Chapter 4 - R.I.P.
I sat back in my reclining chair, swallowing a gulp of ice cold beer. The football game was on but I was bored. “When is that bastard coming to get me out of this place? I’m sick of hiding!”
For months, I’d been hiding out in some beat up gas station. It was an old place and the previous owner had built it to connect to his own house. What a trash heap! And to make matters worse, nobody could give me a straight answer as to what I was hiding from.
What am I doing? I should start from the beginning. It’d be rude to not introduce myself. I’m eighteen years old and my name is Rip. It’s a nickname given to me when I was just a little boy. My mother raised me on her own because my father was too much of a coward to be an actual father to me. He ran away before I was even born.
I was born as James Thomas, but my mother called me Jimmy. My story really begins when I was five years old. I barely remember it, my school bus was in an a terrible accident. It was pushed off of a bridge by an out of control city dump truck, killing everyone inside, including me.
As my mother cried over my dead body, something happened to me. My heart began beating on its own and my chest rose and fell. I had a few broken bones, but everyone called me a miracle. I came back from death and they paraded me around in churches, touting my life as proof of God’s love. I even made up some story that I saw a light and it told me to return to the living world.
What a joke. It was then that I realized how easy it was to manipulate people. It actually scared me how much power I had in their eyes, but I took advantage. I was given anything and everything that I could have asked for.
A few years later, I was struck in the head by a baseball. For the second time in my life, I was dead. The force of the blow was so great that the doctor’s declared me brain dead. It was soon after that my mother took me off of life support and the rest of my body failed.
A reporter from the local news snuck into my room as my mother wailed over my dead body. She’d pretended to be a family member to get in, but instead started recording video of the boy who had journeyed back from the dead only to be killed in another accident. That was the story she thought she had.
As she was getting her money shot of my death, she asked a question to my mother, “How do you feel now that God has taken your son from you twice?”
She didn’t respond immediately, but looked up at the reporter in disgust. After a moment, she asked, “Why can’t you people just let my son rest in peace?” Immediately, my hand twitched and soon my legs until my eyes opened wide and I sat up.
Another miracle and this time it was captured on video for the entire world to see. Well, it was actually dismissed by most of the national media as a hoax, but locals knew better. It was the hot topic for years. The news even dubbed me as “The Rest In Peace Boy” thanks to my mother’s words just before my revival. That’s how I became “Rip”.
As the years went by, I started showing signs that I wasn’t normal. It made me question my own existence. I had never really believed in God, but it was clear to me that some sort of higher power had been on my side. I hid everything that I could do, but secretly practiced when I was alone. I didn’t want any more attention from the media.
Despite my being involved in a miracle twice, my mother died in my teen years. Heart failure, I was told. For a long time, I blamed myself. If she hadn’t had to deal with me and all of my issues, maybe her heart would have been healthier. Maybe I was the problem.
Then, a couple years ago, Luc found me. He knew about the miracles and was intrigued. He said that I could help him and his organization, IFER. There was always little hints in his voice that he knew about my secret abilities, but he never really came out and said it.
