burger Bar; it's his birthday," Rhonda snapped.

Mike's heart broke when he heard his daughter whine, "God! Do I have to?"

"Uh, Mike?" Rhonda said, trying to think of an excuse.

But the call had been terminated. Rhonda sighed and hit his number. She left a message when his voice mail picked up.

"Hey, guess call got dropped; you're probably still talking away," she said, forcing her voice to sound cheerful. "Anyway, Michelle already had plans; Mickey does too. Maybe you guys can do something this weekend, huh?"

Friday afternoon, Rhonda waited for the phone call that Mike was on his way to pick up his children. Michelle was complaining about having to go; she had struck up a friendship with Kate Lynn Grady, the thirteen year old girl next door and would rather be with her new friend than with her dorky dad.

Mickey was just sullen, moody. Whenever Rhonda asked him what was wrong, Mickey's answer was a terse 'Nothing.'

Five thirty came and went. Six o'clock ticked by and still there was no call from Mike.

At six thirty, Rhonda called Mike's phone and got the message that the number was no longer in service. Puzzled, she punched the number '3' on her keypad again. Again, she got the message.

"About ready?" John asked Rhonda, coming down the stairs in a dark suit.

"It look like we're ready?" Rhonda asked. "Mike hasn't picked the kids up yet."

"Well, call the fucking cock sucker, huh?" John spat, handsome face twisted in anger.

"Gee, great idea John, why didn't I think of that?" Rhonda snapped. "Uh, oh wait, I did, and his number's not in service."

"Good," John gloated. "Fucking ass hole's having a hard time too, huh?"

"Come on, guys," Rhonda sighed, slipping her four inch heels on. "Get your stuff; we'll drop you guys off at your dad's."

"Was going take the 'vette," John complained.

"John, the clients will be inside," Rhonda said. "They won't see the car. Come on; we're going be late."

John grumbled angrily, but grabbed the key for the Mercedes-Benz. Michelle grumbled angrily as she got into the car. Mickey glowered angrily and got into the car.

"Oh my God," Rhonda gasped when she saw the Gold Standard Real Estate sign in front of Mike's house.

"Come on, come on, they're already there," John ordered Michelle and Mickey. "Let's go, get out, huh?"

"John, they can't stay here, he's not here," Rhonda shrilled, seeing that none of the windows had curtains.