CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Helen and Butch stared at one another as they boxed up the new batch for demonstration. They were remembering how this all began.
The Woerter house crouched at the edge of town like a clenched fist, full of angst, anxiety and fear.
Its windows were always open, even in winter. Vladim Woerter believed cold air hardened the lungs. He believed hunger sharpened instinct. He believed love, if it existed at all, was proven only through victory.
Butch learned that lesson first.
He was eight when his father dragged him into the backyard at dawn and set a rusted barbell across his shoulders.
“Again,” Vladim said.
Butch’s knees trembled. Frost silvered the grass and soaked through his socks. He tried to lift the weight. It sagged and tipped him sideways.
“Again.”
“I can’t,” Butch whispered. Vladim’s shadow fell over him.
“Can’t is for worms. Are you a worm?”
“No.”
“Then stand.”
Butch stood.
From the kitchen window, Helen watched. They were both eight, but she was small and sharp-eyed, with a braid that reached the middle of her back. She pressed her palms to the glass and counted the repetitions under her breath.
Their father did not shout all the time. Sometimes he spoke in a tone so controlled it felt more dangerous than screaming.
“You are mine,” he would tell them at the dinner table. “And I will not have mediocrity in my blood.”
There were no family photos in the house. The walls were lined instead with newspaper clippings—other people’s children, grinning with medals around their necks.
“Failures,” Vladim would mutter, stabbing at their faces. “They could have been greater.”
When Butch turned ten, Vladim brought home a locked metal case. He set it on the kitchen counter as if it were a sacred object.
“This,” he said, “is the future.”
Helen hovered near the doorway.
Vladim snapped open the latches. Inside lay rows of small vials filled with amber liquid, each labeled in his precise handwriting.
“I have perfected what others only copy,” he said. “They poison their athletes. I refine mine.” Butch swallowed.
“What is it?”
“Strength,” Vladim replied. “Obedience in liquid form.”
The injections began that night.
Vladim did not allow tears. He called tears weakness leaking from the body.
Butch bit his tongue so hard he tasted iron. Helen stared at the ceiling while the needle slid into her thigh.
“You will thank me,” Vladim said.
They did not thank him.
School became an afterthought. They attended, but only to dominate. In autumn, Butch played football and cross-country simultaneously. In winter, wrestling and swimming. In spring, baseball and track.
Helen rotated through gymnastics, tennis, basketball, volleyball—whatever the season demanded.
Vladim attended every game. He did not cheer.
When Butch scored three touchdowns in a single afternoon, Vladim leaned over the bleachers and said, “Why not four?”
When Helen stuck a flawless dismount at a gymnastics meet, he waited until they were alone to whisper, “Your toes were soft.”
He never called them by their names during training. Names were sentimental. Instead:
“Move.”
“Faster.”
“Pathetic.”
“Embarrassment.”
He had a special vocabulary for disappointment. Words designed to burrow into bone. He spoke of them as if they were unfinished products.
“Do you think champions sleep?” he asked one night when Helen dozed over homework.
“Yes,” she murmured.
“Not mine.”
He flipped the table, books crashing to the floor. Butch lunged forward.
“Don’t.”
The single word hung in the air. Vladim’s eyes shifted to his son. Slowly, deliberately, he smiled.
“You would defend her?” he asked. Butch felt something tighten in his chest.
“She’s tired.”
“She is weak,” Vladim corrected. “And weakness spreads.”
He made them run sprints in the dark until their legs buckled.
The steroids worked.
By thirteen, Butch’s shoulders had broadened unnaturally. Veins mapped his arms like rivers. He recovered from injuries in days instead of weeks.
Helen’s muscles tightened and lengthened. She moved with a mechanical precision that startled coaches.
Rumors began.
“How are they doing this?” other parents whispered.
“Natural talent,” Vladim would say, his expression serene. At home, the regimen intensified.
He measured their food on a scale. Timed their sleep. Monitored their blood pressure, their hormone levels, their heart rates. He recorded everything in black notebooks stacked beside his bed.
“Data,” he told them. “Emotion is for fools. Numbers tell the truth.”
But the numbers began to shift.
Butch’s temper flared without warning. He snapped at teammates, shoved lockers, punched walls until his knuckles split.
Helen stopped laughing. She stared at herself in the mirror as if searching for someone else.
One evening, after a grueling tournament where both siblings had won gold in their respective divisions, Vladim gathered them in the living room.
“You see?” he said softly. “You are becoming superior.” Helen’s voice surprised them all.
“Superior to who?”
“To everyone.”
“But why?” The question lingered, fragile and defiant.
Vladim’s face hardened.
“Because I will not have my children crawl through life like insects.”
“We don’t want to crawl,” Butch said carefully.
“You don’t want at all,” Vladim snapped. “I want for you.”
High school brought scholarships, recruiters, and headlines.
Local Siblings Rewrite Record Books
Woerter Dynasty Rising
Vladim cut out every article and pinned them to the walls. He slept less. His eyes gleamed feverishly. The metal case multiplied into three. He increased the dosages.
“You can endure it,” he insisted when Helen vomited after practice.
Butch began injecting himself to avoid his father’s steady hands. At night, they met in the narrow space between their bedrooms, backs against opposite walls.
“Do you ever think about leaving?” Helen whispered once.
“And go where?”
“Anywhere.”
Butch thought of the barbell in the frost. The needle. The word pathetic.
“He’d find us,” he said.
Helen nodded. She knew it was true. Yet something had shifted. They no longer trained because they feared being called worthless. They trained because winning felt like silence.
On the field, in the gym, on the track—there was no voice but their own breathing. Victory became a kind of revenge.
The collapse came without warning. Vladim was fifty-two when his heart gave out.
He was in the garage, adjusting a homemade centrifuge he used for his concoctions. Butch found him sprawled across the concrete floor, one hand clutching his chest. For a moment, Butch thought he was pretending.
“Get up,” he said. Vladim’s eyes fluttered open. They were unfocused, almost childlike.
“Superior,” he whispered.
Then he was still.
Helen stood in the doorway, her hands covered in chalk from the gym. Neither of them cried.
The funeral was sparsely attended. Coaches came. A few curious neighbors. The metal cases were locked in the basement. In the days that followed, the house felt larger. Quieter. The air seemed to move differently.
Helen stood at the kitchen counter where the injections had begun.
“He’s gone,” she said. Butch leaned against the sink.
“Yeah.”
She waited for relief. It did not come. Instead, there was a hollow space, like the silence after a gunshot.
“What do we do now?” she asked. Butch looked at the walls lined with clippings.
“We keep going.”
“For us?” He hesitated.
“For what we started.”
College recruiters descended with contracts and promises. Butch accepted a full scholarship for football and track. Helen chose gymnastics and tennis at a rival university.
For the first time in their lives, no one woke them before dawn. No one measured their food. No one called them names. The freedom was disorienting.
Butch found himself rising at 4:00 a.m. anyway. Helen counted calories without thinking. They both searched for the edge of pain that had once defined them.
When practices felt too easy, Butch doubled them. When coaches insisted Helen rest, she stayed late.
“You’re overtraining,” her coach warned.
“I’m fine,” she replied.
In private, they began experimenting with the formulas Vladim had left behind. The notebooks were meticulous. Ratios. Timetables. Adjustments. He had built a system.
“Do we destroy this?” Helen asked over the phone one night. Butch stared at the open journal on his desk.
“If we do, everything he did was for nothing.”
“And if we don’t?”
He didn’t answer.
Success came swiftly. Butch broke conference records as a freshman. Helen qualified for nationals.
Commentators praised their discipline. Their intensity.
“They’re machines,” one analyst said admiringly. The word felt like an inheritance.
Butch began mentoring younger teammates, pushing them beyond exhaustion.
“You can give more,” he insisted.
When one collapsed during drills, Butch felt a flicker of something—guilt? Or irritation?
“Get up,” he said, echoing a voice he knew too well.
Helen, meanwhile, developed a reputation for relentless perfection. She corrected teammates mid-routine. Critiqued posture, timing, breathing.
“Relax,” a fellow gymnast laughed once. Helen blinked, confused.
“Why?”
Late one night, she stood alone in the gymnasium and caught her reflection in the mirrored wall. Her body was sculpted, powerful, almost severe. Her eyes were unfamiliar. She heard her father’s voice as clearly as if he stood behind her.
Superior.
She realized with a cold clarity that she had not escaped him. She had absorbed him.
The first major scandal erupted during Butch’s junior year. A routine drug test flagged anomalies. The university launched an investigation.
Butch sat in a sterile office, hands clasped, listening to administrators use words like “irregularities” and “policy violations.” He thought of the metal case in his dorm closet.
“Have you taken any performance-enhancing substances?” they asked. He imagined Vladim’s expression. Emotion is for fools. Numbers tell the truth.
“Yes,” Butch said.
The confession detonated across campus. Headlines shifted tone.
Star Athlete Admits Doping
Siblings Under Scrutiny
Helen was tested the next day. Her results were also positive. They were suspended. Scholarships revoked. Reporters swarmed.
In the quiet that followed, they returned to the house of iron. Dust coated the clippings. The centrifuge sat idle.
They stood in the garage where their father had died.
“It ends here,” Helen said. Butch ran his hand over the metal case.
“Does it?” She turned on him.
“You heard them. We cheated,” said Helen.
“We enhanced.”
“We lied,” she corrected. He met her gaze.
“We became what he made us.” Silence stretched between them. Helen felt something crack inside—a thin fracture running through years of discipline.
“What if we don’t have to be superior?” she whispered. Butch looked genuinely startled.
“If we’re not,” he said slowly, “then what are we?”
The question hung heavier than any barbell. Weeks passed. Without training schedules, the days felt shapeless. Butch tried working at a local gym. He found himself correcting strangers’ form with an intensity that drove them away.
Helen volunteered at a community center, teaching gymnastics to children. The first time a girl stumbled off the beam and burst into tears, Helen knelt beside her.
“It’s okay,” she began automatically, then stopped.
“I’m bad at this,” said the girl.
Helen felt the old script rise to her tongue. Weakness spreads. She held her tongue, instead, she said, “You’re learning.”
The words felt foreign. Fragile. The girl looked up.
“Really?”
“Yes.” But she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t believe her own words. Helen helped her back onto the beam. That night, she sat alone in her childhood bedroom and cried for the first time in years.
Butch heard her through the wall. He didn’t knock, instead leaving her to her cry herself to sleep. He was in the garage, flipping through Vladim’s notebooks.
Page after page of data. Heart rates. Dosages. Performance metrics. Not once had their father written the words son or daughter. Only subjects and data he didn’t quite understand as yet. Butch closed the journal.
He remembered the moment in the university’s athletic offices when he had said yes. It had felt like stepping off a ledge. He walked into the house and found Helen at the kitchen table.
“I don’t want to be him,” he said. Helen wiped her face.
“I don’t want to be her. So maybe we don’t.”
“It’s not that simple,” said Butch.
“No,” she agreed. “It’s not.”
They sat in silence. After a while, Butch rose and carried the metal cases upstairs. Helen watched as he set them on the counter. He opened each one carefully. The vials glinted under the light.
He carried them to the sink and, one by one, emptied them. Amber liquid spiraled down the drain. Helen exhaled. When the last vial was gone, Butch dropped the empty case into the trash.
“What now?” he asked.
“Now we learn how to live without a scoreboard but perfect what he couldn’t,” she said. “This is just the beginning. Now we become who we really are.”
Present Day….
“Butch? Butch are you listening? What do we do about the kid? That Carter boy and his mom? They’re missing. If they go to an emergency room or tell someone, we’re gonna be shit out of luck.”
“Don’t worry. They’re too poor to do something so stupid. She needs the work. She’ll show up and we’ll be ready for her,” he smirked.
“I’m glad you’re so confident because I am not. If we don’t have positive examples of what we’ve accomplished when the buyer arrives next week, we’re done. We don’t have enough money to start again. This is it, Butch. Do you hear me?” asked Helen.
“I hear you. Loud and clear.”