Anders

8 Killing Season

Bryan

I was born in the summer and quickly became accustomed to the sting of the sun on my skin. Heat didn't faze me. My parents often said Blake and I were too busy trying to absorb our surroundings to care about the burn of the sun or the weight of the world. Our adventurous spirits and devil may care approach to life made us dangerous very early in life.

I suppose sensibility was never encoded in our DNA. Our mother, Clementine, was raised in the chaos and danger of a life of crime. Her father ran a profitable criminal enterprise specializing in the drug trade. He dabbled in prostitution as well. She was the sweetest person in the world, a loving soul. As an adult she opened her own café that also sold books.

Phillip, Blake and I used to try and run wild among the sparse shelves and tables as children. One stern look from Clementine Anders was all it took to strike fear into our fearless little hearts. Then we became perfectly well-behaved little monsters. A small woman, with shimmering blond hair, a soft dimpled smile and gentle soft blue eyes, my mother didn't appear intimidating; but we knew better.

Unlike Papa.

He wasn't an especially domineering man, but his face remained stern. His sharp eyes, sniper's eyes, never missed a thing and it served him well. Phillip was born while papa was still in the army. Blake and I didn't come into his life until he retired from the Army and became an enforcer.

Pierre Anders earned a reputation for brutality. People said the only time they ever saw him smile was when someone was begging for mercy; it humored him. I suppose it's possible that was true. It would explain why his children were nothing less than monsters.

But I was never privy to that side of my father. He was stern enough but not cruel or cold. Mama had a worse temper than him. She was sweet until she wasn't. And when that happened it was very clear who her father was and how she could marry a man like Pierre Anders.

While Blake earned her sweetness from my mother, I took on the temper. One wrong move could find a person with a new hole in their body if I was so moved. Blake always carried my father's temperament. She could hide her rage better.

Though they were both incredibly dangerous and lethal, Papa and Blake, they were a touch slower to anger; only by a hair. Phillip, with his smart mouth, was sharp like my father and looked more like my mother. He became a surgeon before he parlayed his skills into a criminal enterprise.

Seven years our senior, Phillip greatly influenced Blake and me. As children he taught us schemes and petty crimes like picking locks and pockets. He gave me my first cigarette, showed me my first boobs and paid for me to get my first blow job.

And when he learned I was gay, he paid for my first blow job from a guy.

With his medical knowledge, Phillip followed in my father's footsteps as an enforcer. He bored of it quickly and focused on torture. He created a network of medical professionals for the criminals while simultaneously torturing information out of countless victims.

Everything I knew of torture was rooted in my time spent with him while he worked. He showed me the art in it. I learned about the human body with the same detail as I learned about the tools he used.

I suppose with family roots like mine I was always destined to become a monster, a story told to scare people into compliance. From the beginning we learned how to appear to fit into a mold, a stereotype, so that we could operate freely to exorcise our demons as we saw fit.

My Master's in Economics and Blake's MBA only served to further that agenda. We came to America to further our education academically and worldly. And we wanted to spread our wings to see just how far we could go when no one really knew the Anders name.