“Here we go!” he said while putting the pitchers on the table.

“Wow mate! You’re serious.”

“Well, I thought we had quite some catching up to do.”

Both of them were thirsty. They emptied one of the pitchers almost instantly. That loosened them up. They started talking about teachers, classmates and that wretched town they grew up in.

“I’m telling you it’s a miracle we survived.” Aaron said

“It’s a miracle we didn’t catch the crazies.” added Dan. “There were some pretty fucked up things happening there”.

“Yeah. What do you expect in a town so small? Most people were probably related but they kept fucking and multiplying.”

“I think my parents were cousins. But I turned out OK. Unlike poor David.” said Dan. Both men frowned remembering David, who was diagnosed with a heart complication at the age of 13 and died in less than a year after that.

David’s family had taken him to a doctor in the nearest big city who said there was nothing medicine could do for him. It was probably because of the restricted gene pool in the town and that he was actually amazed more cases like that hadn’t been reported.

But he didn’t know about all the stillborn babies. Some of them weren’t even reported to the local authorities. Most women used to give birth at home with the help of a midwife. If the baby was stillborn they would just put it in a small box and bury it in the woods outside of town. People there were very defensive of their ‘heritage’ as they liked to call it.

“I’m glad I left when I did.” Aaron finally broke the silence.

...to be continued...