THE PROLOGUE:

I have often heard it said that there lies within each of us a penchant for both good and evil. Bad and somewhat less so and I have no reason to doubt that that is true based on my young and slightly limited experience with homo whatever. Sapiens or supines or marsupials and the myriad other variables of the species.

Ostensibly you can have both Mother Teresa and Adolph Hitler within the same body, and boy what a dinner table companion that would be. One minute saying the blessing and the next pulling out an AK-47 and blowing everyone away. Sorta like the State Fair meets the Holocaust kind of screaming teaming.

(I think I'll go to McDonald's that night...in ANCHORAGE.)

Okay, so maybe let's ponder that for a second. This good/evil thingy.

That makes for some incredible possibilities for amazingly good things happening and then again the substantial possibilities for the exact opposite, all within the same innocent-looking person. (I may have dated him once).

Might make for some interesting sessions during marriage counseling or Parent-Teacher conferences. Hell, the wedding...looking all  swoony one minute and totally evil the next. Think of the wedding night.

Anyway, there was this situation in our slightly retarded but nevertheless pleasant little mid-EVIL Midwestern hometown that reminded me of that and...ok, let me try to tell you about it. It's quite the little tale.

SO HERE GOES...

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His name was Sammy Harper, an only child of fairly successful parents. Sammy and the 'Rents all lived in a large victorian home on a quiet residential street only slightly off the beaten path near downtown and about a block from the high school. His father Jeffrey was a surgeon at one of the hospitals in Kalamazoo and his mother Laura was and is an CPA/Auditor for our city. Neither of them were from here originally.

Next door to the Harpers lived the Kiriakis family. Father Dmitri (Dim for short but in truth he was neither) was a Lawyer and mother Kimberly an English teacher in the local high school, and they had three sons. They were also all transplants.

The oldest boy wound up going to Med School (UofMichigan) and becoming a pediatrician and I am told a damn good one too...now married with one kid. The youngest boy Kenneth is a high school sophmore and headed to law school at last report...and then there is Ryan, a high school senior this year (as is Sammy Harper) who according to all reports is quite the little mixed bag. Brilliant and stupid. Gorgeous and ugly. Simple and complex, Good interspersed with the kind of malfeasance usually found only on post office walls and for good reason. Honor roll one minute and detention the next and ALWAYS with Sammy by his side. Nobody has ever had a clue how he would turn out and it is quite possible neither did he.

"WITHIN" tells the tale of these two boys and their rather circuitous path both to and from each other practically from birth. Parents beyond chummy, boys born one day apart and raised to be almost inseparable, but there were some warning signs even early on. But we shall get to that.

"WITHIN"...quite the little tale so let's get to it shall we?

CLICK HERE FOR CHAPTER I:
IN THE BEGINNING