1.
Nick's notorious father Jack Allan Fesseden passed away that fall. Leaving to his children a vast fortune and an uncertain legacy.
Nick rushed home from an extended vacation to Europe to help make the final arrangements and attend the funeral. He arrived to find his numerous siblings in an uproar. While the rest of their father's fortune was intact and accounted for in his will, the possession that they all coveted the most was unaccounted for- the Ring was missing.
About a dozen men and women gathered that day at the cemetery to see Nick's father off into the afterlife. Jack Fesseden was not a particularly loved by those that were gathered around his grave that gray afternoon, but they were the only ones who could have been said to be on the old man's good side, if one could even argue Jack Fesseden had a good side.
He was a true lecher. His appetites were as legendary as was his ability to find ways to satiate his desires... He had dated Hollywood stars and Supermodels. He traveled the globe and spent money with wild abandon. He garnered something of an ill reputation in the gossip columns of Paris and New York. He always had three or four young women in his entourage that he slept with and verbally chastised in public.
These women always seemed somehow strange... They talked and acted normal, yet there was something vacant about their expressions. Their eyes seemed dead, thoughtless. They were completely devoted to Jack when he was around, becoming very meek and subservient in his presence. Jack seemed to hold an unnatural power over them. They were his absolute slaves, mentally and physically. Many people thought that the whole scene was
too creepy
and suspected all sorts of things from Nick's Dad. It was said that he was a witch, a cult leader, or a pimp. Some thought he was a mind controller working for the CIA or KGB, like something out of a bad spy movie... Other's thought that Jack had ties to the white slave trade, but absolutely nothing could ever be proven about Jack. He remained a mystery to the town's citizens.
But those that were observant and had time to watch the intricacies of Jack Fesseden's life knew that his strange power over all people revolved around the gold ring he constantly wore on his right hand. He often played with it while he was talking to people, especially among the members of his entourage. The family that knew Jack in his later years believed that the Ring had something to do with Jack's strange powers over people. He refused to talk about it, and grew very irate if you asked him any questions. There was no doubt that the ring was the key to Jack's powers. Now no one knew where the Ring was, except for the corpse that they were watching be put forever into the earth.
The expressions on Nick's family's faces were not ones of sadness or mourning, they seemed rather almost annoyed. No one had seen the ring since he died. The various women that were staying with him at that time: a film actress from New York and several members of the Philadelphia Eagles cheerleading squad, were all suspected of stealing it and the police were called in... Nothing turned up; they said that Jack hadn't been seen with the ring for a least a week before he died. IT seemed that the old man had thwarted them one last time from beyond the grave. Nick imagined the old man looking down, or up, in his case, as laughing his ass off.
They listened to the priest's bleak message about avoiding a life living without repentance and then watched them slowly lower him into the ground. Three of Nick's Half-Sisters were whispering amongst each other, plotting. He knew they were going back to Dad's estate to search for the ring. Nick knew it would be a waste of time.
Nick knew that his father had done something purposeful with his beloved ring. His father probably knew he was dying and took steps to keep the wrong parties from coming into control of his mysterious ring. Whatever sorts of power it had, his father wanted to be sure that it did not pass into the wrong hands. And since it was no secret he thought that most of his children were whiney and brainless, he would make sure that none of them would get the ring... But the question that remained was... What did his Dad do with the ring? Who now held its power?
"Well Nick, what are you going to do after the wake?" Nick's brother Harvey, three years older and in Law School at University of Montana, came up and patted him on the back.
"I don't know. I thought about trying to go grab a couple of drinks at one of my old drinking holes. Maybe call a couple of the old girlfriends; it's been a while since I got laid. Nice service, huh?"
"Yeah, I guess so... But I can't stop thinking about that ring. "
"Yeah, it's weird that they haven't found it. I wonder what he did with it... You don't think that Dad would have thrown it in the river or destroyed it or something, do you?" I asked him.
"Yeah, I do. The old bastard would love to do something exactly like that. Just to screw us a little more as his final earthly act..." Harvey said. They slowly walked from the gravesite up the hill to the limousines. "Are you going to take a limo? I am going to have some of the family meet over at my house for drinks and diner. You are completely welcome. I would love you to me Julie, my wife, she's a great cook."
"No, thanks though, I don't think that I am going to make it to the house... I'm going back to my apartment to lie down for a while and think about things. I think that I need a few minutes to myself after the last couple of days."
"Okay Pal. See you later?" He looked down at me a smiled. "You should come over sometime, have diner with Julie and the kid. A night away from the bars."
"Definitely. I will call... Later."
Harvey nodded and Nick walked down to the parking lot next the small stone chapel. He got into his Lexus and pulled out onto Cornell Road and headed downtown to his apartment. After he got home, he briefly considered calling one of his ex-girlfriends, see if they wanted to come over and let him work out his aggressions on their bodies. He tried to call his last girlfriend, but there was no answer.
He heated a frozen pizza and watched some Discovery Channel. It was mid-afternoon and he needed to rest and think about what he was going to do next... Maybe he would go back to Europe, Greece or somewhere warm. He also knew that a couple of his buddies had taken up semi-residence in Thailand, maybe he would go there and whore around for a couple of weeks. He loved the sex available to him in SE Asia... Boys, girls, young, old, innocent, dirty, all of it was there for the taking...
