PART 4: MY MIND'S PURGATORY
Jax lay in his bed, watching the ceiling. White was the real colour, but ofcourse it just looked grey with the curtains closed. Everything looked grey in the shadows. Not even the darkness can turn something pure completely dark. But everything black became a hostile silhouet in the dark. Something to be afraid of, something that you could think of as a monster, standing in front of your door, blocking the way.
Black hair, black clothes, black eyes. All as dark during the night of during the day. Did that say something about Jax? Was he a monster, something that disturbed others in their sleep?
A weird thought, really, but not completely unfitting. He did feel like a monster, at times. When the others gave him weird looks, despite of the polite niceness of some of them, like Raja and Scott. Very kind people, but they gave him looks afterall. Jax wasn't very talented when it came to figuring out what emotions were written on people's faces, but he was sure of the fact that even the nicest people of the Argonaut-tribe looked at him with disgust in their eyes.
Even Raja, Scott, ... Zion? Ofcourse, that would be the first person to get tired of him, after all those years he had taken care of Jax. Those were nice people, but Jax made them encounter hate. Behaving in such a way, being such a freak, such a "weirdo", that it was all they could possibly do. They had been pure, until Jax forced hate upon them.
And so Jax mind went on and on, tumblings in traps and dark dungeons, getting caught in hotred wire, struggling to break loose, but at the same time feeling like he deserved that mental torture.
Whatfor?
Well, do you need a reason? his mind told him. Just the mere fact that you were born, is awful enough. You make people sick. Your parents didn't want you, and not even those fosterparents that thought they had raised enough problemkids to deal with everything, could handle you. They all gave up you. Everybody loathed you; you made them sick. Zion will follow soon. He's a nice guy, you can't blame him for anything. It's just your fault. You're not good for anything. I mean, look at you, laying in your room, feeling sorry for yourself. You don't even have the right to feel sorry for yourself.
"Leave me alone,"Jax whispered in a hoarse voice, one that he hadn't used for nearly two days.
The voice spoke to him again, as clear as if a real living person was standing on the other side of the room: Ah, come on, Jax... It's just me, your old pal. Basically I am you, but ofcourse you're not ready to admit that yet. Not ready to admit that you make up voices that seem to have a will of your own. But face it buddy you're just a psycho, like the docs said. And right now I'm the only one that tells you the truth... Because, Christ, the others are still too nice to do it, despite of the fact that you're horrific.
Jax shook his head. This couldn't be happening. Not again. He wouldn't listen to the voices again. Instead, he tried to concentrate on the cracks in the ceiling, but the voice was not so easy to get rid of.
Hey! Listen to me, you bastard! You can deny the truth all you want, but someone has to tell you: you're worthless. So I'm telling you, over and over, until you get it. And no, you're not gonna get rid of me. Well... there is one way ofcourse. You fail to understand that this little voice inside your head is merely your helper. You can do one last good thing, ONE good thing in all your life, right now... That's: ridding the world of your existence. That's the only good thing you'll ever be able to do, the only way you'll ever make everybody happy.
Jax felt his eyes going wet. Why did that have to be so right? He never did a good thing...
Hey, the voice said in a sibilant, almost kind voice. Now we're getting somewhere; now you're starting to realise things. It's easy, you see: people are like math-equasions. Some turn out right, do good. Those people are Zion, Raja, Dart, well, basically everyone of this tribe, except for you... Then there are the wrong math-equasions. Hey, even God is like a student, he has to learn now and then. But mistakes aren't nice to look at. What do you do with a wrong equasion on a chalkboard?
"You... erase it?"Jax said hesitant, afraid the voice would go mean again.
Well, you can think of those equasions as people, we already figured out that much, and you actually understood it, despite of you being such an incredible retard... Now, students don't like to look at wrong equasions, God doesn't like to look at the people that turned out to be wrong. And let's be fair, neither do all the other poor people on this planet. So what are we going to do?
"Erase me,"Jax whispered.
*
Kera looked at what she, Randy and Justine had gathered with an extremely proud smile. Powdered milk. Powdered mashed potatoes. Cereal, cookies, oatmeal, pudding. A lot of stuff in the shape of powder, thus durable. And they found all of this in the storage room of a supermarket in the bad part of town. Although, there wasn't really any good part left in the city.
The supermarket had been raided, robbed of all its treasures -food, the most precious things in times of emergency- but the storage room had been left untouched. Apparently no child had the energy or strength to break it open, but Kera and her group did; and look what they found.
"Fabulous,"Kera said, her chest swelling with proud happiness. "Well, I'd say we did our share. Let's go back to the hospital, it's getting late."
*
A knock on the door. A soft, polite, cheery knock. The sweetest knock Jax had ever heard. That could only mean one thing: Raja was standing on the other side of the door.
"Jax?" Clear, bright voice. Raja had the voice of seraphim, especially when she sang. Jax had always liked her songs, they were full of sweetness. If he ever had a mother that was good to him, he would compare Raja to a mother, that could be a bit distant, but was sweet nonetheless.
"Jax?" Again, that voice. It seemed to come from far away, a whisper in the dark. Like when the dolls come to live at night, and start talking to you. Jax blinked, trying to concentrate on those cracks in the ceiling. He felt like the whole world was a chaos, spinning around him violently. Was it his physical or his mental state that caused this?
"I'm coming in," Raja's polite warning, with no agression to make the voice vibrate, through the cheap firwood door. She just didn't want to scare him. She wasn't angry. Jax didn't know why he thought about Raja like that. It seemed that his whole head was a chaos, and he could only think of everything in four essential colours: black, black, black, and black. Weird mists seemed to rise up from the bottom of his mind, throwing night over his brain and rotting his heart, like someone injected him with some poisonous fluid.
Why was this happening to him? He felt like he was dying, but on the other side he longed for the peace of death. Nothing made sense anymore. What did he do to deserve this mental torment?
"You know very well."
Oh, there you go, that voice again. Only now it had become one with his own voice. It had taken over his mind, crawling in with spiderlegs, biting and spitting poison on every last thought of his, slittering through the hairline cracks of his sanity, convincing Jax of his own evil and uselessness. And Jax had come to believe it, he took over the voice and turned it to himself. He was destroying himself, punishing himself for something, something he did. He didn't know what it was yet, but it was BAD, really bad; the voice had told him that. Jax would love to die before he figured out what it was... take the offer the voice had displayed for him.
"Do it then. If you want to die, what's stopping you?"
A reasonable question. What was stopping him? Nothing, except for... what was Raja doing at his bed?
"Jax,"she said in a soft, sweet voice. That voice fit her so well. She was so real, she didn't have to hide anything. Her voice was a perfect reflection of her personality, and that is a rare thing in a world that's realed by fake.
"How are you doing? Are you okay?"she asked, with an undertone of care and worries in her voice. She placed her hand against his forehead. Those hands were special. Warm, because her heart that had the power to heal made a golden glow race to it as soon as she touched someone. And at the same time nice and cool. The hands of the perfect mother, of a guardian angel.
Her voice was a guide in the dark, her eyes were shining and Jax held on to them, so that he wouldn't completely lose himself in the chaos that was his mind at the moment. It was terrifying, that big black hole that he called his soul... at the same time he wanted to find peace in the darkness. But not yet.
"Coward,"his inner voice hissed.
"You don't have a fever. You should eat something. Here, I brought you some. The healthiest snack I could find in the candy-counter... But it has these cereals and nuts and dried fruit in it too. Eh, well anyway,"Raja said and she gave him the cereal-bar.
Jax took it and looked at it, as if it was part of an alien spaceship.
He looked at Raja then. Could she care about him? Could she really be so sweet, so immensely forgiving and non-judgemental, that she even had the feeling she had to care about him?
He didn't know if he could trust her, and her presance made him a bit nervous, it made him feel like he had to do something. But at the same time it was comforting, because it didn't make him fall in the traps in his mind, so he would end up in that big, black oblivion... that place were the voice was luring him too. Jax didn't want to be called a coward, he would listen to the voice eventually. Just... not now, okay?
Jax saw her smiling eyes and looked at the cereal-bar in his hands. He didn't want to disappoint that terribly nice girl, that would be the heigth of sin, so even though it made him nauseous, he ate the food she brought him... for as far as you could consider it food.
A great, big smile broke through on Raja's face, making her glow like gold. Her face was a direct link to her heart, she would never hide or supress her emotions, lie about something, or follow the narrow ways of her mind. It was always the heart she followed.
Raja had been worrying about Jax a lot. He hadn't been downstairs ever since they arrived here, and he hadn't eaten since either. He looked so hopeless and lost, like a little child that just woke up from a nightmare. She wanted to follow her instinct, take him into her arms and comfort him, use her pretty voice to sing one of her soothing lullaby's; she didn't care about what was wrong with him, she just felt his hurt, like she could always feel the negative emotions of other people.
But Jax was unpredictable, and she didn't know how he would respond if she would do that. So she held back. The only thing she could offer him for now was her company, and she hoped that that would comfort him at least a little bit.
*
Kera, Randy and Justine were on their way back to the hospital, wandering the empty streets. Justine took the lead for once. Her memory was amazing, and she could lead the small group of people right back to their new home.
But it hadn't come that far yet. Out of nowhere, a young man with a wild black hairdo and heavy face-paint, appeared. "Hey there,"he said in a low voice, smirking.
Other people appeared too. Like ghosts they seemed to crawl out of the shadows of the streets. All wore the same paint on their face as the guy with the wild hair, who had the attitude of a leader.
"Where do you think your going?"the leader said, the smirk never leaving his face.
"Is it any of your business?"Justine said in a cold voice.
"Drpends on what you've got with you. I see food. And we want that food,"the leader said.
"And what if we don't give you the food?"Justine said, reflecting the smirk back to him, her voice confident, with not a trace of fear in it.
The leader drew a knife. "Well,"he said, "then I'm afraid we can't just stick to asking nicely."
*
Raja sat on the edge of Jax's bed, with nothing but sweetness on her face. She didn't look exactly uncomfortable, just like she hadn't figured out what to do yet. She fidgeted with the blanket a little, then moved her fingers on her lap in nearly impossible curves, and made little rabbits with her hands.
Jax rather enjoyed it. Raja didn't say much, but was good for company at least. Company he could actually enjoy, not someone who would ask him tricky, annoying questions, or call him a freak, or any other name, or do something else he wouldn't appreciate. Ofcourse it was safe to say that everything others did to him, he brought upon himself.
Raja didn't seem uncomfortable with the silence at all. She just sat there, her eyes closed, her face bright and a peaceful smile creeping upon her lips. She looked like she was dreaming, or meditating or something. Jax admired her, without words. She was a younger, female, less honoured version of the Dalai Lama at times. She could supress her hate so much that she could even stand being in the same room as him. Or maybe she truly didn't feel any hate at all... not even for him. A rather uncanny thought, and seemingly impossible.
"I'm glad you ate,"the buddhist-angel on his bedside finally said. She kept her eyes closed while she was talking. There was a smile in her voice. That strange, but beautiful voice. She didn't seem very special or confident (just nice) when she was talking, but when she sang... The power of an opera-diva lay in her vocal chords, she sang gold that made you shiver in a nice way. It was a true pleasure to hear her sing. Jax thought about it that way, at least.
Right now, her presence was the golden thread in the chaotic labyrint his mind was at the moment. Her voice might just be the sword that could keep the Minotaur-monster at distance.
"Could you... sing for me?"Jax asked shily. He was rather surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. He hadn't used it a lot lately. Well, he never used his voice a lot, ofcourse. He wasn't a great fan of talking. This resulted in the fact that the other Argonauts still thought of him as a stranger, and they found strangers suspicious. Raja had some problems with trusting people. Jax wondered what she of all people was doing here then, getting so close to the 'freak' that might even be dangerous.
"Hm, what?" Raja's meditation was disturbed, but she looked just as peaceful and her big eyes still had that sweet, ever-wonderful, fantasizing stare. A perpetuous dreamer.
"Sing something for me?"Jax asked like a child, begging for candy.
Raja's face started glowing. She loved to sing, singing used to be what she lived for. Somehow she knew she was good at it. But still, she was insecure, and she needed the confirmation of other people. And if someone would ask her to sing, the clearest sign of appreciaton a person could give her, she nearly exploded with happiness.
"Ka'daru mi-atsha,
Milulu nubsasha,
Bunili-te ba'ahn,
Rassfu te'kahn,
Shulsham nutu,
Sudu metti leyludu..."
Her voice was a warm ocean, the waves of it carried Jax away. To a far away land, maybe to the mystical place where the people spoke those weirds Raja used in her song; a lullaby Jax had heard her sing to Aaron. Maybe Raja was from another country, or maybe she had just been very good at languages, back when she was still a schoolgirl. Maybe it was French... Jax wouldn't know, he'd hardly ever been to school.
Most of the time he skipped school. He couldn't stand all the noise there, the voices seemed ten times louder to him. The eyes of all those students and teachers, their cold, sharp eyes, were burning into his soul. Those picture-perfect people there, the ones that told him he was a freak. Those insignificant words made him feel so small, so useless; like dirt. It hit him so hard, those sharp words, daggers with paralizing poison, and it seemed so unnatural to him, that he could feel so bad about little things. The others laughed at him, calling him a coward, a weakling, a crybaby. And he was.
"Maybe you're just hyper-sensitive,"Raja said.
Jax looked at her. Had he been talking all that time, instead of just thinking? Oh god, he couldn't even make out the difference between talking and thinking anymore? What if he would go back to the way he was...? That state of mind, that caused him to see things that weren't there, hear voices, fall away in a total dark chaos, wandering around like he couldn't tell the difference between dream and reality anymore. "Psychotic," the 'doctors' had called it. And shipped him off to psycho-hall.
"I know,"Raja said.
Ooooh, Jax, there you go again. You thought you were thinking it, but really you were saying it. Either that or Raja is telepathic. Wouldn't even be that surprising. Or... you're just imagining everything she's saying now. Maybe Raja isn't even in this room. Once again, entirely possible.
"I am over-sensitive,"Raja said. "Everything bad people said about me, made me cry. I heard every noise on the street so loud that I would cover my ears with my hands. Then people would look at me as if I were crazy. When my parents got angry or yelled at me, I'd feel like starving myself. And when someone was sad or angry, I'd feel that; my stomach would hurt. My stepdad took me to a shrink to dissect my mind, and he said I had emotional problematics, and was depressed. But my stepmom wasn't that much of a 'everything has to be logical, explainable and scientific'-person. She let me meet this psychic, and he said that I was just hypersensitive. He said I had a very open mind and heart, and supposedly, there's a lot of healingpower in my hands. Anyway, he thought me how to handle this... 'gift', so I became sort of at peace with myself. He said I was a helping and healing person, and that it wouldn't surprise him if I could learn to see aura's. Well, I'm very, very over-sensitive. But you know, I think you're sensitive too. Although I don't know if you have any psychic gifts,"Raja said with a shy, playful smile.
"It helped?"Jax asked.
"The psychic? Yeah, sorta. I learned to meditate, which was cool, and I guess I became more at peace with myself. But it didn't solve all my problems, ofcourse. But it certainly did a lot more good than that shrink,"Raja said.
"I hate them. Shrinks,"Jax said bitter.
Raja just nodded, didn't ask. "Another thing we have in common, then,"she said.
That felt good, somehow. To have something in common with someone. It was unbelievable, that there was someone as nice as Raja on this planet. Someone that was só kind, she couldn't even stand to leave a thing like him starving in his room.
"That song... What language was that?"Jax asked.
"Oh, no language. I just make all those words up. It's sort of a fantasy- language,"Raja said with a childish smile.
Jax imagined a small kingdom underneath a rock with a magical marking, and underneath that rock there would be people that spoke Raja's fairytale- language.
A high-pierced cry echo-ed through the hallway and crept underneath the door of Jax's room.
"Oh, Aaron is crying. Well, I gotta go. Are you really okay?"she asked, concerned.
Jax nodded, slam-jawed. Concerned? She was genuinely concerned about what would happen to him?
Raja left the room, with a strange grace, that of a good spirit. A peaceful spirit of the earth, like the ones native Americans believed in. Jax watched her leave. Don't go yet, I need you...
But he didn't have any voice left, couldn't eve remember if he ever had a voice. He only had eyes for her, and the minute her healing glow had left the room, he felt the darkness take over his mind again.
Jax lay in his bed, watching the ceiling. White was the real colour, but ofcourse it just looked grey with the curtains closed. Everything looked grey in the shadows. Not even the darkness can turn something pure completely dark. But everything black became a hostile silhouet in the dark. Something to be afraid of, something that you could think of as a monster, standing in front of your door, blocking the way.
Black hair, black clothes, black eyes. All as dark during the night of during the day. Did that say something about Jax? Was he a monster, something that disturbed others in their sleep?
A weird thought, really, but not completely unfitting. He did feel like a monster, at times. When the others gave him weird looks, despite of the polite niceness of some of them, like Raja and Scott. Very kind people, but they gave him looks afterall. Jax wasn't very talented when it came to figuring out what emotions were written on people's faces, but he was sure of the fact that even the nicest people of the Argonaut-tribe looked at him with disgust in their eyes.
Even Raja, Scott, ... Zion? Ofcourse, that would be the first person to get tired of him, after all those years he had taken care of Jax. Those were nice people, but Jax made them encounter hate. Behaving in such a way, being such a freak, such a "weirdo", that it was all they could possibly do. They had been pure, until Jax forced hate upon them.
And so Jax mind went on and on, tumblings in traps and dark dungeons, getting caught in hotred wire, struggling to break loose, but at the same time feeling like he deserved that mental torture.
Whatfor?
Well, do you need a reason? his mind told him. Just the mere fact that you were born, is awful enough. You make people sick. Your parents didn't want you, and not even those fosterparents that thought they had raised enough problemkids to deal with everything, could handle you. They all gave up you. Everybody loathed you; you made them sick. Zion will follow soon. He's a nice guy, you can't blame him for anything. It's just your fault. You're not good for anything. I mean, look at you, laying in your room, feeling sorry for yourself. You don't even have the right to feel sorry for yourself.
"Leave me alone,"Jax whispered in a hoarse voice, one that he hadn't used for nearly two days.
The voice spoke to him again, as clear as if a real living person was standing on the other side of the room: Ah, come on, Jax... It's just me, your old pal. Basically I am you, but ofcourse you're not ready to admit that yet. Not ready to admit that you make up voices that seem to have a will of your own. But face it buddy you're just a psycho, like the docs said. And right now I'm the only one that tells you the truth... Because, Christ, the others are still too nice to do it, despite of the fact that you're horrific.
Jax shook his head. This couldn't be happening. Not again. He wouldn't listen to the voices again. Instead, he tried to concentrate on the cracks in the ceiling, but the voice was not so easy to get rid of.
Hey! Listen to me, you bastard! You can deny the truth all you want, but someone has to tell you: you're worthless. So I'm telling you, over and over, until you get it. And no, you're not gonna get rid of me. Well... there is one way ofcourse. You fail to understand that this little voice inside your head is merely your helper. You can do one last good thing, ONE good thing in all your life, right now... That's: ridding the world of your existence. That's the only good thing you'll ever be able to do, the only way you'll ever make everybody happy.
Jax felt his eyes going wet. Why did that have to be so right? He never did a good thing...
Hey, the voice said in a sibilant, almost kind voice. Now we're getting somewhere; now you're starting to realise things. It's easy, you see: people are like math-equasions. Some turn out right, do good. Those people are Zion, Raja, Dart, well, basically everyone of this tribe, except for you... Then there are the wrong math-equasions. Hey, even God is like a student, he has to learn now and then. But mistakes aren't nice to look at. What do you do with a wrong equasion on a chalkboard?
"You... erase it?"Jax said hesitant, afraid the voice would go mean again.
Well, you can think of those equasions as people, we already figured out that much, and you actually understood it, despite of you being such an incredible retard... Now, students don't like to look at wrong equasions, God doesn't like to look at the people that turned out to be wrong. And let's be fair, neither do all the other poor people on this planet. So what are we going to do?
"Erase me,"Jax whispered.
*
Kera looked at what she, Randy and Justine had gathered with an extremely proud smile. Powdered milk. Powdered mashed potatoes. Cereal, cookies, oatmeal, pudding. A lot of stuff in the shape of powder, thus durable. And they found all of this in the storage room of a supermarket in the bad part of town. Although, there wasn't really any good part left in the city.
The supermarket had been raided, robbed of all its treasures -food, the most precious things in times of emergency- but the storage room had been left untouched. Apparently no child had the energy or strength to break it open, but Kera and her group did; and look what they found.
"Fabulous,"Kera said, her chest swelling with proud happiness. "Well, I'd say we did our share. Let's go back to the hospital, it's getting late."
*
A knock on the door. A soft, polite, cheery knock. The sweetest knock Jax had ever heard. That could only mean one thing: Raja was standing on the other side of the door.
"Jax?" Clear, bright voice. Raja had the voice of seraphim, especially when she sang. Jax had always liked her songs, they were full of sweetness. If he ever had a mother that was good to him, he would compare Raja to a mother, that could be a bit distant, but was sweet nonetheless.
"Jax?" Again, that voice. It seemed to come from far away, a whisper in the dark. Like when the dolls come to live at night, and start talking to you. Jax blinked, trying to concentrate on those cracks in the ceiling. He felt like the whole world was a chaos, spinning around him violently. Was it his physical or his mental state that caused this?
"I'm coming in," Raja's polite warning, with no agression to make the voice vibrate, through the cheap firwood door. She just didn't want to scare him. She wasn't angry. Jax didn't know why he thought about Raja like that. It seemed that his whole head was a chaos, and he could only think of everything in four essential colours: black, black, black, and black. Weird mists seemed to rise up from the bottom of his mind, throwing night over his brain and rotting his heart, like someone injected him with some poisonous fluid.
Why was this happening to him? He felt like he was dying, but on the other side he longed for the peace of death. Nothing made sense anymore. What did he do to deserve this mental torment?
"You know very well."
Oh, there you go, that voice again. Only now it had become one with his own voice. It had taken over his mind, crawling in with spiderlegs, biting and spitting poison on every last thought of his, slittering through the hairline cracks of his sanity, convincing Jax of his own evil and uselessness. And Jax had come to believe it, he took over the voice and turned it to himself. He was destroying himself, punishing himself for something, something he did. He didn't know what it was yet, but it was BAD, really bad; the voice had told him that. Jax would love to die before he figured out what it was... take the offer the voice had displayed for him.
"Do it then. If you want to die, what's stopping you?"
A reasonable question. What was stopping him? Nothing, except for... what was Raja doing at his bed?
"Jax,"she said in a soft, sweet voice. That voice fit her so well. She was so real, she didn't have to hide anything. Her voice was a perfect reflection of her personality, and that is a rare thing in a world that's realed by fake.
"How are you doing? Are you okay?"she asked, with an undertone of care and worries in her voice. She placed her hand against his forehead. Those hands were special. Warm, because her heart that had the power to heal made a golden glow race to it as soon as she touched someone. And at the same time nice and cool. The hands of the perfect mother, of a guardian angel.
Her voice was a guide in the dark, her eyes were shining and Jax held on to them, so that he wouldn't completely lose himself in the chaos that was his mind at the moment. It was terrifying, that big black hole that he called his soul... at the same time he wanted to find peace in the darkness. But not yet.
"Coward,"his inner voice hissed.
"You don't have a fever. You should eat something. Here, I brought you some. The healthiest snack I could find in the candy-counter... But it has these cereals and nuts and dried fruit in it too. Eh, well anyway,"Raja said and she gave him the cereal-bar.
Jax took it and looked at it, as if it was part of an alien spaceship.
He looked at Raja then. Could she care about him? Could she really be so sweet, so immensely forgiving and non-judgemental, that she even had the feeling she had to care about him?
He didn't know if he could trust her, and her presance made him a bit nervous, it made him feel like he had to do something. But at the same time it was comforting, because it didn't make him fall in the traps in his mind, so he would end up in that big, black oblivion... that place were the voice was luring him too. Jax didn't want to be called a coward, he would listen to the voice eventually. Just... not now, okay?
Jax saw her smiling eyes and looked at the cereal-bar in his hands. He didn't want to disappoint that terribly nice girl, that would be the heigth of sin, so even though it made him nauseous, he ate the food she brought him... for as far as you could consider it food.
A great, big smile broke through on Raja's face, making her glow like gold. Her face was a direct link to her heart, she would never hide or supress her emotions, lie about something, or follow the narrow ways of her mind. It was always the heart she followed.
Raja had been worrying about Jax a lot. He hadn't been downstairs ever since they arrived here, and he hadn't eaten since either. He looked so hopeless and lost, like a little child that just woke up from a nightmare. She wanted to follow her instinct, take him into her arms and comfort him, use her pretty voice to sing one of her soothing lullaby's; she didn't care about what was wrong with him, she just felt his hurt, like she could always feel the negative emotions of other people.
But Jax was unpredictable, and she didn't know how he would respond if she would do that. So she held back. The only thing she could offer him for now was her company, and she hoped that that would comfort him at least a little bit.
*
Kera, Randy and Justine were on their way back to the hospital, wandering the empty streets. Justine took the lead for once. Her memory was amazing, and she could lead the small group of people right back to their new home.
But it hadn't come that far yet. Out of nowhere, a young man with a wild black hairdo and heavy face-paint, appeared. "Hey there,"he said in a low voice, smirking.
Other people appeared too. Like ghosts they seemed to crawl out of the shadows of the streets. All wore the same paint on their face as the guy with the wild hair, who had the attitude of a leader.
"Where do you think your going?"the leader said, the smirk never leaving his face.
"Is it any of your business?"Justine said in a cold voice.
"Drpends on what you've got with you. I see food. And we want that food,"the leader said.
"And what if we don't give you the food?"Justine said, reflecting the smirk back to him, her voice confident, with not a trace of fear in it.
The leader drew a knife. "Well,"he said, "then I'm afraid we can't just stick to asking nicely."
*
Raja sat on the edge of Jax's bed, with nothing but sweetness on her face. She didn't look exactly uncomfortable, just like she hadn't figured out what to do yet. She fidgeted with the blanket a little, then moved her fingers on her lap in nearly impossible curves, and made little rabbits with her hands.
Jax rather enjoyed it. Raja didn't say much, but was good for company at least. Company he could actually enjoy, not someone who would ask him tricky, annoying questions, or call him a freak, or any other name, or do something else he wouldn't appreciate. Ofcourse it was safe to say that everything others did to him, he brought upon himself.
Raja didn't seem uncomfortable with the silence at all. She just sat there, her eyes closed, her face bright and a peaceful smile creeping upon her lips. She looked like she was dreaming, or meditating or something. Jax admired her, without words. She was a younger, female, less honoured version of the Dalai Lama at times. She could supress her hate so much that she could even stand being in the same room as him. Or maybe she truly didn't feel any hate at all... not even for him. A rather uncanny thought, and seemingly impossible.
"I'm glad you ate,"the buddhist-angel on his bedside finally said. She kept her eyes closed while she was talking. There was a smile in her voice. That strange, but beautiful voice. She didn't seem very special or confident (just nice) when she was talking, but when she sang... The power of an opera-diva lay in her vocal chords, she sang gold that made you shiver in a nice way. It was a true pleasure to hear her sing. Jax thought about it that way, at least.
Right now, her presence was the golden thread in the chaotic labyrint his mind was at the moment. Her voice might just be the sword that could keep the Minotaur-monster at distance.
"Could you... sing for me?"Jax asked shily. He was rather surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. He hadn't used it a lot lately. Well, he never used his voice a lot, ofcourse. He wasn't a great fan of talking. This resulted in the fact that the other Argonauts still thought of him as a stranger, and they found strangers suspicious. Raja had some problems with trusting people. Jax wondered what she of all people was doing here then, getting so close to the 'freak' that might even be dangerous.
"Hm, what?" Raja's meditation was disturbed, but she looked just as peaceful and her big eyes still had that sweet, ever-wonderful, fantasizing stare. A perpetuous dreamer.
"Sing something for me?"Jax asked like a child, begging for candy.
Raja's face started glowing. She loved to sing, singing used to be what she lived for. Somehow she knew she was good at it. But still, she was insecure, and she needed the confirmation of other people. And if someone would ask her to sing, the clearest sign of appreciaton a person could give her, she nearly exploded with happiness.
"Ka'daru mi-atsha,
Milulu nubsasha,
Bunili-te ba'ahn,
Rassfu te'kahn,
Shulsham nutu,
Sudu metti leyludu..."
Her voice was a warm ocean, the waves of it carried Jax away. To a far away land, maybe to the mystical place where the people spoke those weirds Raja used in her song; a lullaby Jax had heard her sing to Aaron. Maybe Raja was from another country, or maybe she had just been very good at languages, back when she was still a schoolgirl. Maybe it was French... Jax wouldn't know, he'd hardly ever been to school.
Most of the time he skipped school. He couldn't stand all the noise there, the voices seemed ten times louder to him. The eyes of all those students and teachers, their cold, sharp eyes, were burning into his soul. Those picture-perfect people there, the ones that told him he was a freak. Those insignificant words made him feel so small, so useless; like dirt. It hit him so hard, those sharp words, daggers with paralizing poison, and it seemed so unnatural to him, that he could feel so bad about little things. The others laughed at him, calling him a coward, a weakling, a crybaby. And he was.
"Maybe you're just hyper-sensitive,"Raja said.
Jax looked at her. Had he been talking all that time, instead of just thinking? Oh god, he couldn't even make out the difference between talking and thinking anymore? What if he would go back to the way he was...? That state of mind, that caused him to see things that weren't there, hear voices, fall away in a total dark chaos, wandering around like he couldn't tell the difference between dream and reality anymore. "Psychotic," the 'doctors' had called it. And shipped him off to psycho-hall.
"I know,"Raja said.
Ooooh, Jax, there you go again. You thought you were thinking it, but really you were saying it. Either that or Raja is telepathic. Wouldn't even be that surprising. Or... you're just imagining everything she's saying now. Maybe Raja isn't even in this room. Once again, entirely possible.
"I am over-sensitive,"Raja said. "Everything bad people said about me, made me cry. I heard every noise on the street so loud that I would cover my ears with my hands. Then people would look at me as if I were crazy. When my parents got angry or yelled at me, I'd feel like starving myself. And when someone was sad or angry, I'd feel that; my stomach would hurt. My stepdad took me to a shrink to dissect my mind, and he said I had emotional problematics, and was depressed. But my stepmom wasn't that much of a 'everything has to be logical, explainable and scientific'-person. She let me meet this psychic, and he said that I was just hypersensitive. He said I had a very open mind and heart, and supposedly, there's a lot of healingpower in my hands. Anyway, he thought me how to handle this... 'gift', so I became sort of at peace with myself. He said I was a helping and healing person, and that it wouldn't surprise him if I could learn to see aura's. Well, I'm very, very over-sensitive. But you know, I think you're sensitive too. Although I don't know if you have any psychic gifts,"Raja said with a shy, playful smile.
"It helped?"Jax asked.
"The psychic? Yeah, sorta. I learned to meditate, which was cool, and I guess I became more at peace with myself. But it didn't solve all my problems, ofcourse. But it certainly did a lot more good than that shrink,"Raja said.
"I hate them. Shrinks,"Jax said bitter.
Raja just nodded, didn't ask. "Another thing we have in common, then,"she said.
That felt good, somehow. To have something in common with someone. It was unbelievable, that there was someone as nice as Raja on this planet. Someone that was só kind, she couldn't even stand to leave a thing like him starving in his room.
"That song... What language was that?"Jax asked.
"Oh, no language. I just make all those words up. It's sort of a fantasy- language,"Raja said with a childish smile.
Jax imagined a small kingdom underneath a rock with a magical marking, and underneath that rock there would be people that spoke Raja's fairytale- language.
A high-pierced cry echo-ed through the hallway and crept underneath the door of Jax's room.
"Oh, Aaron is crying. Well, I gotta go. Are you really okay?"she asked, concerned.
Jax nodded, slam-jawed. Concerned? She was genuinely concerned about what would happen to him?
Raja left the room, with a strange grace, that of a good spirit. A peaceful spirit of the earth, like the ones native Americans believed in. Jax watched her leave. Don't go yet, I need you...
But he didn't have any voice left, couldn't eve remember if he ever had a voice. He only had eyes for her, and the minute her healing glow had left the room, he felt the darkness take over his mind again.