The Six Rules of Business

The claws of the overgrown hill tore at Nathan Stern as he made his way up its rather steep slope. They tore at his exposed legs, his uncovered arms, and at his dwindling sanity. Like the good little soldiers they were, his feet continued to climb, ignoring the pain that came in hot and disappeared in a flash. In the moonlight, the treacherous hill glistened like a silver nightmare. Which is exactly what this is, Nathan thought. A nightmare. A very real, yet impossible, nightmare. One that started less than an hour ago, when he woke up in bed and found he was unable to move.  

As he climbed, he recalled the time when the backside of the hill used to be barren, back when his former mentor, the brilliant businessman Doug Patterson, first purchased the mansion. To Doug, the barren hill seemed like an invitation for burglars to come slinking up his slope and invade his home, so he had hundreds of various thorn bushes, everything from Creeping Junipers to Standard Gooseberries, sewn into his slanted land. Once the task was done, Doug boasted that his property had become “three times more aesthetic and fifty times safer from trespassers.” 

This all happened years before Nathan even knew Doug, but he had heard the story many times, as it was one of his mentor’s favorite examples of how he came across something good and made it better. 

Just like I did for you, my boy. 

From his vantage point on the hill, Nathan could see the rest of Rozelle, the prestigious gated community which both he and Doug resided, glowing under the light of the gibbous moon, row after row of gorgeous, multi-storied houses, each one neatly sectioned off from the other by wrought iron fences, each one with their own elegant, spacious porch in the front yard, and a stone-tiled pool in the back. He wished with all his heart that he could just leap off this god awful incline and fly over the blocks of wealthy homes until he reached his own, at 42 Bleaner Street. The second largest home in Rozelle. The house where Nathan and his girl, Lacy, lived together.   

And what a happy time we’ve had together. Nathan thought with a bitter laugh. Only he couldn’t laugh anymore so instead the giggles in his throat spiraled downward and crashed somewhere in his belly, near the colon, dying a pitiful death. 

  He had long since stopped wondering about the how or why of the thing, for that seemed to only lead him down a sinkhole of despair and depression. When the impossible became reality, logic was no longer a useful ally.  

But he needed to think about something, anything, otherwise he’d be setting himself up for yet another failure. For the last thirty minutes or so, when this nightmare first began, he had learned a few things regarding the impossible. The most important one being that he could fight against it. But only for a brief amount of time, and only if he caught it off guard. He learned that the hard way at his kitchen window, and then again at his own wrought iron fence. He did not plan to learn it a third time. But success required a proper mental distraction.  

And then a thought hit him like a hammer bludgeon to the head. 

The six rules!

 Of course, why hadn’t he thought of that sooner?? He went over the rules in his head every morning anyway, as a sort of method to channel his inner peace. Why not use it now? Worth a shot, at least. 

And so, with the thorny claws of the gooseberry bushes still carving into his calves, Nathan disappeared into his mind, recalling the sixth rules of business his mentor had taught him so long ago. 

 The Sixth Rule: Love what you do. 

Seven years ago, Doug invited Nathan to his famed “mansion on the hill” for a luncheon meet-and-greet. It was easily the biggest thing that had ever happened to Nathan in his entire life. Doug was the sort of man who could change your life during the course of a meal with a snap of his fingers. And while that didn’t exactly happen with their first lunch, it would start a relationship that certainly changed his life most dramatically. 

Nathan remembered how Doug led them out to one of the wicker tables on the pristine wooden balcony, allowing them to enjoy the view of the rest of Rozelle while they ate. Doug seemed so magnificent to Nathan. His confident, military-esque posture, his fierce, focused brown eyes peering out at the view from underneath those bushy, caterpillar eyebrows of his. He barely looked in Nathan’s direction, he merely talked, assuming his would-be protege was still there, memorizing every word that came out of his mouth. Which, of course, he was.  

Lacy had been there too. She seemed less taken with the glory of Doug Patterson, but she did look amazing that day. The way her hair, golden and glowing, flowed down past her shoulders, just gorgeous. Despite this being one of the most important meetings of his life, Nathan had trouble taking his eyes off her. She had always been beautiful to him. 

It was there during that lunch, as they sat on the balcony, that Nathan gushed about Doug’s book. He told Doug it was those six titular rules of the book that helped him make his first hugely lucrative business deal at the age of twenty five. His hero played it cool, but Nathan could tell he was quite pleased with what he was hearing. 

Funnily enough, it was the last rule that Doug brought up first.

“And what is your love?” He asked, still looking out past the hill. Nathan stammered a little here, not because he didn’t have an answer, but because he wasn’t certain that the great Doug Patterson would approve of his answer. Luckily, Doug interrupted his hee-hawing to reiterate what Nathan had already read in his book. None of the other rules meant a damn thing if you didn’t have passion for what you did. Work ethic and drive would slowly crumble away if your heart wasn’t in the game. He told Nathan that his own passion came from his love of land. Owning it. Selling it. Building on it. It didn’t really matter. What mattered was that once it was yours, it was yours. It wasn’t like some invisible entity like stock whose value could suddenly collapse at any moment. People want your property? Sure. For a price. And of course, the money was quite nice. But that wasn’t enough. Doug stressed to Nathan that fact many a time at lunch. Even in business, he explained, it had to be more than just about the money. 

Nathan found himself in a familiar small clearing on the hill, absent of any hateful bushes, when his knees suddenly shot down to the ground.  

It’s almost time, he thought, before quickly reminding himself not to think about it.   

Below him, his hand began to sweep at the dirt surface of the slope. He pretended not to notice the small pile of dirt and developing hole that seemed to be magically taking shape.  

The Fifth Rule: Learn to Self-Promote.

When Doug asked him which rule he had the hardest time with, he admitted it was the fifth one. Self-promotion was the same way of saying “getting people to like you.” And Nathan didn’t give a damn about that. He cared little for people. His whole life, especially his poverty-stricken childhood, it had been people who betrayed him, or did him wrong. You couldn’t trust people. And if you can’t trust people, who cares if they like you? He then made a bold move, citing to Doug his recent lucrative business deal as an example of how this rule may not be all that necessary. 

Doug merely sipped his Arnold Palmer at this brazen suggestion, before telling him with a tone of absolute certainty that without Rule Five you could only go so far before hitting your ceiling. If you wanted to be truly special, you had to learn the art of winning people over. 

“Don’t worry about whether you honestly care what these people think, my boy. Just trick your mind into believing that it’s important to impress them.” He then suggested, no, demanded was more like it, that Nathan force himself to have at least fifty interactions every day with a random person, and in the process, sell them something about himself that he knew was not true. 

Deception has its benefits, Doug told him.

The hole had grown a good eight inches. After one last sweep, Nathan’s hand dived down, his fingers pushing their way beneath the dirt at the bottom of the hole and wrapping around the black carbon fiber handle. 

Close. He was getting close.  

Nathan’s hand lifted from the hole, the stained steel tooth firmly in his grasp. He continued to go along with the impossible, pretending that he was perfectly fine with tucking it back into his belt. But as soon as he felt the tip of the blade tickle the top of his leather belt, he made his move.  

Throw the fucking knife!  He commanded with all the hysteric rage of an imprisoned beast trying to escape its cage. As his arm moved, Nathan felt his insides sear, as if he was on fire, as if every one of his muscles had been laced with gasoline and he had just swallowed a lit match.  

Through the fiery rush, his hand and arm obeyed his command and lifted the knife up and over his head, so that he was now in the throwing position. Like a quarterback who knows he has one second to throw before getting sacked by a three hundred pound defensive lineman, Nathan launched his arm out in front of him with blazing speed. But the impossible lineman was quicker, as Nathan’s sack took place in the form of him losing control of his hand, his fingers releasing their grip on the knife before it was time, causing the weapon to simply spiral down to the ground next to him, instead of being launched into the night sky as he had hoped. 

Internally, Nathan screamed in frustration. Internally, he died a little. On the outside, though, he was as silent as one of the Creeping Juniper bushes that surrounded him. He had lost control again. The flames long gone now, he was doomed to his fate. He’d have to go through the whole thing once again. Only this time, of course, it’d be different. It’d be worse. Much worse. And who knows, once it was done, the impossible might just make him go through it again after that, and then again after that, into infinity, like some poorly written Twilight Zone episode. 

Unless…

Unless there was time for one more attempt. He tried to do the math in his head, trying to calculate how much time there had been between the kitchen window and the wrought iron fence, and the wrought iron fence to the knife, and finally, the knife to the incident. Nathan had never been good at math, but it seemed to him that he might just have enough time after all for one more move. 

His back bent over and his hand retrieved the knife, sticking it into his waistband. Back on his feet now, he continued his journey up the hill. 

Rule Four: Outrun Your Competitors.

 This was the one rule that Nathan didn’t need to read from Doug’s book. From a young age, he had learned the importance of outworking the jerks around you. Most of the kids at school had more than he did. More money, more toys, more opportunity. But that made them entitled. That made them lazy. And Nathan used that against them. He worked harder than them, and made sure everyone knew it. This became a winning strategy all the way through college, where the rest of his peers were too busy trying to get laid to really provide much competition. Pussy didn’t mean much to Nathan. It was fun and all, but it was far from his ultimate goal. Not until he met Lacy, that was. Not that she was just some life support for vagina. She was special, she was a game-changer. Someone who not only had the beauty that Nathan deserved out of a partner, but someone with a brain. Someone who could relate to a life of struggle, who had climbed up her own ladder of bullshit to get where she was. Nathan knew quickly that she was meant for him. He deserved her. And he was going to get her. He just had to outrun the competition first. 

He wasn’t ready for the jump to the balcony. It was a good four feet up from the ground, and in the darkness, lost in his thoughts, it seemed to come out of nowhere. But ready or not, he said goodbye to the vicious bushes below and landed on the railing of balcony with an odd sounding thud. 

It was here, without the bushes and brush in the way, that he could see clearly out to the rest of the gated community. All those traitorous bastards. He wanted so much to close his eyes.  

His body left the railing, dropping down to the balcony before walking over to the sliding glass door.  

As he entered the mansion now, he realized that physically he felt better, his thorn scars now gone, the only pain left came from his hand, the minor cuts on his fingers stinging like crazy. Once inside, his cut-up hand shut the sliding glass door behind him and his feet headed straight for the oak staircase. It was time to go up to the fourth floor. 

Rule Number Three: Build Your A-Team

No man is an island, as the great Doug Patterson was fond of saying, and no businessman can do it all alone. You’re going to need a team to help you. This can trigger your ego, of course. Most driven folks believe they are in fact gods, and gods should be able to move heaven and earth to get to their goal. But the truth was, without a crack staff behind you, you were as good as dead. 

Nathan approached Lacy in this manner. This was more than just romance, he told her, this was about being an unstoppable, powerhouse team. With their brains working together, their power of seduction mastered, was their any goal they couldn’t achieve? Any enemies they couldn’t destroy? Listen to me, he told her, leave the familiar, leave what’s safe, and come with me. 

Nathan did simple math in his head as his footsteps echoed off the walls of the stairway. Four flight of stairs to go. Ten steps per flight. Forty steps in total. That was forty steps too much. For each step made him shiver inside. He did not like being back here. He did not like seeing the photographs on the walls. Each one was framed in golden poplar, the same style one would see in some upscale museum. Except the pictures inside were hardly Smithsonian-worthy. They were mostly filled with glamorous snapshots of Doug Patterson’s life. Him hobnobbing at parties with sports stars, celebrities, and even a few ex-presidents. Each one stabbed him in the heart. He felt like he was being judged. Judged by the impossible. The same impossible that was making him repeat this absurd trek was also raining criticism upon him. The impossible wanted him to feel bad about this. That’s what this was all about. Guilt. Regret. Remorse. But those words didn’t mean anything to Nathan, they never had. He was a goal focused person. He couldn’t be bothered by minor concerns like people’s feelings. Things would go his way because he would make them so, and if someone got in his way, well they would be dealt with in way or another. No time for trouble-makers or betrayers.

With each step, a new picture revealed itself. His skull tightened around his brain. He needed a distraction. He only had two rules left, and he was saving those for his big move, but he felt if he didn’t find some mental escape soon, his gray matter would actually explode. So rule two popped up in his brain: Learn from your worst mistake. Perfect timing, he thought, as more aborted laughter died in his belly. He knew what the impossible wanted him to say. That he was being led back to his biggest mistake. But he didn’t buy that. Not for a minute. His biggest mistake, as far as he could tell, was ever actually falling in love with someone to begin with. With trusting not just one, but two people in this awful world filled with betrayers. That was his mistake. And what did he learn from it? Simple. Never do that again. If he ever got out of this mess, which was looking more and more unlikely with each passing minute, he’d make sure never to get close to another living person as long as he lived. 

There was only one rule left now. Nathan knew he really should save it for his big moment, but he also knew he was seconds away from approaching the unendurable. He didn’t have a choice. So rule number one came, ahead of schedule. 

Rule Number One: Always have a plan, always stick to the plan. 

Nobody could say he hadn’t done this to a fucking tee. Ever since he was a child, he had a plan: Get to a better spot than your current one. And he stuck to that plan no matter how hard things got. And when he found the rules, well, that just provided a better blueprint for his plan. And when he met Doug, that gave him a living example to go by. And when he found Lacy, he found what was to be his supreme accomplishment. He stuck to his plan the entire way through. And in less than ten years he had achieved every goal on his list. He lived in a mansion in Rozelle, the most prestigious gated community in the state. He had the most beautiful, and bold, woman in the whole world on his arm. He was feared by many because of his power. That poor, pathetic child that he used to be was now greater than anyone could have imagined. Mission accomplished.

But what happened then? What happened after that? Treachery, that’s what. It all started to crumble away. The ladder he had used to climb to the top had turned on him at every rung. His mentor shunned him. His neighbors and business associates gossiped behind his back. And finally, Lacy, the woman of his dreams, the woman he deserved more than anyone else, left him once he revealed too much of himself to her.  

His feet stopped. He knew why. He had reached the top of the stairway, and there was a picture on the nearby wall that was about to destroy him. 

His head turned. His eyes met the eyes of those in the photo.  

 Lacy looked stunning in her white dress. Doug looking radiant in his tuxedo. And their smiles couldn’t have been been bigger. The picture must have been fifteen years old, but to Nathan it might as well have been taken yesterday. 

Nathan could feel his skull crushing against his brain. Rage. Hard rage consumed him. Just as it had the first time. It wasn’t fair. He had successfully stolen her away from him. He had showed her, using every rule in the book, that he was a superior man to Doug. That he was superior to everyone. And she knew it too. That’s why she left Doug. That’s why she went to him. But over time, even this fairy tale ended the way the rest of his romances did. The girls find out too much about him, find out that behind the deception, there wasn’t anything there. Just a black void. That’s when they go running. 

Her eyes continued to stare back at him, so happy, so very happy. He couldn’t think anymore. The rage had taken over. He made his final move, regrets be damned. The flames inside him returned as he gave his last command. 

Punch the fucking bitch! 

 His hand turned into a fist, and his fist smashed into Lacy’s face, destroying it, along with the wall behind it. Glass flew. New blood squirted out of his knuckles. An ungodly guttural sound came pouring out of his mouth. 

And then, silence. The flames died away. The impossible came back to power.   

 His feet took him out of the stairway to the fourth floor hallway. Nothing to do now but wait. No more moves to make, no more mental distractions. Only twenty or so steps before he would find himself back in hell. 

For no real reason, he thought about the beginning. Thought back to when this nightmare started. When he woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t move. Couldn’t open his eyes either. Immobile and blind, he began to panic. But then he felt himself roll over. As if he had been still sleeping, or on his way to sleep, his body flipped over in bed. And then it rolled again. Neither by his own control. His eyes shot open. His body left the bed. His mind was in shock, it was familiarizing itself with the impossible. 

The creaking of the hallway on the fourth floor unnerved him. The sound it made. It wasn’t right. As if the creaking had gone through some sort of sound-altering machine or something. 

His body took him from his bed to the bathroom, each step out of his hand, each step taken in a most unnatural way. At first he thought it might have been the result of the sleeping pills he had taken. That thought comforted him for a time. But then he reached the bathroom, and he watched a bunched-up used towel in the corner of the room jump up and fly to his hand, and the comfort disappeared. His hand held onto the towel tight and scrubbed it up and down his body in hard, fast movements. The towel had been damp to the point of soaked when he first felt it, but as the scrubbing continued, he swore he felt the towel gradually become drier, as his skin became wetter and wetter. By the time the scrubbing had finished, the towel was perfectly dry and his body was drenched to the bone. The towel went neatly back on the rack, and Nathan moved to the shower. His hand went to the faucet and gave it a hard turn. The showerhead above him remained still, but at his feet there was an eruption. Gallons of used water came rushing up and out of the drain, millions of drops danced up his body before vanishing into the tiny holes in the spout above him. When his hand finally returned to the faucet to end the damn thing once in for all, he saw that it was now covered in a sickly, familiar red.  

Thousands of backwards steps later, he finally found himself back at his worst moment, kneeling over the corpse of his dead wife, dozens of stab wounds decorating her lifeless body. He could not see it, but he knew the body of his mentor was crumpled up in the corner, just like that damn towel in his bathroom. 

The knife came out from its hiding spot. He couldn’t do this. But he had no choice. Welcome to the impossible. 

The blade entered his wife again and again with each swift hammerswing of his fist. In the new light of the impossible, he could appreciate just how far overboard he had gone. Overkill was too kind of a term to use here. She was more hole than woman. And yet, as if by magic, the knife entered each hole before pulling out, magically healing up the entire wound. Over and over again it was done, one violent thrust at a time.   

And then the sound of gurgling came from her throat. Blood returning from her mouth back to where it belonged. The gurgle turned into something that could be called a weak moan. The moan grew stronger and stronger. And then the eyes shot open, wild and terrified. That’s when the screaming began. Her hands began to slap harmlessly off his face. The knife continued to heal her.  

She appeared to be a whole body once again, a whole, living, breathing body, perfectly intact. And that perfectly intact body crawled away from him to under the bed. His hands went with her ankles, holding them with the force of god. But they relinquished their grasp when it was time, and he moved on to the damp towel in the corner. 

As his healing knife went to work on his former mentor, Nathan thought about Rule number six again. He thought about how Doug had asked him what his love was, and how Nathan never gave him an answer, too afraid of what he might think. He would have been happy to give him an answer now, as he gave him back his life with his magical knife. He’d even say it with a smile. 

“My love comes from destroying others. I am at my most happiness when I see my competition suffering. I love that, I care about that, more than my own success.” 

But of course, he could not say this, so he only thought it. He thought of this as his knife finished up the job, and he thought of this as he walked backwards out of the room, listening to Doug and his ex-wife begging in reverse. He thought of this as those backwards pleas turned into sweet-nothings, as the two former murder victims became unaware of Nathan’s presence. He only stopped thinking about this once he had fully retreated from the room and the door had closed behind him. He stopped thinking about this because of what he heard. It was the same as what he heard that first time he had snuck into the mansion on the hill. The sounds of Doug and Lacy talking. His ear pressed to the door, he could hear them speaking, not in reverse, but normal. Just as before, Lacy had been doing most of the talking. 

“I’m telling you Doug, he’s not right. In the head, there is something missing.”

“I know honey. I know.”

“Oh Doug, can you ever forgive me.”

“Of course honey, of course.”

That was the line he had come in before. That’s all he could take before he decided to take his revenge. And now that he found himself in this exact same spot, he decided to do it again. The impossible had taught him nothing. He was a free man once more, and it was time to act. 

Only he wasn’t free. He found this out immediately as his body continued to ignore his commands. 

Impossible, he thought. Lacy and Doug were speaking normally, the curse had been broken. 

He continued to hear them converse, normally, as his ear left the door and his feet took him down the hall, one backwards step at a time. Just before he reached the stairs, a new thought hit him. Perhaps now, it would be only him that was cursed. Doug, Lacy, and the rest of the world would be able to go on with his lives, while he would continue to spiral backwards down the timeline. For how long? Who knew. Maybe all the way. Maybe until he had been reversed into nonexistence. The universe erasing its mistake one impossible step at a time. 

The End

(Off the top of my head, two problems. One, I never address what his love was for the sixth rule, which a foreshadowed in the beginning. And two, he never makes his next move. He has to address that, even if he doesn’t act on it). 

[ANOTHER NOTE: The last (or rather, first) rule is Make a Plan. And he’s going over this rule as he’s unstabbing the bodies. And the first rule is directly tied to the last, his love for this is his love to see those that think they are better than him destroyed. And we really got to make this seem important, so let’s write myself into this last part. Every ounce of my anger, self-hatred, lack of self-worth, all due to a childhood where I was constantly getting beaten down by everyone,  thus fueling my motivation to be something big one day. That’s all got to go in there. In the most passionate way possible. To a twisted degree, so the reader both feels for Nathan and now sees how deranged he truly is. Like he’s been poisoned by life and it turned him into a psychopath, and the only way to fix him is to rub him out of existence, thus going back in time. 

That’s why when he leaves them alive, and walks out the hallway, he can hear them speaking, and they are speaking correctly, not backwards. And he wonders if perhaps now it is just him that is doomed to go back in time, until he is no longer in existence, to help god erase his ill-gotten mistake. ]

  Family circus bit:

The thought of his enemies darkened his mind once again, and he recalled a comic strip he used to read as a kid. Actually, forced to read would be a more appropriate way to phrase it. For it was his mother, a strict, adamant woman, who made him read it every day. The comic strip was Family Circus and it centered around a good Christian family that enjoyed good wholesome, Christian fun. His mother was convinced that forcing him to read it would help him become more normal, less of an outcast. That never happened, and instead Nathan simply developed a deep loathing for all things religious and wholesome. 

He remembered the comic well though, despite his hatred for it, particularly the dotted-line gag, a frequent feature in the strip, where the entire comic would just be a bird’s eye view of a suburban neighborhood with a dotted line that ran up and down the streets, backyards, and houses, representing precious little Billy’s path of exploration on some idle Sunday morning. Looking down at his neighborhood, Nathan envisioned that same dotted-line now, representing his own journey. Leaving his house through the kitchen window, traveling through his sizable, well-maintained backyard under the moonlight, climbing up and over the wrought iron fence that separated his house from the street, and then trekking through the community center, past the rows of houses, and up the hill. All represented by a single dotted line. 

Two trips, only one line. 

Leprosy bit:

had read a book once about the leper colony in Hawaii back in the 1800s. (There were few things Nathan loved more than reading a good book whose subject was morbid and ghastly, and there were few things Sherry liked more than teasing him that her second husband was a sociopath). One section of the book focused on a few brave souls that explored the colony of the wretched. They reported finding a woman there who stuck out from the rest because she did not look like them, in fact she was beautiful. It turned out that she was suffering from a unique kind of leprosy that occurred from within. The disease was destroying her from the inside bit by bit. That’s how Nathan felt now. Outside he looked just fine, but this impossible night was causing him to rot away internally. 

View of the hill bit:

Halfway up the hill now, his view had improved tremendously. A full moon lit up the night sky, allowing Nathan to see over the first couple of rows of wealthy houses to the lit up tennis courts in spacious community center that stood in the middle of the gated neighborhood, known as Rozelle. Ah, Rozelle. Despite everything, the fact that he lived here still filled him with pride. It was the most expensive gated community in the state, after all. He had had lived there for seven years, five of them with Sherry, for Doug it had been more like fifteen. Nathan’s pride continued to swell as he looked passed the tennis courts to the third story house that stood in the distance, hovering above the rest of the homes it surrounded. The second biggest house in Rozelle, and he owned it. For a just a moment, Nathan managed to forget his troubles and appreciate how far he had come in life. 

Two years ago at one of Doug’s barbeques, their last interaction before they stopped speaking to one another, Doug asked Nathan a question he had surprisingly never asked before. What was his love? Nathan looked out from the balcony, taking in the beauty of the view, before admitting to Doug that he had struggled with the sixth rule, that the idea that it wasn’t about the money seemed insane to him. For that was exactly why he pursued a life in business in the first place, the money. To help him forget his poverty-stricken childhood, his pathetic parents that were known for giving hugs, and only hugs, on Christmas morning. Of course it was all about the money. But after some considerable thought, he found his own answer. His love came from the destruction of his enemies. To prove to everyone that not only were they wrong about him, their mistake had cost them dearly. If one had been idiotic enough to try to take him down, they would find themselves in a unique pit of hellfire they would never be able to escape. Silence filled the balcony once he finished his response. Doug’s eyes, half hidden under those black caterpillar brows of his, looked down to the wooden planks at their feet. Nathan shifted in the awkwardness. He noticed Lacy off to the side. She smiled warmly at him.  

And as the all-natural home defense system carved into Nathan’s flesh, he regretted not being more careful during his previous traverse through his mentor’s land.  

But of course, Nathan was never careful when the fire was upon him. His Everyone close to him knew this. Underneath the veneer of the proud multi-millionaire wunderkind lay a violent temper that should be avoided at all costs.  A couple’s therapist once told him this was due to a childhood filled with betrayal, but Nathan believed it was due to the fact that nobody deserved to be trusted. Treachery hid behind every bush. Of course, a small piece of him could appreciate that even he, the one who never trusted anyone, found himself betrayed by the one thing he never even considered turning on him. 

I should have never woken up. 

Nathan remembered struggling to comprehend this last rule. The other ones, while seeming a little broad and generic, clearly made logical sense. But this idea that money wasn’t enough? Money was everything! He entered into the business world to become wealthy. So forget about his ridiculous impoverished childhood, to become someone worth a damn. He looked out to the view, studied the wealthy homes of the neighborhood, considering his answer to number six, before casting his eyes back on Lacy. For just a moment he thought he saw her give him the slightest of smiles.   

He did his best to ignore the unsettling way the pain would come in hot before disappearing altogether with a single step. 

You want to separate yourself from the rest of the pack? Then you need to forget about birthdays, holidays, anniversaries…” With that last word, Doug looked back at Lacy with a wry smile, which was received with a severe eye roll. “They,” he nudged his head in her direction, “will want you to put the relationship in front of career. But that can’t happen. Especially not in your first ten years.”   

It would be five years later, when Lacy would throw those words back in his face. Mocking him for sticking to them so rigidly, reminding him that even Doug celebrated birthdays and anniversaries occasionally. Nathan’s response, “that just proves I’m better than him,” was met with a hateful stare. 

Rule Number 3: Always have a plan. 

It was Lacy in particular, that loved to mock rule three.

 “Oh come on,” She said at one particular group outing, at a baseball game, if Nathan remembered correctly, when Doug and him were going over the rules for the umpteenth time, “literally every businessman has a plan. That’s what makes them businessmen. Otherwise, they’re just men. Or women.” 

“No,” Doug replied in that cocky tone of his, in between sips of his Jack and coke. “Everyone does not have a plan. Everyone thinks they have a plan, but they don’t understand what a plan is. A plan is something you stick to, no matter what. You don’t drop it when things get tough, you don’t abandon it when things change. Adapt, sure. But a plan, a good plan, has a point A and a point B, and if at the end of the day you have not gotten to point B, than you have given up on your plan, in fact, you probably never had a plan to begin with, just an inclination. Inclinations won’t get you success, Nathan. You understand, don’t you?”

Nathan thought he knew. But recent events suggested otherwise. He had come to believe that once you reached point B, that was it. But apparently not. His first plan had been simple. Use the six rules to go from being a poor nobody to an important, and rich, somebody. Within seven years time, he did exactly that. HIs next plan was to prove his worth to the woman of his dreams and marry her. After three years of dogged pursuit, his dream girl became his wife, and they lived in a dream home. But that’s when things started to unfold. First with the people around him. It turned out that rich folks were no better than poor ones, they were just as bad in different ways. Blowhards. Obnoxious blowhards with opinions about everything. Including opinions about him. They thought they could judge Nathan. Never to his face, but he felt the snickers and whispers around him. They chose to take Doug’s side over his. His wife begged for them to move out of Rozelle, but Nathan wasn’t going anywhere. He spent his whole life trying to get here, and now that he finally made it he wasn’t leaving. They could honestly all go die in a fire as far as he was concerned. Focus on business and everything else would work out. 

But then Lacy, his own loving wife, began to turn on him. Her kisses grew cold, her embrace felt distant, and regrets seemed to pour out of her every mannerisms.