Chapter 1: A Death in the Family

Jake Savage woke up on the floor of a stranger’s house in a pool of his own vomit. This hadn’t
happened in over seven months and as Jake pushed himself up onto his elbow and tried to scrape
out the dried sick in his hair with his free hand, he wondered where it all went wrong.

The room he was in was bare and he was one of several people sleeping on the floor of the living
room. If he had to guess, Jake would say they were teenagers, maybe early twenty somethings;
probably students from the local college, but he wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

He had now become the old bloke who crashed teenagers’ parties and as he quietly tiptoed around
the sleeping children, a palpable sense of disgust washed over him. He was only twenty-nine, but
Jake was acutely aware that there comes an age where if you’re still living in your hometown, you
officially become a member of the sad, old bloke club. Jake had crossed that line several years ago.

Jake had been sober for over seven months, and he hadn’t touched crystal meth in nearly two years.
He knew that this was a step back and the feeling of annoyance outpaced his feeling of disgust. All
that work pissed away, Jake thought, and for what? Because a teenage girl offered you a drink.

That final thought caused his disgust to grow again. Not only was he the sad, old bloke who crashed
parties, he was the sad, old bloke who tried to sleep with college students.

…….

Jake was skinny, but this only revealed his wiry, muscled frame. Before everything had gone the way
it did, he was an accomplished athlete at school – Captain of both the rugby team and the cricket
team – but now he didn’t have much time for sports. He just wanted to get healthy and get out of
dodge before he became just another old man who sat around in the local Wetherspoons all day
talking about the days when he used to be young and handsome.

He looked ten years older than he was, with leathery skin, damaged by the abuse he’d done to his
body, but at least he managed to hold on to a full head of black, stringy hair. He knew before long
that would be a losing battle, too, as both his dad and his uncle had the full horseshoe, but for now it
was the one thing keeping him from looking truly ancient.

The most striking feature of Jake Savage wasn’t his skin or his physique, but the half-sleeve tattoos
that covered both arms. Each tattoo that made up the design seemed to be random: an elephant
trunk here, a coiling snake there. These weren’t tattoos chosen for their artistry, and it was obvious
from the different styles and clarity of the images that made up the sleeve that they were done by
various artists over the years as and when he could afford to have them done.

Beneath the tattoos, running from his wrist to just beneath his elbow pit, criss-crossing slice wounds
remained from a time that Jake wishes he couldn’t remember.

but he was glad he’d managed t

, with defined muscles and sharp facial features