Post by curvestone on Jul 11, 2007 8:04:11 GMT -5
Part 6: That's Life
By Nathan Cook
I hadn't been talking to Jane as long as I had thought. It was still night outside. To make matters worse, we were only in Alabama. I was in a major hurry, and the way things were moving wasn't helping. It was raining now, and as we turned on the radio, we learned that rain was what to expect for the next forty-eight hours.
“You seem to have changed, Sebastian,” she chortled. “So, the Lion Heart has a “heart” in more than just his nickname.”
“That's not funny.”
“Well, it looks like your 'mean' streak couldn't last forever. Personally, I find such a quick reconciliation rather difficult to believe.”
I didn't answer.
“Oh, it's okay,” she laughed. “I never thought that badly of you, but then again, I know the nice you before you ever started telling me about this, and honestly, you sounded more stupid and arrogant than mean and terrible.” When my only response remained a cold look, Jane took the hint. “So, you loved her then?” she asked.
“From the moment I looked into those eyes, and the moment I wiped away their tears. You see, Dr. Hamilton, just because I fell in love doesn't mean I'm reconciled. Falling in love only means that I was able to taste what a person like me couldn't have ever had. I was only maybe fourteen, probably fifteen, but that's not the point. The point, simply, is that deep down I was jerk. Maybe it wasn't so deep down, now that I think about it. I was a smart ass to everyone, and not really very kind to anyone. I wasn't trust worthy, and I wasn't selfless by any means. Love could never have worked for me then.”
“How old was she?”
“Excuse me?”
Jane shrugged. “Well,” she said, “you said you were only around fifteen. I wanted to know how old this goddess was.”
“She was almost eighteen. Remember, I looked maybe eighteen or even twenty back then.” I gave a little laugh. “I was handsome and tall, you know, but I thought I already said that.”
Jane nodded. “So how did you lose her?” she asked slowly, as if to avoid hurting me.
“Lose her!? Goodness, Jane!” I laughed a little, which must have seemed crazy. “Heck, we're still on the “finding her” stage!” Controlling my laughter, I continued more seriously, “But you're right. I did lose her, and not long after finding her.”
Impatiently, Jane asked again, “Well, how?”
"Well, if you hadn't caught on, I'm telling a story. If you stay tuned in long enough, you'll hear what happened."
In a little over an hour, storm clouds had covered the sky. Also in that time, I had learned where and when I was. It had been a week and half since my kidnapping, if you it really should be called that. They had kept me unconscious with a heavy cocktail that could knock down a horse. The where was southern Colorado, and apparently, it wasn't a good idea to try to get around the rocks and bramble I had met in my path. On the other side was a kind of small ravine or gorge. Actually, I was being held near Mesa Verde, and as it seemed, we were currently at a place where we definitely were not supposed to be.
“Why would you have killed me?” I asked hesitantly as we sat in the back of the white van, cuddled up in our sleeping bags waiting out the storm.
Haley “James told me if you woke up and I had any trouble with you, I was supposed to shoot you. Then, he said if you got out of your sleeping bag at all, I should kill you, because if you got out, that meant you had enough strength to maybe get away or cause me harm, and he didn't want either of those.”
“Who's James?” I asked.
“James is my half-brother. We share the same mother. I don't honestly know much about his father. I know he lives somewhere in Mississippi, and I know he's got money. Come to think of it, I believe it was his father that got James into the mercenary business, and it was James who got me into it, too. I guess that means it's his father's fault I'm hear,” she concluded as angry tears returned to her eyes.
“How did you get messed up in all this?” I said, trying to change the subject and perhaps get her angry about something different. “I know precisely who these men are working for, and I know that a concentration camp designed for mob members doesn't sound too pleasant now does it? I'm not exactly looking forward to it myself.”
“Everything was going normally. I had a normal life in a normal town. Then, one day I went home, and my brother was there. I'd seen him from time to time, but this time he was staying. He wasn't too bad at first, but at first, he just needed a place to stay. Then, his friends came around. They saw me and they thought they found their place to sleep. I told James, and he pretended he had my back. I knew he didn't. He said that he told them off, but they never stopped. My brother had always been a hustler. Now, he was hustlin' me. He did a good job of pretending to be the good big brother icon. He fooled me from sometimes, made me think he was on my side. Then one morning after a few months of living like that, my brother was leaving, and his friends who couldn't stop trying to touch me were leaving too. There was only one problem: they were leaving and I had to come with them.”
“Where was your mom throughout all of this?”
“My mom? Ha!” she cried out angrily. “My mother walked out on me when I was eleven.” As Haley's tone intensified, I knew I had poked the wrong button, but unless I wanted to make things worse, all I could do was listen and wait. “Oh, I don't want to even think about my mother! She left nothing for me but a ruddy old note. It was such a nice note,” she growled. “It politely read, 'Dearest Haley, I can't stay with you any longer. I've given up eleven years of my life for you, but now I must return to my own life. Don't beat yourself up. After all, it wasn't you that took my life from me; it was whoever got me pregnant.' I had no idea my mom was capable of being that cold, but I've learned to accept it as true.”
“I can't believe that anyone could be that cold to someone like you,” I said, which was rather funny 'cause I'm sure that I could have been colder than that to basically anybody but her. I suppose that's funny thing about meeting Haley: I felt totally different. I wasn't a resentful teen. I didn't say blatant and cold things just because I felt like it. I wasn't moody, arrogant, or even sarcastic. Basically, I didn't act like a cocky teenager.
We spent the remainder of the day alone together. She told me her life story, and I told her mine. We talked about joys. We talked about sorrows. For three days, we stayed there. The van was well stocked with supplies to get us through that length of time. I don't know why they expected us to be out there so long, but apparently, they did.
On the third night, after about 72 consecutive hours talking, we made love. I even proposed. I don't really know why; it's not like we could have gotten married very easily under the circumstances, but I loved Haley. I knew that, and she loved me.
By midnight we had a plan. We decided the best thing to do would be to head for Los Angeles. There, we could look for anybody that might be one of Dempsey's contacts. From L.A., we would either meet Dempsey or fly on to New York where a friend of Haley's dead father was going to leave an apartment for her in his will.
Everything would have gone smoothly. Everything was going smoothly. We had made it out of to California in pretty good time, and the rest seemed just at our fingertips. We made it to the L.A. with ease. By some miracle, we even found one of Dempsey's correspondents. Everything was flawless. We were never even followed by Haley's brother. They didn't even seem to care we were gone.
I paused. Remembering what happened next made me particularly angry. I turned to Jane. “Do you know what shit move screwed everything?! Do you want to know how we fucked the whole thing?!” I asked, both crying in sorrow and yelling with fury. “We were on the damn plane to Chicago, for goodness sake! You know what happened? You want to know who fucked the whole thing and why?! Me, because I couldn't take it that the guy in front of me make a 'mile high' joke about me and my girlfriend when he saw us kissing. I couldn't just take the joke. No, not me. I had to get start arguing with the guy, get in a fight with him, and then pop him in the back of the head! His friends tailed us once we went to go meet Dempsey in Chicago. Do you know who one of his friends was? Haley's brother. Out of resentment, he beat the living daylights out of her and the shot her in the back of the head. Then, he proceeded to take go to the cleaners on me. I could barely breathe by the time he was ready to ship me to that Canadian concentration camp. Lucky Dempsey! He was out of the whole thing before those guys even made themselves known.”
Jane looked at me entirely different then. I didn't know what she was expecting from the story. A happy ending perhaps. I wondered how it was possible that she could have expected something like that. If it were happy, would I have been lying in an alley after being thrown out of a rehab of facility that I was never supposed to be in in the first place? Then again, who actually expects things like that to happen in the story, at least a true one. That wasn't the end of the story, though.
“That's not the end, you know,” I told her. “There's still time for a turn around. I mean, what would this story be with out redemption, rejuvenation, and revenge. After all, that's what I've been promising. Do you want to hear it or not? Hell, the good stuff has just begun.”
And so, she sat there and listened as I told her how I had thought I had been through Hell but how wrong was. The tough part hadn't even started yet.
© Nathan Cook, 2007
By Nathan Cook
I hadn't been talking to Jane as long as I had thought. It was still night outside. To make matters worse, we were only in Alabama. I was in a major hurry, and the way things were moving wasn't helping. It was raining now, and as we turned on the radio, we learned that rain was what to expect for the next forty-eight hours.
“You seem to have changed, Sebastian,” she chortled. “So, the Lion Heart has a “heart” in more than just his nickname.”
“That's not funny.”
“Well, it looks like your 'mean' streak couldn't last forever. Personally, I find such a quick reconciliation rather difficult to believe.”
I didn't answer.
“Oh, it's okay,” she laughed. “I never thought that badly of you, but then again, I know the nice you before you ever started telling me about this, and honestly, you sounded more stupid and arrogant than mean and terrible.” When my only response remained a cold look, Jane took the hint. “So, you loved her then?” she asked.
“From the moment I looked into those eyes, and the moment I wiped away their tears. You see, Dr. Hamilton, just because I fell in love doesn't mean I'm reconciled. Falling in love only means that I was able to taste what a person like me couldn't have ever had. I was only maybe fourteen, probably fifteen, but that's not the point. The point, simply, is that deep down I was jerk. Maybe it wasn't so deep down, now that I think about it. I was a smart ass to everyone, and not really very kind to anyone. I wasn't trust worthy, and I wasn't selfless by any means. Love could never have worked for me then.”
“How old was she?”
“Excuse me?”
Jane shrugged. “Well,” she said, “you said you were only around fifteen. I wanted to know how old this goddess was.”
“She was almost eighteen. Remember, I looked maybe eighteen or even twenty back then.” I gave a little laugh. “I was handsome and tall, you know, but I thought I already said that.”
Jane nodded. “So how did you lose her?” she asked slowly, as if to avoid hurting me.
“Lose her!? Goodness, Jane!” I laughed a little, which must have seemed crazy. “Heck, we're still on the “finding her” stage!” Controlling my laughter, I continued more seriously, “But you're right. I did lose her, and not long after finding her.”
Impatiently, Jane asked again, “Well, how?”
"Well, if you hadn't caught on, I'm telling a story. If you stay tuned in long enough, you'll hear what happened."
In a little over an hour, storm clouds had covered the sky. Also in that time, I had learned where and when I was. It had been a week and half since my kidnapping, if you it really should be called that. They had kept me unconscious with a heavy cocktail that could knock down a horse. The where was southern Colorado, and apparently, it wasn't a good idea to try to get around the rocks and bramble I had met in my path. On the other side was a kind of small ravine or gorge. Actually, I was being held near Mesa Verde, and as it seemed, we were currently at a place where we definitely were not supposed to be.
“Why would you have killed me?” I asked hesitantly as we sat in the back of the white van, cuddled up in our sleeping bags waiting out the storm.
Haley “James told me if you woke up and I had any trouble with you, I was supposed to shoot you. Then, he said if you got out of your sleeping bag at all, I should kill you, because if you got out, that meant you had enough strength to maybe get away or cause me harm, and he didn't want either of those.”
“Who's James?” I asked.
“James is my half-brother. We share the same mother. I don't honestly know much about his father. I know he lives somewhere in Mississippi, and I know he's got money. Come to think of it, I believe it was his father that got James into the mercenary business, and it was James who got me into it, too. I guess that means it's his father's fault I'm hear,” she concluded as angry tears returned to her eyes.
“How did you get messed up in all this?” I said, trying to change the subject and perhaps get her angry about something different. “I know precisely who these men are working for, and I know that a concentration camp designed for mob members doesn't sound too pleasant now does it? I'm not exactly looking forward to it myself.”
“Everything was going normally. I had a normal life in a normal town. Then, one day I went home, and my brother was there. I'd seen him from time to time, but this time he was staying. He wasn't too bad at first, but at first, he just needed a place to stay. Then, his friends came around. They saw me and they thought they found their place to sleep. I told James, and he pretended he had my back. I knew he didn't. He said that he told them off, but they never stopped. My brother had always been a hustler. Now, he was hustlin' me. He did a good job of pretending to be the good big brother icon. He fooled me from sometimes, made me think he was on my side. Then one morning after a few months of living like that, my brother was leaving, and his friends who couldn't stop trying to touch me were leaving too. There was only one problem: they were leaving and I had to come with them.”
“Where was your mom throughout all of this?”
“My mom? Ha!” she cried out angrily. “My mother walked out on me when I was eleven.” As Haley's tone intensified, I knew I had poked the wrong button, but unless I wanted to make things worse, all I could do was listen and wait. “Oh, I don't want to even think about my mother! She left nothing for me but a ruddy old note. It was such a nice note,” she growled. “It politely read, 'Dearest Haley, I can't stay with you any longer. I've given up eleven years of my life for you, but now I must return to my own life. Don't beat yourself up. After all, it wasn't you that took my life from me; it was whoever got me pregnant.' I had no idea my mom was capable of being that cold, but I've learned to accept it as true.”
“I can't believe that anyone could be that cold to someone like you,” I said, which was rather funny 'cause I'm sure that I could have been colder than that to basically anybody but her. I suppose that's funny thing about meeting Haley: I felt totally different. I wasn't a resentful teen. I didn't say blatant and cold things just because I felt like it. I wasn't moody, arrogant, or even sarcastic. Basically, I didn't act like a cocky teenager.
We spent the remainder of the day alone together. She told me her life story, and I told her mine. We talked about joys. We talked about sorrows. For three days, we stayed there. The van was well stocked with supplies to get us through that length of time. I don't know why they expected us to be out there so long, but apparently, they did.
On the third night, after about 72 consecutive hours talking, we made love. I even proposed. I don't really know why; it's not like we could have gotten married very easily under the circumstances, but I loved Haley. I knew that, and she loved me.
By midnight we had a plan. We decided the best thing to do would be to head for Los Angeles. There, we could look for anybody that might be one of Dempsey's contacts. From L.A., we would either meet Dempsey or fly on to New York where a friend of Haley's dead father was going to leave an apartment for her in his will.
Everything would have gone smoothly. Everything was going smoothly. We had made it out of to California in pretty good time, and the rest seemed just at our fingertips. We made it to the L.A. with ease. By some miracle, we even found one of Dempsey's correspondents. Everything was flawless. We were never even followed by Haley's brother. They didn't even seem to care we were gone.
I paused. Remembering what happened next made me particularly angry. I turned to Jane. “Do you know what shit move screwed everything?! Do you want to know how we fucked the whole thing?!” I asked, both crying in sorrow and yelling with fury. “We were on the damn plane to Chicago, for goodness sake! You know what happened? You want to know who fucked the whole thing and why?! Me, because I couldn't take it that the guy in front of me make a 'mile high' joke about me and my girlfriend when he saw us kissing. I couldn't just take the joke. No, not me. I had to get start arguing with the guy, get in a fight with him, and then pop him in the back of the head! His friends tailed us once we went to go meet Dempsey in Chicago. Do you know who one of his friends was? Haley's brother. Out of resentment, he beat the living daylights out of her and the shot her in the back of the head. Then, he proceeded to take go to the cleaners on me. I could barely breathe by the time he was ready to ship me to that Canadian concentration camp. Lucky Dempsey! He was out of the whole thing before those guys even made themselves known.”
Jane looked at me entirely different then. I didn't know what she was expecting from the story. A happy ending perhaps. I wondered how it was possible that she could have expected something like that. If it were happy, would I have been lying in an alley after being thrown out of a rehab of facility that I was never supposed to be in in the first place? Then again, who actually expects things like that to happen in the story, at least a true one. That wasn't the end of the story, though.
“That's not the end, you know,” I told her. “There's still time for a turn around. I mean, what would this story be with out redemption, rejuvenation, and revenge. After all, that's what I've been promising. Do you want to hear it or not? Hell, the good stuff has just begun.”
And so, she sat there and listened as I told her how I had thought I had been through Hell but how wrong was. The tough part hadn't even started yet.
© Nathan Cook, 2007
and 
all
time for me 
echoes, hope you all are doing well 
