Chronicles of Jonathan Tibbs 1: The Never Hero (27 page)

Following those instructions, he soon found, didn’t end at the gym.

“Want to be a monster,” Lincoln said, “you don’t just train like a monster; you gotta eat like one.”

Eating. Meal preparation and constant food consumption had become a full time job. His roommates hadn’t seen the kitchen get so much use in the entirety of their living together. He was constantly cooking meals that were high in protein. Collin and Hayden had openly been sickened by the amount of
healthy crap
they now found in the refrigerator. Lincoln had told him that for optimal muscle growth he was going to have to have food available at all times.

“Tibbs, if you start feeling hungry, I want you to start getting scared,” Lincoln had said. “I want you to be thinking, if I don’t eat soon my body might burn calories from my hard-earned muscle mass.”

Jonathan had at first found this to be a hassle. Twice a week he was cooking large quantities of food, then constantly carrying around a backpack full of pre-made meals. Soon though, he understood the necessity. Constant training was causing him to be perpetually hungry, just like the trainer had advised him. When he started feeling hungry, he started to worry.

This was, of course, in addition to the plethora of new supplements he’d been instructed to take at varying intervals. Protein powders, creatine, nitric oxide supplements, in addition to simple multivitamins, which were the only thing he had recognized prior to hiring the trainer.

Still, that hadn’t been the end of it. On the second day of training Lincoln had asked him how often he was doing things like jogging. When he found out Jonathan ran frequently he just shook his head.

“You need to knock that off immediately.”

He’d forbidden him from doing more than an hour of cardio throughout the whole week. Seeing as Jonathan had been running since high school for all of his exercise, it came as a blow. Apparently cardio and muscle building didn’t go together well. It had been the one thing he’d thought he’d be bringing to the table at the beginning, now it was considered a hindrance to his progress. He just had to accept it all as the price of survival. If he wasn’t making progress, then all he was doing was dying. Few equations were ever so simple.

“What are we watching tonight?” Collin asked Hayden. “Your turn to choose.”

“
Blood Sport
,” Hayden replied.

“Ugh.” Collin frowned. “Are we really including Van Damme movies?”

Hayden didn’t dignify the question with a response. Instead he riffled through the bookcase full of DVDs looking for the box he wanted.

He’d grown accustomed to the shift in routine. Jonathan came home, always appearing exhausted, and Collin and Hayden used his arrival as an excuse to take a break from their biblical comic book adaptation to watch action movies from their childhood. Which, if they were being honest, wasn’t much of a departure from their ordinary routine, except that it now included Jonathan.

Collin appeared to love the company, especially with the way Jonathan seemed to hang on their every word regarding the films. Although, he’d admittedly seemed less and less enthusiastic about it over the past week.

Hayden’s eyes finally found the box he was looking for and pulled it from the shelf. He placed the film in the player and turned on the TV so that the menu options would be showing once Jonathan arrived. He felt like a professor getting a PowerPoint presentation ready before class.

To say Jonathan’s change in behavior was noticeable was an understatement. Hayden felt that the only way he could be supportive was to provide the distraction that Jonathan seemed to be looking for. The whole house had commented on Jonathan never being at school anymore, or at least they never saw him there, and he was never studying.

Paige had said she was going to talk to him about it, but then the nightmares had started.

Hayden and Collin had both noticed it. Despite the fact that he appeared completely wiped out, he seemed to struggle to stay awake when he was with them, like he was afraid of going to sleep. They had all heard him, crying out in the night, walking around the house, or typing away on the Internet at early hours of the morning. No one had said anything to him yet. It wasn’t a courage issue; it just felt impolite.

Paige said Jonathan was showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Collin and Hayden had just nodded when she said it. It wasn’t like he was qualified to argue, but he wouldn’t have anyway. Given their roommate’s circumstances the assessment seemed to fit. Frankly, Hayden wasn’t so sure that he’d even recovered from that night. Images of blood all over the kitchen floor still made him cringe from time to time. He couldn’t imagine being Jonathan, having woken up in it.

Of course, PTSD still didn’t explain Jonathan’s strange new obsession with cooking. Hayden was putting that in the distraction category, along with the movies.

A few minutes later the front door opened and Jonathan came in. He moved sluggishly; his legs walked, but only in protest. He waved to them and they nodded, but he immediately ducked into the kitchen. A moment later they heard the microwave running.

“Ugh.” Collin whispered to Hayden. “Chicken breast and broccoli again.”

A few moments later Jonathan sat on the couch and started putting the meal away. He looked tired and distant. He chewed, but didn’t appear to be enjoying the meal, just sustaining himself.

“Tonight, we watch
Blood Sport
,” Hayden said hoping to rouse some excitement out of him.

Jonathan nodded. Both Collin and Hayden noticed a change in his behavior. This wasn’t less enthusiasm. It was bordering on no enthusiasm.

“What’s up, Tibbs?” Collin asked. “Seem kind of disinterested suddenly.”

Jonathan looked up at the two of them and paused. He sighed and put his knife and fork down on his plate.

“Sorry guys, it’s not you; I’m just starting to think this might be a waste of time.”

“Tibbs, we are watching action movies from the 80’s. Of course it’s a waste of time,” Collin said. “What did you think you’d be getting out of it?”

Jonathan seemed to think about the question too long. After he wavered for a moment he finally said, “Not sure exactly. These movies are occasionally inspiring I guess. It’s just, they don’t…” He paused again. “They don’t seem to offer anything practical.”

“Practical?” Collin asked incredulously, exchanging looks with Hayden.

Jonathan put his plate on the coffee table. Again looking thoughtful, it was obvious that he was trying to ask a question without actually giving them context, without asking the ‘real’ question. Hayden wanted to tell him to stop dancing around the issue and just blurt it out already, but he didn’t. After all, if Jonathan wanted to talk about it, he wouldn’t go to so much trouble angling to avoid it.

“These movies, they’re starting to feel so formulaic,” Jonathan said, “I don’t get why there are so many of them, all telling essentially the same story. Why do—“

“Ahhh ha!” Hayden said.

“Crap,” Collin said right after he saw the look in Hayden’s eyes. “Here we go.”

“I’m glad you brought this up Jonathan,” Hayden said.

“Here comes the speech,” Collin said.

Jonathan looked surprised, like he’d never expect the comment to push a button.

“It’s that very formula,” Hayden said, looking to Collin as though he’d just won some argument, “that drives the reuse of these stories over and over.”

Collin just shook his head at Jonathan as though he’d been betrayed.

“All hero stories basically follow the same rules, Tibbs,” Hayden said. “Joseph Campbell wrote an extensive work on this called
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
but I’ll give you a Cliff Notes rundown of my version.”

This wasn’t the first time Jonathan had forgotten that Hayden was a literature major and such topics could suddenly turn into passionate tangents, usually of interest to no one but Hayden himself.

“I like to simplify the formula down to four basic components: the quest, the entourage, the weapon, and the wise man.”

“Okay,” Jonathan said, actually appearing interested.

“The quest is pretty self-explanatory. There’s the monster to slay, the revenge to seek, the treasure to find, and the people to save. You know, whatever the call to action is for the hero.”

“Sure.” Jonathan nodded.

Collin picked up his laptop and plugged into the headphone jack.

“
Then there’s the entourage, the hero’s groupies. They could be his fellow warriors or soldiers, a comedy sidekick, etc. Of course, the entourage doesn’t even have to know they are the entourage; take Lois Lane and Jimmy Olson, for example. For most of Superman’s history they don’t even know Clark Kent is Superman.”

Hayden noticed that something about this comment seemed to resonate with Jonathan. He sat up straighter, more alert.

“Wait a minute,” Collin chimed in, giving away that he was in fact still paying attention, “Lois is Clark’s romantic interest. Shouldn’t she be separate from the entourage?”

Hayden flip flopped his hands as if weighing the observation.

“Ehhh. The love interest almost indefinitely becomes wrapped up in the quest somehow. They either are the person the hero is saving, or revenging, or will inevitably be the bargaining chip for whatever treasure the hero finally recovers when the bad guy wants to take said treasure away,” Hayden stated, then paused and added, “or they betray the hero which inevitably leads to a plot twist, or their downfall.”

“You’ve given this speech a lot,” Jonathan said as he observed Hayden fielding the question.

Hayden ignored the comment and continued.

“Then there’s the weapon, that which the hero requires to complete the quest. This is vague. It could be literal or symbolic, depending on the story. For instance, we could literally be talking about a special sword or an ax the hero needs to slay the beast, a Medusa head to turn his enemy into stone like in Clash of the Titans, or it could be the magic key that seals or closes a portal. Symbolically, it could also be something like belief or self-reliance. For instance, Neo, in
The Matrix
, is a hero but he is only able to defeat the villain when he ‘believes’ he’s the hero.”

Jonathan nodded again.

“Last, there’s the sage, the wise old man, the person who knows the terrain and can tell the hero what to prepare for; what he needs to be, who he needs to be. This is your Mick from
Rocky
, Yoda from
Star Wars
, and Mr. Miyogi from
The Karate Kid
. Frankly, these are all of your most beloved characters, usually preferred over the hero themselves.”

Jonathan seemed to wait for Hayden to continue. When Hayden didn’t he asked the obvious question. “So, if it’s all so formulaic, why do storytellers keep rehashing the formula?”

“I guess some argument could be made that the stories tend to require regenerating to fit the times,” Hayden said. “I mean it’s easier for me to watch Superman fly around metropolis since the setting and state of the world are more relatable to my time in history, as opposed to reading about Odysseus,” Hayden said, “but I don’t think that’s all there is to it.

“So what do you think?” Jonathan asked.

“I think the formula isn’t about practicality, as you mentioned earlier. Its use isn’t useful in the standard sense. You don’t learn to fight, for instance, through watching an action movie. But you might learn to fight because of watching an action movie.”

“I’m not sure I follow. That seems anti-climactic,” Jonathan said.

Hayden sat back down on the couch.

“We watch these formulaic movies over and over again because they affect us emotionally Tibbs. They show the way to anyone who might heed the call to action. They tell the tale of how a thousand different heroes gritted their teeth to be what the situation needed. It’s not physical preparation, it’s psychological. And this formula has been inspiring mankind since the beginning of, well, stories.”

Jonathan sat back into the couch himself. He seemed to be thinking it over. Finally he picked his plate back up off the table and started eating again.

Collin removed the headphones from his ear.