Beneath the Lotus

A novel

Jimmy just wants to be a normal teenager. Good grades, clean-cut, he does everything he can to be like everyone else his age, but beneath the surface lies a household that is anything but normal. An addict mother that’ll do anything for her next fix, a gluttonous father that’s trapped to the couch, two siblings with unsettling closeness, and an uncle who turns the basement into a chamber of dark art make normality impossible.

But Jimmy’s baby brother, Pecu, is not like the rest of them, not yet. Jimmy endures the family for Pecu; what other choice is there? But when Jimmy’s girlfriend mysteriously disappears and he discovers her fighting for her life in his own basement enduring the family is not enough. Jimmy makes a decision that’ll change his life. And who he is.

Jimmy kidnaps Pecu and starts life on the run. From his own family. He’ll do anything to save his brother, and he soon learns that anything, at least for him, comes with no boundaries. As Jimmy turns into the very thing he hoped to save his brother from, he comes to a crossroad between salvation for Pecu and the last vestige of his innocence. Which will he choose?

The Lotus?
Or what lay beneath?