Mule Skinner

To be perfectly clear, anyone who wants to use this as a spring board for their writing is free to do so. Enjoy.

I wrote this quite a while back. Does not have an ending. Does not really go anywhere. No real sex in it, but if there was, everyone would be over eighteen. Most of you probably need to skip it. It will only lead to frustration.

CHAPTER 1

I met my wife through online gaming. My avatar was a half elf female cleric. Gaming was my main hobby and I figured if I was going to spend that many hours staring at my incarnation the view should at least be nice.

My character's name was Rye. I was always upfront with people I played with that I was a guy. There was no flirting, I did not accept 'gifts' from other players. I was just there to play the game and had no interest in their personal fantasy's. I was not equipped to help with those fantasies in the real world.

The guys I regularly played with accepted me as one of them with the exception of Mead. He was a dwarf. In fantasy worlds dwarves and elves often argue. I thought he was role playing the first couple weeks we played together. Picking on me to stay in character. As time went on, I realized he was not just teasing me, he was flirting. It got uncomfortable. I changed the times I played. I tried to avoid him. I reminded him that I really was a guy. I started thinking about building a different main character. I even considered quitting the game.

We finally went to a private chatroom to have it out. I lead with something like, "I'm a guy, you got to quit hitting on me dude!"

Mead disagreed. "I should not have to. I'm the same as you sweetheart."

"Look I enjoy gaming with you. We work well together. I like chatting with you too. You are fun to hang with. But the flirting has to stop. I may look this way online, but I am a real guy and there is no future for us. There is no us." I actually ranted for a while. Assuring him I was not going to start playing for the other team and threatening him if he was jacking off to my avatar images. I had bottled it up too long and finally let it all go. I said a lot of things that were over the line. I concluded with something to the effect that all the flirting had to stop now! That I was not going to put up with any more of his crap. He had better clean up his act or we would not even be friends.

Mead had one last shot at me. "You know I'm a gal, right?" She sent a screen shot of her at her desk. She was a knock out.

Within a week we had met in real life and started dating. I was twenty, she was seventeen. When she turned eighteen, she moved in with me. Academically I was a little further along than most of my peers and I graduated at twenty-one, switched to full time at my job and married Miss Brandy Mead.

Super powers have existed since the beginning. The number of people having super powers has always been small. Generally, they don't awaken until puberty. There are cases of gals younger than eight gaining their powers, there are records of guys in their thirties finally awakening. Many super powers are not impressive. Telling time without a watch, knowing how much someone weighs just by looking at them are not impressive powers.

Couple that with truly impressive powers that are accidentally fatal (spontaneous combustion, teleports incompatible with life, transformations that make you a target for wildlife etc.) and it is pretty easy to see why so many people denied their existence until they came up with a test.

A lot happened all at once in the world. Worldwide economic problems forced a lot of changes. Our country reorganized and changed its name to Unity. All the kids had to be tested and register for the draft when they turned eighteen in our country, but they only drafted people with extraordinary powers.

Another branch of the armed services was banded together. The Trans-Dimensional Defense Service (TDDS), dungeon divers, was formed because shortly after learning how to detect supers, we figured out how to locate portals into interdimensional space. Raiding those spaces for other worldly resources became a big deal.

Brandy Mead and I were exempt from this gold rush. We had both flunked our superhero test when we were eighteen. We were not hero material. My name is Ryan Palmer. The love of my life calls me Rye.

When I turned twenty-five my wife became pregnant. At twenty-two she was having our first baby. It was very stressful for me. That may be why I evidenced super powers. In rare cases people sometimes developed powers as late as thirty years old. I was a late bloomer, not a miracle. Brandy and I talked it over and I decided not to register with the government. They already had their shot at me. The TDDS had a bad reputation of being treasure hunters for the government. My plan was to work from home and bond with my wife and daughter. Live my life.

I came from a broken home. My mom divorced my dad at an early age. He was an income resource to her, Nothing else. She made sure the two of us never really developed a relationship. I spent very little time with my father. He paid my way through college, paid court ordered support and otherwise was a ghost in my life.

I did not get along with Brandy's family. Her mom and dad were separated. Her mom, grandmother and sister always had negative things to say about me and men in general. They had been pretty rough on Brandy too, which was why she was so happy to get away from them. They were always stirring the pot, creating problems. I supported moderation, they pressed for abstinence.

At the end of a hard day, Brandy liked to relax with a beer. I felt she deserved a cold one now and then. Her family disagreed. More than that, they painted me as a villain trying to poison our unborn daughter. Honestly, we are talking about a beer or two a week. When I bought her near beer, they went ballistic claiming it was a gateway drug. There was a great deal of overblown drama.

When my wife was having trouble eating and holding things down her sister showed up with weed. I am pretty much against drugs that have no government oversight but my sister by law brow beat me into submission pointing out that if we could get my wife to eat and hold it down, we could keep her out of the hospital. Against my better judgement. I went along with her. When my mother-in-law found out about it, she ripped me a new asshole and gave both of her daughter's hall passes. My sister-in-law even made fun of me.

We were getting ready to bring a third member into our family and it was a time for bonding. Instead, we were fighting about nonsense her family dreamed up. Her sister randomly decided to be the birthing coach even though she refused to come to any of the classes.

Grandma had a litany of outdated ideas Brandy had to agree to. She was probably the one who decided there should be no sex. I foolishly believed that should be my wife's decision.

The gals were going to tag team us after the birth and take care of Brandy 24-7. I was already fed up with them and needing a break from in laws. Somewhere along the line somebody dropped a line to the government telling them I had awakened super powers. The Unity government invited me down for testing. Without a new test I was still ineligible for the draft. So, it was annoying but not life changing. My awakened super power was something I had only shared with my wife, but now the government knew. I accused Brady of wanting me serving in the TDDS for the next two years instead of being home with her and our daughter. She cried and claimed she had not told anyone. Certainly, never told the government.

It was not nice, but I felt she had told her family who had in turn sold me out trying to get the bounty for finding me. I wanted her fighting them instead of me. I wanted her back on my side. I wanted her family to leave us alone. It did not work out.

Brandy was getting exhausted by work and the commute back and forth. We had agreed it was time for her to go on leave. Her OB GYN agreed it was time to put work on hold and concentrate on baby. Her family decided she should keep working until the baby dropped so she would have more time to bond after our daughter was born. I was the bad guy for standing up for her and frustrated when my wife sold me down river as easily as my in-laws did.

On Monday she was supposed to start pregnancy leave, instead she got dressed for work and headed out early barely looking at me. I felt our marriage was in trouble. I would have to go out of my way to make the peace tonight.

I work from home. I was an analyst for my company and did not need to be at an office to do my job. I could work anywhere there was internet. It was midmorning when the doorbell rang. I thought Brandy must have bought something for our daughter and was a little excited to see what it was.

I was greeted by two police officers. The young woman explained there had been an accident and my wife had died in the car. I went with them to the morgue to identify the body.

Her face and hands had been badly burned while she was trapped in the car. I was able to identify her feet and legs because I was massaging them at least twice a day to keep the swelling down. She had a distinctive scar on her right foot that happened when she was nine. She had me paint her nails the night before because she could not reach her feet. I knew it was her.

My bad day got immediately worse when my wife's family banded to together to blame me for her death. I dropped them.

I had my wife and daughter cremated. Held a memorial service on line then had their ashes scattered at sea. Her family could do whatever they wanted. They had some bad posts about me online according to my mother. Their final interaction with me was when they lobbied for a part of the insurance settlement. They were no longer allowed in my life.

The leak that my powers had awakened was a gift that kept on giving. Every time I thought about making peace with my wife's family, I would get a text, Email, a call or a snail mail from Unity or the TDDS encouraging me to come in for my absolutely free testing. They even promised the results would be absolutely confidential. Of course, they were the ones I was trying to keep in the dark so it was a total mess.

It got so bad I actually broke down and cried to my playmates. They suggested I join the French Foreign Legion. The dungeon branch was pretty much an old west style shoot from the hip organization that made up the rules as it went along. I could list it as alternate service with Unity, ten percent of my pay would go to Unity but I would still take in more than if I was with the TDDS and got paid a salary. I could enlist under a pseudonym and the legion would help get the government off my back. I could work part time and not have to relocate.

I was feeling a little suicidal and signed up for their officer testing. I scored really high on all of the written exams an was offered a chief sergeant major in Le Corps Donjon. When I signed on the dotted line they offered me two weekends of officer training in the actual dungeon. The highest-ranking candidates would be offered a commission as a second lieutenant. I discovered the online game I had been playing as Rye was actually used as a training exercise for the dungeon. No wonder I tested well.

My skill was Eviscerate, but it had a sub set, "Exuviate".

I met the kids at the work shop. I was twenty-five going on one hundred after losing my wife and daughter in a pointless one car traffic wreck. The officers were eighteen to twenty. The people signed up for the workshop were children. I got to talking to a tall dark-haired girl who called herself Petra Stone, she admitted to being twelve. She was not the youngest one there. They were all emancipated adults.

*****

So, I like it. Not really thinking of adding to it. If someone out there thinks they know where this should go, please give it a shot. Do with it what you like.

For those of you who wanted a lot more, my apologies, but I did try to warn you.

To be perfectly clear, anyone who wants to use this as a spring board for their writing is free to do so. Enjoy.

Anyone expecting a lot more, I am truly sorry. Hopefully there is someone out there who knows the rest of Rye's story.