Jack

Chapter One: Reverie

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A man stood in the desert, clutching the souls of thousands in his fist. His breath in time with the heartbeat of the world, of the heartbeats of the dead, the living, and everything in between. His conscience shattered and his very nature primal, deadly. This was Jack. 

Picture him now: staring into the vastness of everything around him, a snarl fixed upon his face-burnt with sun and sin. He saw faces in everything. Faces of those he loved. Faces of those who had loved him. Faces of the deserving dead.  

His boots traversed mile after mile, crunching as they went. The desert plain stretched into infinity ahead, and he watched it as it fell over the edge of existence into the worlds beyond. The way it seemed to melt into everything enticed him, attracted him. As always, he was encouraged to simply lie down and die, to become the dirt and the clay and the cactus. But he wasn't allowed to do that.  

Why is why he needed an anchor, something he could hold on to and remember something, anything good about who he was and had been. He glanced at his small revolvers. They had not been used in a long while. Six months had passed; the town at the edge of the desert had long since been purged by the reaper that now stalked the wastes.  

He remembered what he'd done that day. He'd done as he always did. He remembered how all the trusting faces had turned to terror as his guns had smote them down. He remembered leaving half of himself behind amid the blood and pain - and it made him think of home. For Jack, home was a brief and deadly place. 

As he walked, the sickening memory filled his mind's eye until his feet moved without thought and his breath rasped slowly. Buildings appeared as if spontaneously upon the horizon, and the sun dimmed to a soft orange as it set. In his mind, he saw this. He breathed cool air once again, insubstantial as it was, and reveled in its sense of new life. As he stepped deeper into the memory, the air was replaced by the smell of fish. 

"Jack! Boy, goddammit, I've a right mind to clobber ya with this rifle! Git your sorry behind over here and help me get these onto the cart!"  

Jack, a young boy of no older than nine, brushed his auburn hair from his eyes and looked resignedly at his father. The man wore faded overalls and a red shirt stained with many years of sweat and hard liquor. In one hand, he gripped an old rifle, and in the other, an immense sack of dried salmon. He glared with unfocused green eyes into mirrors of his own. Jack's eyes were nearly the same as his fathers, although they were deeper in shade. They reflected a dignity that his father's could never possess. 

"We're leaving town. Git your head out your arse and go help your mama with the oxen."  

Jack shuffled across the yard to obey, entering the one-story house that belonged to him and his dysfunctional family. He walked across the creaking floorboards, set generations ago by his great-grandfather. Each told a tale of years of use and misuse, and Jack was almost sorry to be leaving. For a moment, he felt a twinge of childish nostalgia. 

That was when he rounded the corner and beheld the infamous bloodstain. All those years ago-five to be exact-Jack's father, drunk that he was, had flown into a rage and thrown his mother into the wall. He had ignored her pleas. She had been seven months pregnant at the time, and all these years later Jack stilled cursed the bastard with every fiber of his twisted being. His one chance at having someone else to get hit, someone else to get blamed, was stolen in the night by the one who might have given Jack salvation. 

Jack, with steady steps, left the house through the back and entered the courtyard. His mother, in a dusty brown dress, worn travel boots with no laces and a once-white blouse with the sleeves torn off. Those sleeves had once been used to staunch the blood of a wound Jack had once suffered when he climbed onto the roof as a child. He had fallen and nearly broken his neck. The angel of death always seemed to taunt Jack. 

Back in the present, the mirage flickered momentarily as Jack smiled gruesomely. The angel of death had no hold on him now. The angel of death belonged to Jack, was Jack. Jack fingered his revolvers uncertainly and a tremor passed through his body, racking his abdomen and working his way up to his head. Jack ignored it and kept walking.

In his mind again, Jack walked slowly up to his mother with a smile on his face. He sauntered up to her and quickly kissed her on the cheek.  

"Hey, sugar," she said in a lilting drawl, not unlike what molasses dripping out of a jar might sound like were it a sound. She pinched his cheek and drew him into a hug. She smelled of livestock and cheap perfume. For Jack, who had known it since he was a newborn babe, it was a pleasant odor. 

She gestured excitedly at the larger of their two oxen, indicating for Jack to lead it around to the back of the house.  

"Git on, sugar, it's best we leave before your rat for a daddy thinks somethin's wrong and kicks a wall in." She took the harness of the other ox in her callused hands and began walking with a sure, steady gait that Jack would, years later, inherit. When they reached the front of the house, Jack's father was waiting by the wagon with his hands resting easily on his hips and a content, self-assured expression on his unshaven face. 

"Good," he said. "Now let's git goddamn going." He took the oxen, secured them to the wagon, and hopped onto the driver's seat with surprising agility. He motioned for the other two to get into the open back with the family's belongings. They climbed up, Jack's mother helping him, and settled in. Jack squirmed to make his body comfortable against several small sacks of flour and closed his eyes to sleep. 

Jack shook his head and the reverie vanished. He continued to walk, strolling along easily, his calm green eyes surveying the surroundings as would a hawk looking for prey. Jack did not need to eat often. Once a day suited him fine, and he had captured and eaten raw several lizards a few hours back. Jack once again looked at the sky. Blue and vibrant, it formed a perfect contrast to what Jack was on the inside: dark and twisted, like a tree uprooted and blasted to bits by a lightning bolt. In effect, that was a perfect analogy for what had happened to his miserable excuse for a life. 

He closed his eyes. He opened them again. Several yards away, he saw a gaunt figure leaning easily against a boulder with a torn hat covering his eyes. Jack stopped, startled. He was confused but not displeased that his mind had chosen this One. He took a shallow breath, resumed walking, and re-entered his reverie.