A Better Life

By Eddie C Dollgener, Jr

Jason has had enough of the severe physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his mother and the perverted sexual assaults from his step-father. He decides to run away one night. His best friend, Michael, chooses to go with him as he tries to go to Hollywood to establish a better life for himself. Jason can not escape his past, though, and the two boys find themselves in a situation as bad as the one left behind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eddie C Dollgener, Jr
• Release date: May 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463249185

Eddie C Dollgener, Jr

I currently live in East Texas. In July, 2014, I suffered a stroke that threatened to circumvent my desires for a meaningful life. Thanks to a wonderful rehab team out of Tyler, I was able to recover most of my functions for daily living, though I still get exhausted on some days. I am a Christian, a father to one daughter and a mentor to countless youth over the past 20 plus years in ministry. I have taught a Sunday school class and a weekly program to children about missionaries through a program called Royal Ambassadors. I am currently a youth director at my church, as well as a community healthcare advocate and a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate for abused children) volunteer. Although my ultimate goal in life is to write full-time and be able to go on medical mission trips or disaster relief teams, the reality is that most writers have to work extra jobs to support their dreams. I advocate for keeping families together through life coaching and volunteer work. Only recently have I been able to take up the habit of writing again, so expect to see some more works in the near future. My interest in becoming a writer actually started around my twelfth birthday. My mother gave me a book, “Little Men,” by Louisa May Alcott, that became my first inclination that I would want to live adventures through written words. I began writing short stories and poems in high school and then started writing novels in the late 1980’s. My first efforts at creative writing were poems created between classes in high school. I actually had a decent collection of about fifty, but sadly, they were lost over time from various moves in my younger years. My first publication was a poem entitled “Throw Away Child,” that was published in a national anthology. About 1987 I first began to write full-length novels. At the time, I was a big Stephen King fan and thought that writing horror novels was the way to get into mainstream publishing. I started a novel that eventually split into two novels. “Circle of the Rose” began life as “A Rose for Tommy,” and now is titled “Unholy Cult of the Blood Rose.” The original story was about a boy who suffered from horrific abuse and travelled to a dream world in his sleep to escape his tormentors. After writing it out, which is what I try to do with anything I create, the plots just sounded too cheesy to work for me. I extracted the “real” life work from the “imaginary” one and found that I actually had two viable novels from one. “Unholy Cult of the Blood Rose” is a horror novel that I wrote to address the issue of child abuse. In a way, it was a therapeutic work of art helping me to deal with the demons in my past childhood. I do not wish to delve any further at the moment, but if you take the time to read the introduction to that novel, you may have a better understanding of what message I was trying, and may still be trying, to convey. The second novel that split from the original became “Unbinder.” That work of literature is still in progress. It will actually become three separate books as a series and is a fantasy set in another world with young lovers, old dragons, battling sorcerers and an evil overlord. My latest foray into modern literature is a drama written out as serialized fiction. “Kevin’s Homecoming” represents the latest genre that I am working in and has become the most rewarding for me, both in its creation, and in the publishing aspect. May God bless you richly in the coming days, Eddie C Dollgener Jr

Book preview

A Better Life

By

Eddie C Dollgener Jr

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Eddie C Dollgener Jr

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All rights reserved. Except as allowed under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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A Better Life

Jason stretched out on the living room sofa. A slight yawn escaped his mouth. The baseball game really wore him out. It was extremely hot outside. Yesterday, the temperature reached up to one hundred degrees and it was not even the middle of June yet. Outside, the sun beat down on the little town of Lorena with unrelenting fury. The hot desert winds that roared into the West Texas Town brought painful stinging dust clouds. During the summer months, most afternoons were void of playing children, who sought refuge, just as Jason had, in the safety of their homes.

Jason still relished the home run he slammed over the rusty fence at the ballfield. It helped his team win the game. The feeling left him somewhat elated. He looked up at the ceiling and smiled. He watched repeatedly in his mind's eye as the small white ball sailed a good twenty feet beyond the fence. He had put every ounce of strength into that swing despite the hitch in his right arm. He had missed most of the first of the season with a broken elbow. He had been their star pitcher up until then. If he had not been so stupid, he would have been able to play the whole season.

Jason turned on the television just in time to catch the last of Tom and Jerry. That was his favorite cartoon. The sun coming through the window felt too warm. Dust particles danced in the beams. He watched the cartoons until the afternoon news began. With his energy rebounding just like many other eleven-year olds, he was ready to go back outside and do something else. If it had not been for the cartoons and the heat, he would not have even gone home.

Jason walked across the street to where his best friend lived. Michael was only a few months older than he was. They had been best friends since before he could remember. When Jason was not playing baseball, he spent most of this time at Michael's house.

The other boy was a bookworm. Michael could read five books in one week and still manage to play games with Jason, who struggled to read one book in two weeks.

Mrs. Wharton answered the door and smiled at Jason as she shook her head. Michael is at the library and will not be back until later this evening. You can come back after dinner and watch movies with him, if you like.

Jason expressed disappointment. It is too far to walk in the heat to town to the library. Disappointed, he turned around to go back home.

I can drive you up there, Mrs. Wharton offered. I really do not mind.

No! Jason realized his answer was too abrupt. Mother does not want me to leave the neighborhood. I will be alright.

Mrs. Wharton’s smile faltered. Okay. We will see you tonight?

Yes, ma’am, Jason thought Mrs. Wharton was the most beautiful woman on earth. Can we watch a scary movie?

The woman’s smile returned. It cannot be too scary. I do not want you boys to have any nightmares tonight. Bring your pajamas.

Jason started to tell her that he did not have any pajamas. It was unlikely that he would have permission to spend the night at Michael’s house, anyways. He turned to walk back home, but had to wait a moment as a tumbleweed, taller than he was, rolled past. The wind that pushed it along its trek brought paper cups, tin cans, and various other detritus from the center of town. He saw a red and white soda can and he licked his dry lips, thirsting for a cold, sweet drink.

When Jason re-entered his house, instead of sitting down to watch more television, he went upstairs to his bedroom. His bedroom was typical of most young boys' bedrooms, although a bit too neat.

Where Michael had his reading skills to entertain him, Jason chose model building to escape his boredom and fuel his imagination. On his desk sat an unfinished diorama of a tank rolling through a meadow. One of its tracks rested on the gut of a fallen soldier. He could never seem to make that soldier flat enough.

Next to the model sat a picture of Jason’s Daddy when he was still alive. He could not remember much of Daddy. He could remember some of the hugs and kisses that he longed for now. He remembered a camping trip, the last good memory he had, to a place called Clayton Lake, Oklahoma. That had been almost five years ago. They had been fishing from a canoe in the middle of the lake. The memory was all that remained of a better life.

Not long after the camping trip, when he had been working on an oilrig near Ambrose, Daddy suffered a heart attack that caused his death. He fell from the top of the rig into the steel skeleton of the structure. The injuries from the fall had been so terrible that they would not open the casket at the funeral. Jason could not kiss Daddy one last time goodbye.

Jason jumped up on his bed, something he did not dare do when Mother was around. Above his bed an unfinished mobile sported model WWII aircraft. An F-4U Corsair pursued a Japanese Zero. He tapped the mobile so that the planes spun around each other in a mock dogfight. He rested back on his bed and watched them until he fell asleep.

Jason had been asleep no more than an hour when he heard Mother enter the house. She was humming quietly to herself, which indicated that she was in a good mood. Still, he had to be careful what he did around her. One wrong move could bring disaster. He did not dare go down to meet her. He had learned that that valuable lesson when he was barely five. She had to call him first, and if she did, he would have to be there in an instant.

He listened very carefully as she began to work in the kitchen. He worried that he had done something wrong or left a mess and that she was going to find it. He could not remember if he had cleaned up his dishes from lunch, which had consisted of peanut butter and half of a banana forgotten at the back of the refrigerator.

To ease his worries, he stood up on the side of his bed next to the window. He looked to see if Michael's bicycle leaned against the old post cut from a long dead tree. It was