PART 13: IN THE BEGINNING AGAIN

~9~

[I feel so left alone and so
Forgotten
Nobody knows where I am
No one misses me
Cold water runs from my eyes and the
Cold is freezing my last tears
Like I'm only half in my body
I can't feel
I think I'm already half gone
I can feel it's getting colder and colder and colder
I can't breathe]
Jax awoke from his sleep with a gasp, the words of the song in his mind. That song he loved in the days before the Virus. That song that just seemed to be made for him. Jax shook his head slowly. It was pounding in a very annoying way, and his heartrate had gone up for mysterious reasons.
What had that dream been about? He had been in the middle of it just a minute ago, and now he already started to forget. Jax never cared much for dreams, but it was like this one had an important meaning. It had been about…
… His life before the Virus.
Jax eyes grew wide the moments those words flashed through his head. He shook his head, long dark bangs dancing, as if he wanted to shake something from it. A thought. The dream. He had promised himself never to think about that life again, only to concentrate on his new life… for as far as you could call it that. He had been given that dream to forget it.
Jax got up from his bed, his joints making popping noises. He yawned and looked out of the open window. Morning had teared the dark veil of night of the city, and thrown the daylight on it. A rising sun meant breakfast. At least it did today; it was Kera's turn to make breakfast, and Jax knew she awoke the minute the sky turned lighter.
Jax stumbled out of his room, still sleepy, through the door that had been opened all night. He didn't like closed doors. They made him feel locked in, especially in a place like this.
Jax reached the bathroom on the other side of the hallway, still sleepy. He looked in the big mirror above the sink there. He still had that dark ring around his one eye, where Trojan had hit him in the face. Jax looked in the mirror in awe. It looked so strange, and familiar in a way. He had an image in his head… of a kid with dark hair, washing the blood of his face, then looking in the mirror. Figured he would have some big bruises in the morning… what excuse would he use at school tomorrow, when the teachers would ask him about him again?
The mental image disturbed Jax. Because… he didn't know why. But he figured it out when he kept looking in the mirror, until he thought he could see right through it: the reflection of that other kid, the younger one, looked like his. It wasn't a mental image, it was a memory.

*

"You never do as I say,"a loud, sharp voice. Jax didn't like that voice, he didn't like screaming. Because he always knew what would come next. A bang and he hit the floor, sharp jolts of pain going through his face. It nearly felt like his cheekbone was broken. And who knows, maybe it was.
He felt a similar sharp pain as he was kicked in the stomach. He growled in pain and his nose connected with his knees, as he crawled up in a miserable attempt to give himself some comfort.
A hand, that had more power in it than he in his whole little, skinny body, grabbed him by the collar and slowly pulled him off the floor. Blood was running from his nose and tears were running from his eyes. It wasn't over yet. His father wouldn't let go that easily.
All he wanted to go was go to his room, lay in bed…

*

Jax's dark eyes grew wide. That little movie that just played in his head… The boy that got beat up by his father. There was something wrong about it, very wrong. He didn't want to see it.
He didn't want to watch his own memories.
But it was already to late, they were flowing over him. He fell to his knees as he flashed back to his life before the Virus came, the disease that released him from it all.

*

After his father's vicious beating for a mistake he couldn't even remember himself, Jax slowly crawled upstairs. His legs felt weak, like they were filled with fluff. They danced and shivered out of control when he made way through the bathroom. They always did that; so annoying.
Jax shoved a small chair towards the sink and stood on it. He looked at his face in the mirror, red and swollen. There was a cut over his lip, one over his eyebrow, and his nose was bleeding. And everything still hurt like hell. He guessed his whole face would be black and blue tomorrow.
With a sigh he got out a washingcloth and held it against his nose. He sighed; he had done this before. It had been going on for a few years now. It all started ever since his mom left. One morning she was just gone. Now, his dad hadd been strict before and did hit him occasionly, but Jax could live with that, as there were also good things.
But that day his mom had just seemed to vanish into thin air, everything changed. His dad seemed to become a different person. He made one single wrong remark, did something in a way that didn't appeal to his dad, and the man would get angry. He got angry a lot these days.
Then he got this… strange look in his eyes. Blue fire. Jax always wanted to run away in terror when he saw that look, because he never knew what to expect. When that look came, his father… just wasn't his father anymore. He seemed a different person. And Jax's heart would beat in his troath, because lately he had gotten this crazy thought… He thought he had really done it this time, his father would just kill him now. He really thought his father was capable of that: murder. And he started to think that it was what happened to his mother. He had seen him beat her before, and the night after her departure he had a dream of his father slitting his mom's troath, and dumping her body in a river somewhere. It became a truth to him. Only later would he find out the real truth.
After he cleaned his face ánd cleaned the blood of everything carefully –he didn't want his father to get angry again- he staggered to his room and buried himself underneath his blanket with three things: his flashlight, his stuffed dog and a picture.
The stuffed dog had been a gift from his mother. It was a big Husky, soft pluche. Jax always wanted a real dog, but there was no way they could have one. His father truly loathed dogs, or pets of all descriptions for that matter. But his mother gave him the stuffed dog one day. Not because it was his birthday. Just a present. Jax never had a 'just because'-present before. He never had many presents anyway.
Shortly after that, she left.
Jax had to keep his dog, which had been dubbed Rover, hidden underneath his bed. His dad thought kids his age were too old to play with stuffed animals, and he would probably tear Rover to shreds if he found him. A one-way-trip into the garbage-bin was the best thing that could happen to the puppy.
The picture had to hidden very well too. Because it was a picture of his mother, the only one left in the house. It was a black-and-white-picture. She looked positively beautiful on it. She was of Italian origin, and she had lovely, dark, straight hair and dark eyes. Everyone said Jax looked like his mother.
She was wearing a long dress on the picture, and she was sitting on a swing in a beautiful garden. She was wearing a smile like Jax had never seen in real life. He figured this picture was taken before she married his father.
Jax had nothing else to do on lonely, cold nights, when his whole body was aching, then to just lay underneath his blanket, holding Rover tightly, crying soundlessly –his dad wouldn't like him crying; he hated wusses- and pointing the shine of his flashlight at his mother's picture. Her smile. Her sweet, dark eyes. His mother was a good woman.
Jax still hoped that someday she would just come to pick him up. In his fantasy, his mother had gone back to her parents. To Mama, the loving matriarch of the family –the kind grandmother Jax had only met twice- and Angelo, as grandpa was always called. And they were making plans for him, to help him escape from the prison that was supposed to be his home. They had to be.
But they never came.
He was alone. He wished for his mother, wanted her to come back and hold him, but she never came. She had to be dead, because she couldn't have possibly just forgotten about her only son? Sometimes Jax wished for a sibling too. Maybe, with a brother of sister, he could stand up to his father. He knew he had a twinbrother, but apparently this boy had died shortly after he was born. Mom always became very sad when you spoke of this, and father very angry. It was, as it was called, a 'familysecret.'
Jax didn't know why.
Things became worse and worse. Life became a living hell for Jax. He had to do everything around the house, because his father was always to busy. Jax was always on his toes, because if he would do one little thing wrong… It became easier by the day to get his father angry. One little mistake- bang! Another black eye. Jax was nervous the entire time, nearly reached the point of having a breakdown. He didn't know if he could still do anything right at all.
He began to hate his father. That was new to him. Before his mother left… well, his father could be mean and hit him at times, but still, things weren't that bad. He had liked his father too. Now there was not the slightest bit of love left, and Jax figured it was likewise. Life was a torment, he couldn't wait until he was grown-up and could finally leave that house.
He started skipping school. He didn't like it there anymore. The kids made fun of him, and he couldn't keep explaining to the teachers why he had so many bruises… The teachers had never seen a kid that fell of the stairs that often. Jax missed a lot of lessons, but he didn't care. This way he had more time to do his choirs around the house. If he finished everything before his dad came home, there would be a smaller chance the man would get angry with him. Or so he thought.
His dad didn't stick to beating him. Jax found out there were more ways of torment. His father really did miss his mom, or at least what she gave to him.
He picked up some cheap, bleached blonde girl one time. Wearing a dress that seemed to be made for a nine-year-old, in a colour of pink that hurt your eyes. Twelve-year-old Jax, at that point more commonly known as James, sat on the stairs when they came home.
He should've went upstairs to his room right when he heard the sound of the door, but didn't. He just sat on those stairs, motionless. His father and the girl, nearly half his age, were both laughing loud when they came home. It was obvious they were completely drunk. Jax knew what that looked like; his dad was drunk a lot.
Jax was frozen to the stairs, as he saw his dad lead the girl to a couch, taking off her jacket. Neither of them noticed him, so he didn't move. He was scared that, when he did, his father would see him and get angry with him. And that was really the last thing he wanted.
His father pushed the girl on the couch and tried to take off her dress. She laughed a little, but it was obvious that she wasn't very comfortable. She tried to get up, said something Jax couldn't hear, but his father pushed her back on the couch, ripped at the strings of her small dress.
"You goddamn whore! You want it, you got it!"was all Jax could hear. A strange, deformed growl. The girl was pushed down and let out a high-pitched yell.
Jax got up. He didn't want to see her get hurt. The dilemma was: should he help her then, or should he go to his room so he didn't have to see her getting hurt?
Luckily he didn't have to make that choice, because the girl already helped herself. She bit his father's hand, hard, and threw him off her. She got up with big, confused eyes, a ripped dress and blood on her mouth. Jax backed away a little; she looked quite scary. She casted a confused look at Jax, then ran out of the house. She even forgot her shoes and jacket.
Jax heard his father scream in utter frustration, and knew now would definitely be a good time to disappear to his room. But it was too late for that, his father had already seen him, and was a lot faster than him.
Jax was only half across the stairs, before his dad grabbed him and threw him down again. Jax screamed and rolled onto the floor, his whole body aching. He lay on his belly, and didn't feel the need to get up. Every little muscle was hurting, terribly. His father pushed his face into the carpet, Jax heard him growl something about the girl that just left the house, and then he felt a horrible pain tear his body apart.
He screamed, begged his father to stop, but he didn't. Not until he was done.
*
When his father was finally through with him, Jax crawled upstairs slowly, not making a single noise. He reached his room, and didn't bother to turn the light on. He just got Rover and his mom's picture from the hidingplace underneath his bed and sank down against a wall.
He lay in a corner of his room for hours; motionless, like a corpse. He tried to make his mind as non-active as his body. His face was white as a sheet, his eyes seemed to be made of glass. Nothing would tell you his body was burning with pain.
First time his father had ever caused him pain like THAT. And that was when the voices were born, crawling through his head, nibbling on his sanity, whispering sibilantly. "Your father's the kind of man that needs someone to stick it into, and now that mommy dearest left and you're the only one available… ah well…" Jax looked up, amazed. Wondering if that voice, that sounded so unlike his, sprung from his own mind.
It never happened again. The memory of it seemed to leave his father along with that night's alcohol in his body. But Jax couldn't forget; those weird voices wouldn't let him. They weren't kind voices, he knew that right away. They told him horrible things at times, about how disgusting he was, how pathetic and weak. How the world would be better of without him.
They scared Jax. They turned his head into a big chaos, a whirlwind of bad thoughts, of filth and fury. He didn't like the feel. It got him so frustrated one time, that he screamed and started scratching his arms open in pure rage. He was amazed about the fact that that seemed to soothe the chaos in his head for a little while. Watching the small drops of blood welling up made everything better, and the pain made him real.
Soon he didn't scratch anymore. He found knives were much more useful. The sharp blade ran through the skin, slicing it open, and the blood would drip out. But it would only help for a short while. When the bleeding stopped, the voices would be waiting for him, and the chaos would take over again.
[I tried to kill the pain
But only brought more]
They moved to another nabourhood, because his father had actually managed to get a job… also the people in the old nabourhood started to ask questions. Jax hated the new nabourhood. People were just as horrible to them as they were before. A young girl had called his eyes 'beetle-eyes'… Well, that became the new joke of the nabourhood.
The kids were unknowing. They thought of him as weird, and like animals that find a strange creature in their pack, they were hell-bent on destroying him. Only one person didn't… a guy that liked to call himself Zion. Jax doubted that was his real name, but it didn't matter. He also had a name that wasn't real: Jax. His friends could call him by that name. One problem: he didn't have any friends. After he told Zion that, Zion called him Jax. And that was the only light in his miserable life.
[Am I too lost to be saved?
Am I too lost?]
Jax couldn't take it anymore. His arms were covered with scars, looking like battlefields, but it just wasn't enough. It put a temporarily stop to the pain, the torment, the voices, everything. He wanted a permanent stop.
[My wounds cry for the grave
My soul cries for deliverance
Will I be denied Christ?
My suicide]
It was the only way out. Even if he had to surrender himself to the unknown. Whatever would happen, it couldn't be worse than this. Did you go to Hell for suicide? Huh, he was already in Hell. There was no God for him anyway. At least not a God that cared.
He should take the situation into his own hands, once in his life. Put a stop to it for good.
[I want to die!]
Just a few quick slashes with his blade. The blade that had been stained with blood. He had done it before… He would just cut the skin at a different place this time, and cut the artery as well. And the outcome would be totally different. He didn't have to worry about insomnia anymore, because he would sleep forever. A few cuts, and he would slowly slip away.
[I lay dying
And I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal]
But obviously someone, Jax couldn't possibly imagine who, cared enough about him to call an ambulance. He tried to fight them as they stopped the bleeding, tried to explain to them that it was okay. This was what he wanted. But they didn't listen to him, didn't respect his wishes. He just felt the sharp sting of a needle in his arm and everything slowly faded away.
What followed was just the sleep of sedation, not the sleep of death. He woke up in a completely white surrounding…

*

…similar to this surrounding…

*

… and found himself strapped to a bed. "For your own protection,"he was told. His own smooth move had made him end up in Psycho-Hall. He mentally beat himself. How could he have been so stupid? It was so easy… But no, he couldn't even kill himself properly.
Nobody cared enough about him to visit him. Well, that he could've expected. The nurses didn't care much either. They didn't have time for the nutcase-patients. And Jax soon discovered why: they spent their time on other patients. Patients that had been struck down by a dangerous virus that was ruling the world outside of the hospital now.
Jax sort of hoped he would also be killed by the virus… but it didn't happen. Security was minimal, because all the nurses were busy with the people that were dying of this notorious Virus, so it didn't cost Jax a whole heap of trouble to escape from the hospital, dressed in the grey shirt and baggy, flannel pants he used as pyjama's.
He didn't know why –he really didn't have a clue- but something drove him back to his nabourhood. He was in a state of utter confusion, and couldn't remember much of it all; it might have been some sort of deep instinct. He found his house completely empty, and didn't know what to do anymore. He circled around the house a few times, totally confused. It might've been the heavy drugs they had been keeping him on.
When he was going for his fifteenth circle, he heard someone call his name. He turned to find Zion, the only person besides his mother that had ever been nice to him. Zion looked confused too, as if he had been robbed of his mission in life… though not as confused as Jax felt.
Zion asked him if he wanted to go on a journey, an adventure so to say. Jax didn't know why he said 'yes.' An impulse probably. What else was there to do, by the way? So the two left town together.

*

Jax got up, just as confused and zombie-like as he always did when his father had beaten him up. He strolled back to his room and went through his bags. It wasn't hard for him to find what he was after, because he didn't have to keep it hidden anymore. A picture of a beautiful, dark woman on a swing, and a stuffed dog; a Husky.
Jax crawled in bed with Rover and his mother's picture, and covered himself with his blanket like he had always done when he was a child. He looked at the woman on the picture and hoped she hadn't forgotten about him yet. The thought that she might not have survived the Virus, didn't even cross his head. He needed some hope.