My oldest sister was the queen of magical thinking. She swore that she could levitate (just not when anyone was watching), was a reincarnated Indian princess, had met Jesus during an astral projection and had sex with him (except he was a woman and she was a man during their encounter – yeah, okay), could cast spells (she was a “white witch”) and a myriad of other ridiculous claims.

She was ten years older than me and when she still lived at home was the one left in charge of us all when our parents were off playing music at the bars. I’m not quite sure why, as she had zero maternal instinct. When she did get pregnant at nineteen years old she had a shotgun wedding and then abandoned her newborn in the hospital and took off with our neighbor who was a truck driver in his forties. She had went into labor in his bed while her husband was at work and my niece was born extremely premature which didn’t seem to phase my sister a bit.

She simply didn’t give a fuck about anyone but herself, just like my oldest brother who abandoned his children, too.

I should also mention that like my brother, she was a sexual deviant who embraced the “free love” thing, bragged openly about her conquests and took it upon herself to teach the rest of us things we really shouldn’t have been learning at our ages, especially from a mentally ill perverted sibling.

After my brother in law died, leaving my niece without a steady parent at the age of twelve, my sister fought for custody and won, to my utter horror. My niece had a good father who gave her stability and now she was going to be swept into a world of madness with a woman she barely knew and no one seemed to care.

Except me.

It wasn’t long before they came to our house in Wyoming, the three of them, on their way from California up to Montana to join up with the “Rainbow Tribe” who she now called family. With her was my niece, who I had been close to, and her latest hookup, a short, dirty, chubby older guy with stringy black hair that had obviously been dyed. He wore buckskins and turquoise and a mountain man hat and called himself “Chocktaw” even though it was obvious to us that he was like her: a white guy pretending to be something he wasn’t.

Knowing her the way I did, I immediately knew he was bad news. She had a thing for pedophiles and it had already ruined my life. I wasn’t going to stand by and watch her do it to her daughter and it didn’t take long for the red flags to start waving.

To be continued…