An homage to raw unadulterated power
The Story of Dangerfield's Dad
By Mack McColl
Copyright 2026
Prologue
Harney Codliverchuk was raised by an old‑country eastern European (Ukrainian) businessman who owned a pool hall in a small prairie town in western Canada, and this afforded Harney a beginning in life. It was a comfortable beginning, surrounded by the criminals who inhabited the pool hall in the 1940s. Harney had no grandiose ideas about who he was or what he was capable of, except that he could beat anybody at a game of billiards.
From this vantage point he learned early that power didn’t come from noise or spectacle, but from watching. A Watcher begins as an observer, not a force — a patient reader of fracture lines in other people’s lives. Harney chose the law as his perch, a place from which he could direct the traffic of his life.
He came to believe he saw the world more clearly than the world saw itself, and this certainty became his private cosmology. Over time, observation turned to interference, interference to manipulation, and manipulation hardened into a doctrine in which he alone understood the pattern.
He didn’t see any fatal flaws in himself: a Watcher cannot imagine a target who survives, outlasts, or walks through the wreckage untouched by unauthorized designs. In the end, he believes he will overcome resistance. He has no vision for things he never accounted for. There is no life, in his mind, that refuses to break where he expects it to.
Harney noticed the sister first.
Not because she was remarkable (she wasn’t, except perhaps for her figure) but because greed had a particular shine to it, a hairline fracture in the world that only Harney seemed able to see. She carried that crack openly, like a badge. Most mortals tried to hide their appetites. She wore hers like perfume.
He knew she would be useful before she even opened her mouth. People like her always are. Greed was the simplest force in any dimension. It didn’t require interpretation or finesse. You gave it something to want, and it walked itself into the trap. Harney had never needed to work hard with the greedy. They did the work for him.
When he encountered her brother, Dale MacAdam, it barely registered. A boy like that didn’t draw the eye. No shine, no fracture, no appetite worth exploiting. A background figure everywhere but a hockey rink. A formality, inelegant, someone shaped by small loyalties and smaller expectations. Harney assumed he was as flawed as his sister. Most siblings were.
When Harney made his first move, it was because she was a runaway at age fourteen. He was assigned custody of her by the court when they dragged her back to the city of Edmonton, and Harney wasn’t thinking about Dale at all. He was thinking about the sister, about the leverage she represented, about the clean geometry of greed. Dale was incidental, more of an obnoxious intrusion.
He wasn't raising alarms. He was no threat. Just annoyance, the kind you feel when a door you’ve opened a thousand times suddenly sticks. It wasn’t supposed to stick. It had no reason to. It was a door. It should have opened. This was the level of flaw in Dale, and Harney decided it should not exist, and Harney had the power to deny existence.
The only question became how to deny Dale MacAdam his own existence. Would the obnoxious kid cling to a purpose with a stubborn, graceless persistence that made no sense? He wasn’t strong. He wasn’t courageous. But perhaps he had a refusal so quiet and so absolute it felt like mockery. Harney stared at him and wanted him broken, bleeding, unconscious. A pool cue would do the job.
The sister’s face told a different story. She was perfectly poised to be an asset, bleeding with envy. Harney knew she hated Dale for surviving her hate of him coagulating in pools to make her look small. Hated him for possessing an existence. Harney could fix it for her.
Harney didn’t pay much attention to her needs other than that. Dale MacAdam was an anomaly demanding her to fracture, smash, call for extermination. She was 14. She had Harley by the balls. The Sisters counted on it and he knew it.
Harney was sure he needed no support for the task of removing this boy from this mortal coil. But he was prepared to learn, and not out of fear. He would learn out of irritation for surprises. Any second-in-command in Harney's mission would never need to question or interpret.
Harney applied pressure until the world fractured the way it was supposed to. The sister bent exactly as expected. Dale did not in fact crumble and might turn out to be a persistent irritation. All Harney knew is, the promise of giving her whatever she wants cost the brother his life. This was the beginning of a fracture Harney would fret about, covet and vex over until the day he succeeded.
He captured the sister easily enough. Watched the way she leaned into every conversation, hungry for advantage. Watched the way she measured people by what they could give her. Watched the way she resented being denied her wish.
Harney knew envy is a corrosive form of greed. A quieter one. A poisonous one. She said she hated the boy. Harney believed she envied Dale’s life, though she would never have named it. Perhaps she hated his manhood. Hated his durability. Hated the way he refused to collapse under a weight of expectations that would crush her.
But she made a convincing case for his weakness. She thought he was simple. She thought he was beneath her. And Harney agreed. It was because of her that he decided to strike. He resolved to strike Dale as many times as it took. And he wasn't about to wait. A pattern would assert itself. Mortals broke cleanly when you hit them in the right place. They didn’t linger or resist. They didn’t cling or persist. They broke and died.
Would Dale cling? It wouldn’t be dramatic or heroic. Perhaps he would resist, just, persistently. Like a weed that refused to die no matter how many times you tore it out. There was nothing noble about weeds. They don’t fight. They don’t resist. They continue. And continuation, Harney believed, was its own kind of belligerence.
Still, he wasn’t concerned. Survival was not victory. Survival was delay. And delays can be corrected. He had time. He had leverage. He had the prize. The sister was worthy of use. Harney held to patterns, since those are informative.
He had the world exactly where he wanted it. The kid was a footnote. A complication. A child who didn’t know enough to die when he was supposed to. A child whose survival felt like an insult standing in the way of a petite corsage blooming on his dick.
Harney told himself it didn’t matter. Survival was not strength. Endurance was not will. This anomaly would resolve to Harney’s satisfaction. He told himself he understands the world. He told himself he understands problems. He told himself any vendetta would be short and sweet.
To begin with, Harney was certain of a few facts. He was first amongst worldly authorities. Breaker of patterns. A reader of fractures. A hunter of mortals. And Dale McAdam was nothing but a monster whose mother and sister felt he should have died. Under Harney's close watch, it was a child who would die. A child whose survival was malfunction could never be a encouraged. Required full time surveillance. Watching.
Harney would correct the malfunction and would finish what he began. He always did. The main goal of a watcher is to be a finisher.
Chapter one: The World's Greatest Fishing Knife
