Harold was a bachelor. Some men are out, chasing tail, but he had long-since given up on that. He was content to make money in the stock market and play with his own socio-economic theories. Occasionally, the university wanted him to give a seminar, but he turned them down to play golf, if it was a sunny day. It was always sunny. His handicap was a 1. He cared too much about being a prophet to improve his golf game below a 1. It wasn’t that he promoted his predictions to news channels—it was that he enjoyed personal triumphs when he was right. It’s that feeling when you are drinking a glass of brandy and smoking a cigar while watching the races, and your horse comes in. It feels like you have the golden touch. The economy was no different than gambling at the track.

The government pumped horses full of steroids, wouldn’t let jockeys compete, and told patrons that gambling was an addiction, but everybody still went to the track. Idiots got into the stock market because somebody told them they should, and they always bought the popular stock, rather than thinking differently. In the early 90s, when lead was poisoning people and getting into the water supply, they dumped their stocks, but Harold held to his philosophy: go in the opposite direction of everybody, and he put his money into lead. It paid-off. Most recently, Harold was getting into coal, while the morons thought electricity was the future. People didn’t have a grasp on reality. They were full of ideals and screaming for justice, while having no concept of society. Harold didn’t take a side. He made money from both sides, like an arms dealer, supplying guns to either army because he wanted them both to lose.

But this story isn’t about that. It’s much older than Harold—ancient, in fact. It concerns bloodlines and destiny.

It has been said that the most important part of a man’s life is that he should understand what he is meant to do and do it.

Harold’s family had given up on him. His parents were old and in assisted living. His sister was living her life with a good man. Harold had nobody—and he preferred it that way, but if there was one thing that bothered him, it was that he had acquired wealth, but it only amounted to numbers in his bank account. There were things he enjoyed—like literature, collecting rare books, playing the piano, and spending time in his own mind, but he couldn’t share that with anyone.

Harold was getting cramps at night, once a month. It was like being a woman. He didn’t know why. Maybe this happens to a guy in his 40s, he wondered.

He kept getting it checked-out by his doctor. She was sexy. Harold liked a woman with class. She wore pearls on top of her fashionable clothes.

“Nope—you’re a strong virile male—no hormone imbalances that I can see,” she said while checking his charts. “Your blood is rare, though—so you’ll want to avoid any need for a transfusion. Can I put you down as a doner?”

“Why not,” Harold said.

He wondered if there was a guy in a gangland neighborhood who would get shot and his blood would save the man’s life. Strange, to have his blood flowing in another man’s veins.

One of Harold’s hobbies was to read the classics in his living room. His grandfather stared at him from a painting above the fireplace. His eyes were black—not quite human—animalistic, in fact. Harold liked his grandfather. He only met him a handful of times, when he wasn’t in captivity. He had an office, where he showed Harold about heredity and genetics and how genes can be recessive or expressive.

“You and I have more in common with each other than anybody in our family,” he told Harold.

There was a back room in the office where Harold was never allowed to go.

One day, his grandmother was viciously murdered by his grandfather—slashed to pieces, by a primitive weapon.

Harold considered what his grandfather said—that they were just like each other.

When Harold was old enough, he confronted his grandfather in prison.

“Did you murder your wife?” He asked

“It’s not that simple,” his grandfather said.

To be continued…