J Roars
Authors: Emily Eck
J Roars
Published by Emily Eck at Smashwords
Copyright 2014 Emily Eck
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J Roars
I'd tear the world apart for Elle, and I just might have to after what happened in the park. I won't stop until she is safe. I won't sleep until she is next to me.
Because if she dies--
so do I.
"
Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity."
-Malcolm X
Some people never had love. They grew up on the streets, maybe with no family, or family that beat the fuck out of them, family that abused them and treated them like they were worthless pieces of shit. When you've never had love, you don't miss it. You don't even know what it is, and you can't miss something if you don't know it exists. I've met these kind of people, people who are only functioning with half their brain, not because they’re stupid, but because their brain is not fully developed. Whatever fucked up circumstances they've come from has damaged their brain's ability to grow to its full potential. They use the lower half of their brain. The Doing Brain. They can't access the upper half of their brain, the Thinking Brain, because it was never given a chance to develop. Repeated trauma will do that to ya.
The
brain is a mysterious thing, and it can grow and develop, even after all kinds of fucked up shit. We as human beings have the ability to over-come any circumstances put forth in our paths. The problem is, you don't know what you don't know. You don't know there's another path to take if no one shows you. You don't know there's an option besides self destruction if all you've ever seen, felt, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, and
known
was devastation, annihilation, and ruin.
I knew love. Not from my mom or my pops. I knew love from my Gramps, a man who radiated love in his own particular way. He wasn't a quiet man, but he wasn't loud either. He laughed, not all the time, but he knew how to let go and enjoy a joke or an ironic twist of events. He was also serious and pensive, always something on his mind, always something buzzing around upstairs. I think he must have been loved to the maximum capacity and his brain was more developed than most. Everything he did, he did out of love and compassion, even when it seemed like he was being a dick. When I left home, he told me that I'd regret it and he wouldn't be there to pick up the pieces for me. At the time, I thought he was giving me some ultimatum, like if I left, he was giving up on me, that he wouldn't be there for me. What
he was doing was schooling me, almost like he foresaw the future.
I don't remember a lot about Gram. I was young when she passed. I remember being outside, running around the pond, the sunlight making her black hair glisten.
I remember falling in the mud by the shore of the pond. It wasn't uncommon, and it hurt, but I always got right back up. This time was different though, because there was a sharp, flat rock buried in the mud that I couldn't see. When I fell, it dug into my shoulder, gouging a chunk out of my left side, just barely below the joint, only getting fleshy tissue instead of dislocating my whole shoulder. It was a surface wound, but it bled like crazy. I remember looking at it and thinking about when my soda fizz overflowed the cup. It just kept coming and coming, but unlike the fizz, it didn't stop.
Gram was so calm about it. I was so little, not a man, just a boy and she wasn't the normal grandmother, freaking out at the sight of oozing bl
ood. Had she done so, I would've probably flipped the fuck out. Instead she picked me up, brought me in the house, cleaned me up, and called Gramps to come home. I remember sitting on the kitchen counter, Gram dressing my shoulder, the light shining in the window behind her, making her light up. She was glowing, radiating light. My tears dried up, and although I was still in a helluva lot of pain, I wasn't scared anymore. I knew she loved me and would do everything in her power to make me better. Gramps came home with the car and they took me to the ER.
Again, Gram was smooth and calm as she showed
the doctor my shoulder and explained what happened. The doctor said I needed stitches. I didn't know exactly what that meant, but I knew it was going to hurt. The tears came again, and Gram just looked at me with her calm eyes, and I swear, even under the fluorescent lights from hell, she was still glowing that soft, calming light of hers. She held my hand and said prayers in Sioux while the Doc sewed seven stitches just below my shoulder.
That's all I remember about that
incident. I don't remember going home, or what happened next. I just remember Gram loving me and shining bright, love pouring out of her. It's one of the few clear memories I have of her before she passed, leaving me in Gramps care.
I don't know what
happened to my dad. Gramps never wanted to talk about it. I know my dad had a sibling at one point, I don't remember any aunts or uncles. I don't even know why I knew he had a sibling who was gone or dead or somewhere other than Missouri, but I knew there was someone that my dad lost. Dad was loved, but he didn't know how to accept it for some reason, and my mom was a bitch. Call me a fucking bastard for saying so if you want to, but it won't change the fact that she was never a mother. She was a woman who carried me inside of her, pushed me into the world, and then forgot about me. I don't remember any love from her. She was empty. Her eyes were empty, and her heart and mind were empty. Gramps said her soul was empty. I don't know anything about her, and I don't think Gram and Gramps did either. My dad just came home one day with this pregnant woman and shortly after, I was born.
And then she was gone.
And then my dad was gone.
And Gram had already been gone.
So it was just me and Gramps.
His love wasn't glowing like Gram's, but he loved me nonetheless, so when I became a monster, I knew it since I had all of my brain working, top, bottom, sides, all of it. I knew what I was doing, the killing, the intimidating,
and the words that poured out of my mouth. I knew my spirit was dying, and I knew it started the minute Ratchet died. Burns didn't have me killing people right away. No, he had me maiming them first. He had me hunting down those who crossed him and breaking their leg, gauging an eye out, cutting off a finger, shooting their hand off. By the time I took my first life, my Gramps had thankfully passed on to the next part of his soul's journey. It didn't matter though. When I came back to the pond and he looked at me for the first time after being away, he saw the monster in me. Though I told him nothing of MM, he knew my soul was blackened, like it'd been covered in tar and the evil was sticking to it. He bathed me in love, and since Burns was off my back for a minute, I let his love wash me clean, or at least as clean as he could get it.
When he passed, he told me to keep the house,
let go of my hate for my father, and that I was a Bear. No matter what happened, I would always be a Bear. It was a gift from the spirits that they had given an Eagle, my Gramps, a Bear as a grandson. Should I have kept the house? Was it worth it? I'll never know. Did I let go of the hate for my dad? Mostly. I never knew my mom enough to love or hate her. I did know my dad, and know he was too full of his own hate to love me. I think I forgave him as much as I could under the circumstances. It took me a while to get it, but he didn't have any love to give. It's not that he was holding out on me, or giving it to someone else, but that he didn't even have enough love to give to himself, so he surely didn't have any for me.
I was
a Bear. I am a Bear. The Bear helps lost souls, helps people find their true nature. The Bear helps them find their place in this world and the path that will take them to the next part of their journey, to their next world.
Burns was prepping me to kill. He didn't know all his work would be wiped out with a few mere months with an Eagle. I didn't have a choice by that time, and when I pulled the trigger and watched a man die in front of me, all my light drained out of me taking love with it. The second time, I though
t I had nothing left, no more love, no more light. I did though. You'd be surprised how much love we can hold inside of us. It's one of those things that the more you give away, the more that you find inside you. Seems ass backwards, but that's how it works, how Gram promised me it worked. By my tenth kill, I was empty, that's all it took, ten lives to suck the love and the light out of me that Gramps had recharged.
When I met Elle, I'd take
n hundreds of lives. I was so empty, I was a pit of black. She was the opposite. I could see the love inside her. I didn't know her story, I had no idea where she came from, who raised her, where her light came from, but it was there. Maybe that is what drew me to her? Just being near her, I felt this twinge of light inside of me, a flicker, like a candle struggling to stay lit in the wind. It was like being in a coma for decade upon decade with no hope of every dying or waking up, forever suspended in an empty shell of existence.
When she was around, it was like my finger moved while I lay in that coma. When she spoke to me, a leg twitched. When she touched me,
when I felt her against me, when I had my hand deep inside her, my eyes opened and I was pulled from that coma. I was ripped out of the hollow space I'd been occupying and I had light dripping off my fingers. I collected it in a piece of cloth that I carried in my pocket, a little slice of light, of love, of the sun with me at all times.
When my cock was bur
ied deep inside her and she was screaming my name, we both were laser beams that I'm sure shot through this realm into the next. She had an abundance of light, and she didn't even know it, had no idea she was walking around with the sun inside of her. Her mother tried to extinguish it, but Elle is special, something out of this world. Despite the many wars she fought, on the streets and within herself, there was no dimming that light. It refused to be extinguished. She shared it with me and I happily shared it back. The more she gave, the more I took, and the more I took, the more I was able to give back to her.
I craved her blinding light. It dripped from between her legs onto me and I was an addict for it, for her. Though I'd fuck her all hours of the day and night if I could, just being in her presence eased the hunger that pained me
every waking hour. I wanted her. I desired her. I longed for her. I needed her.
She woke me up from that coma, brought me out of the
darkness, and in doing so, she realized the light she carried. Although she didn't consciously realize it, she started giving more of it out. To her friends, the people she let be a part of her life, and to those kids, who just fell into her life because they needed her light as much as I did.
When I found her, I never wanted to let her go. When I lost her, I vowed to get her back.
And I did.
I got her back.
We had twenty four hours of blissful, blinding light together, singing, laughing, fucking, creating...
And then she was gone.
My world was black once again.