For Nevermore Season 1

yawning and rubbing his eyes, exhausted. “Can you do me a favor and clock me out when you go back to the station? I don’t feel like driving all the way back.”
    “No problem, but it might not be for a half hour or so. I’m starving.”
    “Yeah, no problem,” Randy said. “Thanks.”
    “See ya.” Barnes said with a yawn, then pulled away.
    Randy waited until Barnes turned left toward town, then pulled from Harry’s and drove in the opposite direction.
    He didn’t feel like heading home just yet. He needed to blow some steam off first, so he headed up the road, then took a right, hitting the highway.

    **

    As Randy sped down the highway, he found himself thinking about all the ridiculous tension he’d been having with Josie. The tension that seemed to be growing worse by the day. The boil rolling between them hadn’t been that bad for a while. Their last argument wasn’t even an argument, not really, but only because he’d been too smart to let things get that far. He saw where things were headed, so he put a cease and desist on the conversation, slamming the door and hitting the street before things got heated again.
    He wasn’t sure what was going on with that woman lately, but he didn’t like this new defiance. Josie was talking back to him like some kind of bratty teenager, like a Noella with crow’s feet. She must’ve been hanging out with the brat a little too much lately, since the two of them were obviously hatching things behind his back.
    After reading through Noella’s endless stream of disgusting Facebook messages, Randy finally realized just how bad things had gotten, right under his nose. It was all he could do to keep himself from grabbing the brat by her hair, dragging her outside, and telling her to get the heck out of his house.
    “ Randy’s so mean!”
    Randy mimicked the messages Noella had sent her idiot friends.
    “ He’s so gross.”
    “He never lets me do anything.”
    Randy mouthed a few more, filling the empty cruiser with his impressions, even laughing to himself at the last one. It was amazing how entitled kids were these days, thinking they were owed everything simply for existing. Liked you owed them for bringing them into this world, or something. It was disgusting. Noella wasn’t his daughter, yet she still expected him to pay the bills and put up with her crap, but threw a fit or sulked whenever he asked her to do anything in return.
    Big deal, so he’d asked her to do a few chores and he was a little strict. Boo-freaking-hoo. His daddy used to whoop him something fierce, and he’d turned out just fine. But you ask a kid to do a few freakin’ chores, and they’re running off to social media to tell the world how mean you are in real time.
    “ He’s so mean!”
    Heh, I’ll show you mean!
    Randy wasn’t sure how he would respond, at least not yet, though he’d been tossing around a few ideas. He’d seen the messages a couple of days ago, and had read back nearly a year’s worth of other ones. Most of it was stupid crap, mind-numbing teenage woe-is-me crap.
    But some of it was downright nasty, evil, unappreciative stuff. If Randy had written anything like that behind his old man’s back, he would’ve been beaten an inch from death, and would have had to pick the switch that did the beating.
    Randy couldn’t beat Noella, of course. Josie would lose it and whine and cry like she always did whenever he put his foot down, including when he was 100% right, which was almost always, though not all of the time.
    Randy wasn’t quite sure when Noella had gone from sweet kid to simpering teen, but her whining seemed to be getting worse the past few months. And the worse Noella got, the worse Josie was getting. It was as if Noella’s willful disrespect was catchy like women’s cycles.
    Haven’t these stupid broads ever heard about respecting the man of the house?
    Randy sighed, feeling beat, but his spirit instantly lifted when he saw the highway exit sign. He smiled as he gained speed and pulled off the highway.
    A few minutes later, Randy pulled into his home away from home, his aunt’s old house, where he’d sometimes go to blow off steam. He hadn’t planned to keep the place a secret from the girls. Originally, he thought it would make a nice little getaway, since it was so close to a big lake, and all. He figured it would be sorta nice if he spent time fixing it up, working on it here and there, bit by bit, intending to one day surprise Josie and