“Brady!"

"Yes, Mother?" I calmly reply as I go up the stairs to her.

"Would you, please, grab John and me a drink?" mother more ordered than asked. To which I reply perfunctorily, "Yes Ma'am," and then I run downstairs to the kitchen with a look of disgust.

I still can’t believe that mom chose her boss over dad. I shudder and make a mental note to avoid his eyes, or rather eye which is made of glass and looks rather creepy. He always looks at me with disdain as if I liked him any better than he does, and in general we avoid each other but we often will have to talk to each other because of mother.

I realize that I zoned out and continue the task that Mother gave me of bringing her and John beers. As I go back up the stairs I hear Mom telling John about me and my aspirations to become a veterinarian. My frown then once again turns to hatred as I wish she would leave me out of her conversations with her boyfriend. I then force a smile, something I have had to learn since I was six. I force myself to give them the drinks and go back to my room.

I see Paul, my dog, and I pet and hug him and he happily pants and waves his tail. "I don't need anyone else. I just need you, don't I Paul?" I whisper to Paul as I hug him tighter.

Paul then licks my face and I feel my face light up. Smiling at him I go to my desk sit down and start up a game called Magic Online. Paul jumps into the other chair and rests his head on my desk,"watching" me play with online friends as we take on dungeon after dungeon and raid after raid. I don't really know if he is really watching or if he likes how happy I am because when I am happy I tend to spoil him. I pet him and let my friends hear all the noises he makes in the background of the voice chat.

“Hey guys! Where is Rolfgar?” MondayScrub asks suddenly. “He’s missing a show. We have a new dog lover in our guild.”

“I changed my character name,” I reply with a grin plastered on my face.

“Paulgar? Really!? Of everything, you rename your character into a mixture of your old name and your dog’s? Just wow. Do you even have a reason?” he asks obnoxiously fast.

“Well, fuck you too. Anyways, I got a hidden sub-race wolfman so eat it douche. Hey, Paul, this guy is a douche, right?” I retort and Paul barks in agreement, I think , making the whole chat start laughing like a group of lunatics.

As the night goes on we start logging off of Magic Online. I turn off my computer and pet Paul before jumping into a shower and then laying down in bed. I take a quick glance at my alarm clock and see it is 1:28 AM; Oops! I have school and I can not be tired for it because of all the test we are taking tomorrow or rather today now. I sigh exasperated and exhausted as after tomorrow it will be Saturday, the day the court rules which parent I would stay with. I shook my head and cursed my life and yet I didn't even know what was going to happen tomorrow.

The next morning I wake up like any other day. I slowly slide out of bed at a slow pace, then drag myself to the bathroom connected to my room and wash my face. My blue eyes look sunken in from how tired I look but I just shake my head and get dressed in my school uniform, with its white button up shirt and red tie with a royal blue suit jacket and accompanying pants. I then fix my dark brown hair to mother's standards and then proceed to sigh; I.Really. Hate. This. Uniform.

I look at my clock and decide that I have enough time to eat breakfast. As I move to the kitchen I notice that Paul is nowhere to be seen and his bowl is empty. Thinking this is odd I put food in his bowl and call out quietly. John really hates being woken up in the morning and I hate how he gets in my face when he is angry.

No response. I look for his leash, thinking Mother might have taken him for a walk earlier this morning. I find his leash. Now I am panicking. Paul is what has kept me together in these hard times and I can not lose him, not now, and, hopefully, not for a long while.

I feel my chest tightening as I look for Paul and don't find him. I shake my head, "No... No..." I whisper to myself as I feel panic encroaching on my chest. I see blood on the carpet. Two trails of red going towards the door’s and mom's car keys gone from the counter. I check her bedroom and see neither John, nor Mother.

For a moment I feel weak at the knees, like I will pass out any second.Then it seems like the world freezes. The phone starts ringing. I rush over to it, dad is the one calling.

“Brady, I am coming to pick you up,” dad says without even greeting me. “I will be there shortly,” he adds in a calm and composed tone as usual. “Hello? Brady?! Brady!” I never respond so his voice raises in pitch.

“I am here…” I say in a voice that is so quiet that he probably couldn’t hear me clearly.

“Please, go to your room and stay there until I arrive,” he tells me with some sadness in his words.

I walk like a zombie up the stairs and try to think about what had happened. What did I just see? Why was there two trails of blood? My head's spinning like a top. I hear the door open to the house so I stand up and force myself down the stairs. Dad is standing there but I just walk past him and enter his car.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

He drives me to his apartment and that is where we stay until he has to leave. When he’s gone, I just lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling. Not thinking anything.

At some point dad walks in and starts off saying, "Hey, Brady," to which my response is silence."Listen, Brady... There is something I never told you about Paul..." dad continues.

This takes me out of my frozen state and I turn to look. He now has my full attention. "Paul had a rare brain disease. So rare they don't even have a name for it,” he says with a melancholic smile. It annoys me. I want him to continue. What is this about a disease?

Dad sighs at my obvious impatience and starts up again. The fact is, It would slowly turn him more and more aggressive until he became completely feral. At that point he wouldn’t recognise anyone. I’m sorry, Brady. We had no choice."

It was in that moment I knew where this was going. The blood was from either John or Mom and Paul was hit because he bit one of them. It was the simplest explanation for the blood trails. Of course, he would have to be put down now. That was the last thought in my mind for a very long while.

My brain seemed to be exploding and fixing itself, over and over again. All I remember was dad explaining how Paul was put down, me going to bed and crying myself to sleep, and then waking up and going to court. I stood there and watched, listened but not a word made inside. When dad came to pick me up and bring home, I went with him. He made me eat something and then I was back in my room, staring at the ceiling.

How could this have happened?

- - - - - - - - - - - - - 5 years later (Brady is 18 now)- - - - - - - - - - - - -

"So have you packed all of your things in your car?" Dad asks nervously.

"Pretty much, there’s just a few boxes left." I state as I load more boxes into my white truck.

"Well, I have a college gift for you Brady," Dad tries to say nonchalantly.

I turn to look at him and see him  wheel a large box on a dollie from the side of the house. My mouth gapes open at the sight of it. "D-d-dad!" I exclaim, walking towards with haste.

The box that dad has is the first and only virtual reality console, the Sense-blast. It has few games, as programming the games takes a long time, but at a gaming convention it had shown its colors with the test consoles.  They let people at the convention play a sliver of the console's main title that has yet to be released: Fate, A VRMMORPG (Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). It was a huge hit to say the least.

However, the console itself takes so long to code and manufacture that only one thousand are sold a day. Not to mention its astronomical price for the best models that come pre-installed with Fate so you could jump directly into the game at launch.

Yet despite all that here is dad is giving me the best of the models with Fate pre-installed!

My mouth wouldn't or rather couldn't close. I was aware dad was one the head financial directors at the famous BlindEye studios that created the console, but he is kind of a stingy person.  Life hasn’t always favored him starting out with no mom and an alcoholic dad so he takes money very seriously and never  buys things he doesn't need. I like to think that he passed that moneysense on to me, but I always felt the urge to buy certain things he deemed unnecessary such as video games.

Like the one he was holding now. But how did he get it? He wouldn't just buy it from the company for the thousands of dollars it goes for, nor would he be able to just obtain one by asking!

Dad smirks as he states smugly, "I got it for free! There was no mistaking the emphasis on the last part, or pride.  “Isn't that great! Of course the official reason is to be able to receive player concerns from a reliable veteran MMORPG player about issues and suggestions." He then winks at me and I feel that I am smiling like a lunatic. And not my fake smile I usually show but a true one that rarely appears on my face.

I feel dizzy. I run and hug Dad. In all of his stinginess and all of his flaws that he constantly shows, he once again showed his sentimental side that mother killed. "Th-th-tha-Thank you so much dad! I can’t say it in any better way than that!" I stutter then shout in his ear. He returns the hug before pushing me away “Go finish your packing. You wouldn’t want to be late to your meeting with the landlord, now do you?”

I had to agree to that so I squeeze his hand for the last time and go to pack the rest of my things. The new console, Sense-Blast, included.

Afterwards, I say my goodbyes and drive off to my new college for my degree in Financial management and Business.

I arrive days later exhausted and unpack everything into my room except the present which I hide under the bed. As I sit down and rest, a person enters, who I think is most likely my new roommate, carrying a big Sense-Blast box.

Once he sets his box down I stand up and introduce myself, "Hello, my name is Brady."

He looks up at me, just noticing my presence and panting from exertion he replies, "Paul"