Who is Jackson Rippner?

By Pickfair27

Disclaimer: As stated by others, I do not own these characters, nor have I created them. I simply honor the writer who gave them life and the individuals that portrayed them, as well as all of the other staff on the film.

Jackson Rippner, that very moment, sat in a parked car, watching Lisa Reisert's house. Ever since his associates had helped him escape from the hospital, he had been unemployed. He had failed at his job, and when someone fails at their job, they are fired. He supposed he was fired in that sense, but in simpler terms, he was never given another mission, sort of like when an adjunct professor is forced out by never getting another class to teach. Jackson knew, as he had taught for a bit.

He didn't care, though. His employers were not threatened by him, so they didn't care what he did now. If he became a threat to them, they would have known, but he wasn't interested. He wasn't interested in much these past few months, except for Lisa Reisert. She had thrown his world into turmoil, catapulting his long held belief system far from where he could even feel it. He hadn't felt this way in a long time.

It had been a long and arduous physical recovery, and since he had been under watch the whole time, by a guard posted outside of his door, not that relaxing, to be honest. He didn't feel any shame at his failure, nor any regret. He simply accepted things the way they were. He did feel angry at Lisa, but not for the reasons he thought. He had felt as though he had figured out certain things about himself and the world, but she had put that all into doubt. She had asked him questions, fought back in a way that shocked him. He simply hadn't expected anyone like her could exist anymore, in this complacent, spoiled culture Americans lived in.

Ironically, even though he wasn't receiving a paycheck anymore, he was doing the same thing he had done when he was getting money for it: watching Lisa. He watched her all the time, trying to figure out what it was about her that was different, what is was that appealed to him, yet disgusted him so. He thought she would be no different than the other sheep he had dealt with in the past, and in a way, that was true. But in many ways, it wasn't. He wasn't worried about the lack of a paycheck, since he had enough money to live on for the rest of his life. He was 34 years old, and set. He never had to work again. Therefore, he decided that he would concentrate on his education, which was studying Lisa Resiert.

When he first began to watch her, about three months after that fateful red eye flight, he despised her. After all, he had been in the hospital for at least a month, seething in the fact that she had attacked him; had wounded him to almost the point of death! How dare she affront him.

So, when he made his dash for liberty, he decided that he would watch her. Was it for revenge? Was he going to hurt her? He wasn't sure, wasn't sure at all. At first, he did feel that's why he undertook the chore, but after following her and studying her for two months, he wasn't sure what his feelings were. He had obviously been attracted to her when he first met her, and the same was true now, but for a different reason. She had a tenacity, a conviction about her that he hadn't seen in anyone else, ever. Possibly not even himself. Yet he felt pity for her; he was like she years ago, a type of idealist, and he had long convinced himself that his vision of the world then, hers now, could never exist.

It was odd, but Lisa had no idea he was watching her, stalking her, so intently. You think she would have been more aware of this kind of thing, but he sensed it was beyond her control.

The past three months, he noted, had been a lot different for her than it had been for him. She had literally fallen apart. She took an immediate leave of absence at her job, and quite simply, stayed home, hardly ever venturing out, or leaving the couch or bed. She withdrew, much to the concern of her friends and family, into a deep depression. She was convinced to visit psychiatrists, who all diagnosed her with "post traumatic stress disorder," probably an accurate conclusion, Jackson thought, but without any real value. They put her on anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, and anti-anxiety drugs. She just wasn't getting better.

It perplexed him to see her this way. How could someone have so much fight in them, so much vigor, be reduced to this? It pained him in a way, for Lisa had given him hope, hope that there were those out there like her, who had purpose and a reason for living, unwilling to become the victim he attempted to make her.

She went for days without eating, then days of eating everything in sight. She still took a shower every day, bit always dressed in pajamas, and only watched television: sometimes merely flipping channel after channel, but never registering anything. She never read anymore, not even those ridiculous self-help books that she and her father had had some predilection for. He sighed and decided to call it a night. He had plenty of surveillance equipment stashed in her house so that if he felt like it, he could watch her from his home, which wasn't too far from hers, anyway.

When he returned home that night, throwing his jacket on a nearby table and ordering out, he decided to take a shower before his food arrived. He showered quickly, efficiently, as he had done in every aspect of his life. After he finished, he looked into the mirror, into his blue eyes that everyone claimed were so clear, so penetrating. He knew that those people were fools, drones, who knew nothing about what went on inside of him, beyond those eyes, those cheeks, those lips. He took advantage of the fact that the culture and country he lived in was so superficial that all he had to do was flash a smile, look handsome, and he was trusted. No one looked beneath the surface anymore, and he used that to his advantage. The shallow world of today had hardened him.

He studied his face, not for the first time, and knew without a doubt that he had the ability to charm others with his features, his gestures, and his intelligence. He had assets that others didn't possess. He had been so successful in what he had done, thought he had had it all figured out, until that bitch had entered his life. He immediately regretted the harsh thought, as he didn't always feel that hatred, that loathing for Lisa. He did care for her, unlike anyone else he had ever met. He knew he was physically attracted to her, but that had been the case before he had ever even personally met her. But his emotions were so conflicting that they occupied his every thought. He was going through a transformation similar to Lisa's, but very dissimilar as well.

What had he allowed her to do to him?

He spent hours, days, weeks, thinking about it, until a solution came to him. A solution that might help her as well as him. He couldn't stand seeing her the way she was now, not another day longer. Part of him wanted to help her, and part of him just wanted to put her out of her misery and kill her. Obviously, her friends and parents wouldn't take any action, so he had to.

He decided not to kill her, though, but to use her, to help himself. To get back what she had taken from him.

At last, he thought he had found the perfect method. It would take some work on her part, and it would jar her out of that weakened state she had been in for three months. Maybe the old Lisa would return. Although he brushed the thought aside, a bit of it did excite him.

Lisa Reisert awoke around 1 p.m. that day. She immediately reached for her bottle of Xanax and swallowed a few pills. In the confusion of waking, she felt a fear that she felt every day, and immediately awoke and made sure her room was safe. The Xanax would help to calm her soon. She then checked every room of the house, before even brushing her teeth or showering. She carried around a baseball, left at the side of her bed, ever since that night.

In spite of her depression and ennui, she did continue to shower each morning, probably more due to her instinctual ritual than anything else. As she showered, and as she did everything else, she thought about Jackson. She was terrified that he would return of course, but in a way, she seemed certain that he would not. Although she wasn't fully aware of it, she was a bit disappointed, and that was part of the reason she was experiencing such depression. However, to ask her about this would only incur her wrath, her vehement denials. She knew she was still physically attracted to him; that had never changed. The funny thing was, she didn't regret a single one of her self-defensive actions: stabbing him in the throat, hitting him with her old hockey stick, or even shooting him. The one thing, above all else, was the fact that she wished she hadn't called him pathetic. He was anything but, and she knew it. It was a low blow, an insult that was meant to hurt him. But who could blame her, given the long night she had that day?