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| INHERITED POWERS A Christmas Tale of Terror |
{Okay, I can't help it, but things just keep popping into my head, so when they do I have to write them down. But don't worry, I will be continueing writing on my other stuff soon.}
He was staggering down the street, half naked and bleeding, clutching what appeared to be a dirty stone, when I first met Jackson. That was over ten years ago now, the day after Christmas. And today, on his twenty first birthday, I am looking back on a decade of a roller coaster ride of emotions and strange happenings that seemed to surround this young lad that I took pity on those many years ago. I am not really sure when his actual birthday is, for he has never told me, so we decided that the day we met would be his new birthday. I’ve often wondered how things would have gone for Jackson if I hadn’t been the one to find him that cold snowy night. I have also wondered how my life would have been different if not for my taking him in.
I suppose that sounds a little confusing and vague to you? Well it has been confusing for me, so I understand your bewilderment. Maybe I should start form the beginning. No, not the day I ran into Jackson, but the very beginning. The beginning for Jackson. I am not really sure if everything he has told me over the years is one hundred percent true, but with what I have witnessed, I am not the one to claim any of it is a lie. I will leave that up to you to decide.
Jackson has never really told me a lot about his years before the day we met, but this is what he has related to me about the days just prior to our meeting.
‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all thru the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.’
Well actually it was a week before Christmas, and where Jackson was staying, it in no way could be referred to as a house; as for the creature stirring? Well let’s just say, a jolly old fat man all dressed in red wouldn’t be the only one coming to pay a visit to where nice little Jackson was on Christmas Eve.
December 18th: While the rest of the children of the world were anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa and Christmas, Jackson was not. At ten years old, Jackson had long since given up in believing in the story of some crazy old man in a red suit who could fly around the world in a sleigh powered by magical reindeer giving presents and toys to all the good little girls and boys. He used to want to believe. He used to make out his ‘Wish List’ just like other kids, but after never getting anything from this ‘Santa’ guy, he gave up. No he wised up. He grew up. He got smart. Besides, it had been a few years now since anyone would have considered Jackson, a ‘Good Little Boy’.
Jackson pulled the smelly, stained, tattered piece of cloth that he used as a blanket from over his head and slowly opened one eye. He was careful not to move to quickly or to make any noise. If he was found to be awake, well he didn’t want to think about that right now. Right now he was building up his courage to carry out his plan. He had been plotting out his plan for some time now, and Christmas Eve would be the perfect time for it. Jackson was way smarter than any other ten year old, hell he was smarter then most adults, maybe that was one of the reasons he was treated so differently. Maybe all the adults were afraid of him because of his intelligence. Well if that was the case, Jackson would disappoint them no longer. In seven short days, Jackson would give everyone a really good reason to fear him.
“Here comes Santa Claus.” Jackson snickered to himself, “Just wait and see what he’s bringing you this year?”
Jackson lay still, with only half his head poking out from under the blanket. Slowly he moved his eyes to check out the room. Once he felt it was safe, Jackson slowly and quietly let his body slide off of the sawdust stuffed burlap sack he was given to use as a bed. Jackson lay on the dirt floor of the room until he was certain no one had seen or heard him move. Slithering on his belly like a snake on the floor, Jackson made his way to the small canvas covered opening in the wall that worked as a makeshift window. The cold night air blew in around the canvas but at least the blowing snow had frozen to the outside of the canvas so it was ridged and stopped the full gusts of the freezing air from entering his room. When it snowed and the wind blew really hard, snow filtered in for a good five feet inside the room, lowering the temperature to just a few degrees warmer then it was outside. Jackson didn’t mind the cold though; he preferred it to the blistering, sweltering, humid, stagnant heat of the summer. Actually Jackson loved the cold; he could sit half naked in the snow for hours and not have it faze him. It was another thing that seemed to irritate the adults around him. One less thing they could use to punish me Jackson thought.
With the grace and agility of a cat, Jackson slinked out the window and unto the snow covered ground outside. Barefoot, in shorts and no shirt, Jackson leaned tightly against the cold snow covered wooden outside wall and waited. Minutes slowly ticked by as Jackson waited for just the right moment to make his move for the woodpile some fifty yards from the building. A puddle of water formed around Jackson’s feet as the warmth of his body melted the snow he stood on. Once he made his way to the wood pile he would be able to crawl undetected all the way to the trees that lined the perimeter of the property. And once he was in the cover of the trees, he would be able to stand and run. He’d be able to run as far and as fast through the snow as his little bare feet would carry him. It wouldn’t be all that far for Jackson to run, he knew where he was going, to his secret spot, where he had first thought up his delicious plan.
“Punish me by making me clear brush in the woods on the hottest, muggiest days of summer,” Jackson snickered to himself again, “Looks like that little punishment is going to backfire on you fuckers big time.”
It had been the first part of August when Jackson was sent out into the woods and shackled by his right ankle to a big birch tree with a one hundred foot long log chain and made to clear the brush from around the trees. It didn’t matter that the majority of the brush was either poison ivy or poison oak, with the rest being mainly thistles and burning nettles. For sixteen hours a day, starting at five am, Jackson was chained in the woods, the only good thing was that the trees blocked a large part of the direct sunshine, so at least he never burned or blistered too badly. But the heat and humidity was brutal, and he was only allotted two quarts of water for the entire day. The first few days Jackson made the mistake of drinking the water too quickly and suffered severely once the late afternoon heat hit him and dehydrated his body. He soon learned how to ration himself, and even got so daring as to drink his own urine, to save on his water. That really didn’t bother Jackson; he had had much worse tastes in his mouth.
It was on the twelfth day chained in the woods that Jackson found what would become his muse so to speak for his sanity. For his freedom. For his vengeance.
Jackson stood waiting patiently, pressed tightly up against the cold wall; a bank of clouds had been slowly making their way across the night sky towards the moon. As the snow began to fall harder, the clouds reached the moon and blocked out the glow of the moonlight. Once the clouds fully engulfed the moon into darkness, Jackson dropped to his belly and slithered through the snow towards the woodpile. With the clouds having blackened out the glow of the moon, and the heavy amount of snow falling, along with the two plus feet of snow on the ground already, Jackson was able to make his way to the woodpile totally undetected by the men huddled around the fire pit a mere twenty feet from the building.
“Dumb fuckers,” Jackson whispered to himself as he peaked around the corner of the pile and saw the men were all still standing there warming themselves by the fire. “Weak bastards can’t even handle a little cold. They sure hired some great guards this year.” Jackson whispered again to himself looking at the men shivering, all bundled up in layers of clothing and heavy winter parkas with snow boots and gloves on, then back down at his own body with nothing but a pair of shorts on, not even socks for Christ sake, and he wasn’t even cold yet, squatting almost naked in the snow, and it didn’t even faze him. “Weak ass fucks.” Jackson whispered as he turned to crawl to the tree line. From where the four men stood, even if it wasn’t snowing and it was broad daylight, the men would never have seen him over the top of the ten foot high woodpile, but still Jackson crawled on his hands and knees through the snow to the trees.
Every few years a baby is born that is slightly different from all others. Most times these babies go unnoticed by the people involved in their births, from their parents to the doctors and nurses at the hospital, and they go on to lead normal lives. Well mostly normal lives. It is these babies that grow up to be one of two things, either great humanitarians, national leaders, or business people, the likes of Mother Teresa, Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln, Bill Gates, Sam Walton, Warren Buffet, George Washington, Pablo Picasso, Beethoven, Patton, etc. Or they grow up to become the Hitler’s, the Jim Jones’s, the John Wayne Gacy’s, the Jeffery Damer’s, the Kim Jung Il’s, etc. It is not known what differentiates who becomes who, but it has been proven that with the right training, any one of these babies can become whatever they are taught to become, depending on how and who does the teaching. If left to themselves, these babies tend to become normal adults and try to do well for the world around them. Jackson was one of these babies. He had the misfortune of being born in the wrong place with the wrong people around him. People that were trained to spot these exceptional babies and take them from their normal lives, but even they could not foresee what Jackson would be capable of, especially if he were to gain certain mysterious powers, even more powers then the ones granted to him by his mere birth, to culminate and accelerate at different times in his life.
To be born in Gods grace, but raised in the bowels of Satan’s underbelly, there is no telling what one would or could become.
Jackson had reached the tree line and stood behind one of the bigger trees a few feet into the woods, he looked back and could just make out the flickering glow of the fire pit, he squinted his eyes, but couldn’t tell if the men were all still standing around it, but since he hadn’t heard any alarms, or felt the presence of anyone nearing him, like he usually could, he felt confident that he had made good on this first leg of his escape. Well it really wasn’t an escape; he had every intention of returning, and returning soon with a vengeance.
Jackson ran through the woods with the agility and swiftness of a whitetail buck, even in the darkness he was able to see and avoid all the low hanging branches that were being pulled down from the weight of the snow upon them. Jackson ran until he reached his secret spot, and even though it was covered in two feet of snow, he knew exactly where it was. He quickly began digging the snow away with his hands until he got close to the ground, then he removed his shorts and used them to gently brush away the last of the snow until the brown leaf covered ground was visible. Jackson paused to look up and around him, although it was still snowing heavily, no snow was falling on the ground that he had just bared. Jackson stood up and wiped away any snow from his body then stepped into the center of where he had cleared the snow and laid down on his back, arms crossed and with his hands cupping his genitals, he closed his eyes and waited. He wouldn’t have to wait long.
“Damn it’s a cold one out tonight,” The tallest of the four men said as he rubbed his gloved hands above the fire. “And this snow sure ain’t helping matters any.”
“I still don’t understand why the hell they have us out here?” Another one of the men moaned. “Hell in this kind of weather none of those kids are going to try and run off, especially at night.”
“As long as they keep paying me, I’ll stand out here for my four hour shift every night and do nothing,” The smallest of the four piped in. “It sure as hell beats having to be inside dealing with those whiny little brats directly.”
“You got that right.” The tallest one replied as they all chuckled.
As Jackson lay on the leaf covered ground, the snow continued to fall and build around him. Although it was close to midnight and the temperature was well below zero, Jackson felt warm where he lay. As the minutes past, Jackson actually began to fell warmer and warmer. The snow wall around Jackson was now almost four feet high, a heat fog wafted above Jackson as he kept perfectly still and concentrated on his one singular thought; heat. Jackson opened his eyes and glanced around at the wall of snow surrounding him and then rose to his knees and gently but vigorously began to dig his hands into the leaves.
Jackson had taught himself a couple of years ago how to control his body temperature through sheer mind control. Although he wasn’t able yet to cool himself completely from the outside heat, he could raise his body temp by as much as two hundred degrees. He could literally will his body to get so hot as to boil water in a cup he held in his hands. So now with his body heat having thawed the ground enough for Jackson to dig into the soil, he began to dig. Jackson didn’t have far to dig, just a little over a foot into the now warmed dirt before he found the treasure he had buried months earlier.
The treasure that Jackson found on that humid heat soaked day of August some eleven years ago, now sits on the mantle above my fireplace. I still don’t fully understand just what powers this object holds for Jackson, but I do know that with it he is a force to be reckoned with. And just being in its presence, I too feel a since of power from this ancient relic, dug up by a ten year old boy under circumstances that the devil himself would cringe to think about living through.
Before he left this morning, Jackson informed me that he felt things would be changing when he returned. I really don’t know what he means by that, but I can only hope it will be a change for the good. It has been a struggle for me to keep Jackson on the side of the righteous this past decade, what with his desire for vengeance upon those who done him wrong those many years ago. I have tried to guide him to use his powers for the good of his fellow man, and so far I have mostly succeeded. But for some reason I fear when he returns, I will have to battle him to stay on the path I have led him these past eleven years. I just hope this feeling isn’t a premonition.
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