It began with walking out of the lake. No jolt of lightning, no human curse. He rode from the earth, and walks to shore, like the beckoning of an eager hand.
Most of his experiences begin with water.
Jason already knew it wasn't the same lake. He hasn't received much answers since then, but his company isn't much for conversation.
He knows there are survivors. Living beings with working hearts and a lot of blood. They roam through thick forests that never end, and are pulled into the presence of bodies like him on the whims of a voice just past his hearing. Like the voice of a mother from above the water's surface.
It came to him in whispers between drowning and sleeping and sounded like Mother. He does not know if it truly is Mother, because Mother would not need the help of anyone else but Jason, but it sounds like Her, so he listens.
Mother tells him to kill the survivors. He does not always get to kill them, but he is told that there will always be enough for him. He serves Her word, and when he does not, the forest is his to explore.
He does not know most of the souls that linger in the darker dwellings between trial and death. He's here, and Jason wanted to kill him, but it was one swing caught by that gloves hand and a disgusting laugh that got to tell him there's no 'friendly fire'. Jason doesn't understand what that means, but he is forbidden from harming the gloved demon, and that angers him.
Jason understands anger. It is a better emotion for him to think about. Anger and revenge. Revenge that keeps going.
He doesn't wonder if the revenge has an end. Maybe it's just revenge on everyone who got it better than him.
His first trial is a slaughter. No hooks through meat, only slice, cut, bleed, decimate. Mother is displeased. He doesn't understand.
Nobody speaks. The pig headed woman can, but she chooses not to talk to anyone. When she does, it is to herself, and her words are thick and mangled together, like the fingers that break in her key traps. Jason doesn't know if thars how everyone is meant to speak, or if it's just her - ever since the lake, anyone who speaks sounds like that. Him or them. Him versus them.
It's hard to understand most experiences. There are very few constants.
Jason doesn't approach anyone. He fills Jason with disgust. The pig woman fills him with frustration. The quiet shape fills him with - apprehension. He cannot do anything about that, so he does not try.
Jason remembers one of them.
It is not the creature that homes himself on the farmlands - though he believes the butcher man finds comfort there, himself. When he approaches him, the chainsaw is revving, like it wants to warn anyone else.
Bubba only momentarily holds it up to an unflinching Jason out of instinct. Perhaps Bubba experiences the same lingering doubt between blood and rest - or maybe he doesn't at all. Maybe he just misses carving meat. Maybe he imagines he'll get a meal when the skills of surviving humans break under a mallet swing.
He lowers the weapon. It stalls, then thrums to a gentle rumble, and it reminds Jason of the machines the survivors repair. He doesn't understand why they must repair them. Why are they allowed to escape at all?
Bubba is a name that sounds like the man's own sounds, a blubbering mess of tongue and lips. Bubba seems to hang his mouth open, like he's trying to remember. He raises a hand, clumsy and pointing one finger, and draws something in the air. Jason tilts his head.
Then, he walks to the flank of a large tree trunk. Just as clumsy, he fumbles with the saw, trying to shut it down with his hand carrying a mallet, and manages to turn it off so he can draw against the tree. He points, furiously, at the imaginary drawing he makes on the wood.
Is he smiling? The hint of teeth perk from behind a dirty mask of skinned flesh, and Bubba draws it again, determined, frustrated. Jason does not understand, just as much when Bubba speaks some incoherent slurring of a word. Juhjuh, juhjuh...
Jason.
He remembers how he wrote it.
Jason regards him with a surprised straightening of his head, though perhaps the dulled emotion is difficult to discern. But the other man seems pleased, curling his hands inward to his chest and bouncing off his heels in glee. He repeats the slurred name again, twice.
Jason doesn't smile. But he remembers the familiarity. The unity that came from understanding. Bubba claps his two thick hands together and then reaches forward to grab Jason, shaking him in further glee. Jason doesn't smile, but he knows the calm of the mist around him placates his thoughts and blood as Bubba's presence does once more.
Jason steps to the tree trunk. He lifts a hand to draw large letters on to the wood, scraping his decrepit finger over it. B, U, B, B, A.
Bubba mirrors him, Bubbah, he says, and it sounds right. Jason does it again, and Bubba repeats the action with Jason's name, a jovial Juhjuh! to mark it. Jason nods, and a wave of understanding hits him, the same confusing relief that came in the farmhouse.