13
Jax had flimsy, incongruous dreams. Heat cramps, heat exhaustion; whatever you call it, Jax suffered through it unconsciously. A passionate, rage-filled heart made his mind feel like microwaved slime. Jax saw himself arguing with Taylor, but every so often, the two looked like teenagers.
We were invincible, ready for our lives to begin. The only issue was… our lives had already begun.
“Where do you go?!” she yelled. “You’re never here even when you are. Fantasizing. That’s what it is. You’re tired of me.”
“No. I’m tired of this. Useless arguments that show how little you know about me.” Jax spoke calmly, yet vehemence boiled from within. Not angry nor loving, but something painful between the two emotions.
Without transition, Jax sat alone on a park bench while dense snowflakes fell from the air and touched the ground in piles and mounds. This seemed to be a transitional moment in itself as he no longer thought about anything. His mind rested in this peaceful place. It should have been cold, but the dream wasn’t so vivid as to factor in that aspect. For once, Jax felt as though he existed. When he was around most other people, he played a character. A simple, two-dimensional character. No apparent struggles to cope with, nor complicated emotions. It seemed normal to act that way around people who could only handle small talk, the people who are uncomfortable around any topic with even the slightest sad connotation. But Jax acted this way with everyone. He shut Taylor out, pretended not to be bothered by boredom, pretended to listen to how her day went. Her days were the same every time he heard about them. Just a change of detail here and there. Fill-in-the-blank, MadLib-style stories.
Something-something breakfast. Something-something minor inconvenience with Jake. Something-something recreational activity that occasionally included Taylor’s housewife friends. Something-something job search. Something-something else that has to do with Jake.
Some people could live with such boring repetition without a second thought. Jax couldn’t. He was tired of conversations about mundane happenings that were embellished into legends. He was tired of faking interest. Alone in the snow, Jax felt at peace. Not lonely nor in need of a warming hug, because he felt whole and tangible. The kind of life where joy came from every little thing, and the need for constant entertainment (necessary drama) did not exist.
He focused on the rest of the snowy park and watched two figures throwing snow at each other like children would. Before long, he recognized the two figures as Taylor and himself, but younger. They laughed in a joyful noise that warmed him on the bench. The couple beheld a treasure that was long-lost for Jax. Every adult loses their childhood somewhere along the way. They attach to a new world where anything that is not adult does not matter. Silverware and fancy plates are toys that cannot be played with. Dramatic television replaces our cartoons. If no one dies, divorces, contracts disease, or suffers in any way, then it loses relatability. We lost our love for Disney’s fairy tales and turned to the Brothers Grimm. In fact, Disney is no longer reminiscent of childhood; to adults, it is a greedy, dreamless corporation. The adult mind has a knack for cynicism, a need to ruin childhood dreams of Santa Clause and tooth fairies, a feeling that life without pain is dull and worthless. It lacks the skill to enjoy what is simple fun. It needs money to be spent, so it can give an experience tangible value. It forgets days at the park with a tennis ball and a friend, and it focuses on the cost of the ball and the exertion required to get to the park.
Taylor scooped up a handful of snow and clapped it against the back of Jax’s neck. His shoulders tensed up and shuddered against the cold.
“Try’na give me frostbite?” he asked.
“You’ll live, you big baby.”
He pulled her in close for a kiss, and the present-day Jax sitting on the park bench felt a poignant sense of nostalgia. This lasted a moment before a man sat down beside him and rested an arm around his shoulders. Jax didn’t need to look over to see who the man was. He already knew.
“The world might be better if we could be young forever,” Daark said. “Now I could dismiss these things as teenage hormones, but everyone is tired of that argument, so I’ll provide an alternative. It’s easier to love someone when you possess nothing.”
“Everyone wants to be Cinderella, because she has a rich man, but they don’t see that Cinderella wouldn’t care if her palace floor was made of dirt,” Jax said. “What happened to her, Daark? What happened to the girl over there playing in the snow?” Jax pointed outward.
“I don’t need to spell it out for you.”
Taylor pushed young Aaron Jax into the snow, and he laughed. He spread out his arms and legs to make a snow angel, and when she pulled him up out of the snow, they both made the same face. Like art critics, they each put a forefinger and thumb on their chins and tilted their heads sideways in exaggerated thought.
“You thinkin what I’m thinkin?” Young Jax asked.
“Draw a penis on him?”
“Yeah.” He nodded in fake solemnity.
The elder Jax sitting on the bench felt a rough blockage in his throat. He put a hand over his mouth and coughed dryly for a while before he sat up straight and his eyes fluttered open to see the real world. He saw Daark standing at the end of the bed, but he didn’t think to wonder why Daark was standing at the end of the bed.
“You’re an idiot, but I’m sure you’ve learned your lesson. Well, maybe not the obvious lesson about walking long-distance without water, but I know you’ve learned a lesson.”
Jax should have asked if his wife called again, but he had bigger things to be concerned about.
“What happened, I mean, how much time has passed?”
“It has been five hours since you passed out on the side of the road. I was already on my way when you fell, so you’re welcome for your life.”
“Can you get me a good lawyer?” Jax asked without transition. “Not like now, but when we get back.”
“What crime do you plan on committing?”
“It’s not a crime. I’ve realized that I have a long life ahead of me. I made a young man’s mistake, so I better fix it while I’ve still got a decent number of hairs on my head.”
“Cut to the chase,” Daark said.
“I’m in need of a divorce lawyer.”
Daark had a great sympathetic poker face. Internally, he smiled like a dog, and Jax forgot about Daark’s knack for manipulation. Few could gain enough trust to break, and even fewer could bend people to their will. Daark had no reason to wish for Jax’s divorce other than his own selfish need of an anchor. He needed an unclouded mind to make decisions for him. Clinically, Daark was a psychopath: little empathy and largely antisocial. If not for Jax, he would set a goal to wipe out humanity within twenty years, so the evolution cycle would have a chance to catch up to the species that understood math and science. Daark tabled the idea as a secondary goal and pushed forward with the Pax Co. plan.
“What are we doing here?” Jax questioned. “It’s been a week, and we’ve sat around for most of it.”
“I know you’re trustworthy, Jax, so I’ll let you in on the secret. Pax Co. is the owner of this farm on paper.”
Jax paused and considered the plausibility of this statement. “I thought you were in negotiation phase still.”
“The last thing that I negotiated banned Pax Co. from speaking of the deal to non-confidential constituents until the six-month anniversary of our deal. The construction companies come in on the day we leave. It’s guerilla warfare, you see? Bring everything in before a single word can be said to stop it.”
“But there has to be some warning, right?”
“Not for the person who doesn’t own the farm.”
Jax’s stunned silence persisted throughout the room until a muddled yelling of curses permeated the walls of the house before entering with the man yelling them.
“Daark! Daark!” Wyatt exclaimed. “Th-they’re fucking exploding! The hogs, Daark!”
Wyatt barged in with such a panicked authority that neither man consciously noticed the mess of blood coating Wyatt’s clothes. They followed him to the pigpen that rested within the barn, and Jax trailed along as well though he had not been invited. The frantic tone struck genuine fear into Jax as he jogged along with the other men, and he expected nothing less than an R-rated view of the hogs. They arrived with zero time to adjust to the scene as the next gruesome bodily explosion happened.
Pop! Like the squelch of a water balloon, blood fanned out in a two-foot radius, coating the surrounding hogs like a splash of paint. The crude, disfigured hogs seemed too stupid to save themselves from the splash zone. In the low-lit shade of the barn, their crippled bodies glimmered, highlighting the worst features. Somewhere under the hoard, there had to be the diseased corpse of a hog.
“It’s like an explosive disease for pigs,” Daark said, being suspiciously insightful on the matter. He then took a small, cautious step away from Wyatt.
“Aren’t we in danger then?!” Jax asked, panicking.
“Diseases don’t hop between species well, but I wouldn’t go bathing in their blood either. Wyatt, go put your clothes in something metal and burn them with gas or alcohol. We’ll handle the rest.”
Wyatt did as he was told, and when he had run far from earshot, Jax trailed behind as Daark moved on. He closed the barn door decisively and ran off toward the house. Jax didn’t ask to help or question the situation. Instead, he stood by as Daark handled things in an orderly manner. Daark looked like a surgeon collecting tools as he gathered a can of lighter fluid, a match box, and a shovel.
“Grab another shovel,” Daark ordered.
They worked in chaos and Daark spoke few words, yet Jax understood what they were doing without need of verbal cue. They dug shallow scoops of dirt out of the ground surrounding the barn. Jax had no idea how long it took them to circle the barn with their moat, but he felt efficient and speedy. Afterwards, Daark made a lap around the barn with the tip of his shovel grazing the dirt to ensure they had cleared organic matter away. Daark had no idea if the ditch was deep enough for his purposes, but in a state of emergency, hoping can be just as good as knowing. Jax stood a wary distance away from the ditch, and Daark sprayed one wall of the barn with lighter fluid, making a stream that trickled down the wall and saturated the dirt. Jax bit his lip nervously.
Daark turned to face him. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Fires can do good, Jax. Especially in this case.”
Jax paused a moment. “I trust you.”
Daark tossed the book of matches at Jax and nodded. Jax did everything in his power not to think of the fire that ruined him all those years ago, but a nagging thought can never be pushed away fully. How long had it been since last he used a match box? He hardly touched his own grill at home, and he used a long-nozzle lighter whenever he needed fire. You can avoid any fear for the rest of your life if the need arises.
He struck a match awkwardly 5-6 times before it lit, and without noticing his fixation, Jax stared at the match until the flame burned a fourth of the way down the matchstick. He tossed it anxiously, and the match meandered through the air before landing flat in the pool of lighter fluid. His paranoia made him think the flame would die during the toss, but he had done it softly, and the fluid caught fire.
Jax could only think, awkwardly: You’re a man now, Charlie Brown.
He stared with his eyes hooked to the burning barn, the way he had watched his house burn down when he was just wee Aaron Jax. The action seemed simple enough, yet pride swelled within Jax, and he finally felt as though he were taking life by the throat. The world might bend its knee at his gesture, and he felt the way hippies do when they claim to feel “rebirth” or “peace, maaan”. The thought of confronting his wife rested far away on a deserted island with no chance of rescue. He forgot his cell phone, keys, wallet, khakis, and home. Nothing existed but the fire.
At once, his mind wandered, and he turned his gaze towards Daark. Austin Daark was an emotionless void. His lips did not curl into a smile or a frown; they rested in neutrality. He looked the way the person you make random eye contact with always does. Daark also seemed so concerned with the fire that nothing passed through his mind.
Pigs and hogs squealed the way a man squeals when his testicles have been crushed by an unprompted foot. It would have smelled like bacon if any care had been taken to making the barn-fire into a sort of cookout; but the fire was random and sporadic, so it smelled the way a lock of hair smells when singed, the smell of a fly burning in an electric swatter. The men ignored the smell, enthralled with the sight of a burning barn, but it was there nonetheless, like the smell of feces covered up by a cheap aerosol spray.
Wyatt ran to greet them although it was an angry greeting. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuckity-Fuck! The whole barn, Daark?”
Daark strode over to Wyatt, smooth as silk and he caressed Wyatt’s cheek the way a lover would. The hand slid down until he flexed his thumb, gripping the front of the old man’s neck firmly. He tilted Wyatt groundward till he was at a perfect 45° angle, an exact halfway between the ground and Daark’s shoulder. The display of strength amazed Jax as he watched Wyatt grip at the wrist that held him for a glimpse of control, stability.
“Let go of me,” Daark commanded.
“I’m not—”
“Let go,” he insisted. Wyatt gave up his portion of control and let Daark hold him by the neck. “You’ve been a thorn in my toe all this time, and you’ve been such an insignificant pain that I haven’t bothered to pluck you. I’m the heir to the Daark farm. I am Austin-fucking-Daark!”
Austin-fucking-Daark had a slim frame. You wouldn’t think anything of him. Without cheating, Daark could beat 99% of the men on earth in a fight. As Wyatt saw now, dangling at the end of Daark’s arm, he was a large threat. A threat that no one wanted to be on the wrong end of.
Wyatt almost said, let me go, but he was smarter than that. “Pull me up. You’ve made your point.”
“No, Grab my arm. Pull yourself up.”
Wyatt’s arms moved up slowly, shaking terribly, but the oscillation wasn’t due to natural fear. His arms felt heavy, like they had been sculpted from lead. A secret conversation passed telepathically between the men.
What!? Wyatt thought weakly.
You’ve never had control, cretin. All you have is what I’ve allowed you to have. I’m a deity to your kind. You can be buried, ground to bonemeal. You are a man. Never forget. You. Are. A. Man. And I—well—I’m the boogie man.
Wyatt never laid a finger on Daark’s wrist. Daark set the old man down and glanced at Wyatt as the farmer massaged his newly bruised neck.
“The future is coming. Let go of the past and let it touch you. Or, you can let it kill you. Be like the rest of the old-timer porch-dwellers. Is that how you want to die? Holding dearly to a disgusting past? You’re thinking about Joey, right? It’s been ages, and still, he’s in your head like a barbed Quill!” Daark exclaimed. “He hanged himself! So what? You think you could have helped him? Joey had manic depression! His brain throttled him right into a noose!”
Jax put a hand on Daark’s shoulder, and he stopped talking. He looked at Wyatt and saw that the old man was groveling on the ground and bawling his eyes out.