Beast of Prey

Chapter Three

The flashback began the way all his flashbacks began, with the sound of spring boards. With the sound of a mattress giving way to the movement of one adult body and the body of a child. Words of instruction followed, and in his mind, it was all clear. All so damn clear. He could feel her hands tracing his body, and could taste the heat of her. It made him sick, and swelled his brain, his mind, and his heart. She's my mother. She was supposed to be the good parent. She wasn't supposed to do this. She wasn't supposed to hurt me like this. She's not -

"Jazz?"

Howie's voice cut through Jazz's mind, sharp and crisp like a knife going through the middle of someone's skull. It took him a second, but when Jazz came to, he found himself on the floor of his best friend's bedroom with Howie's LeBron James glass lamp in pieces on the floor. For some reason, both his and Howie's hands were bleeding. It took Jazz a millisecond to piece everything together, and, before Howie could say anything more, Jazz rose and bolted from the room, making a fast track out the door, and into the quiet night. I've hurt my best friend. She made me hurt him. I've hurt Howie.

~~~

It took Jazz two hours to walk from Howie's house to the Hideout, or, what was left of it. Ravaged by insects, and a large number of mice, the Hideout was now decapitated, ruined, and murky. No longer was it a sanction. What used to be his favorite place to go and escape had unconsciously become more of a degrading, vapid hole in the wall. Vaguely smelling of rat piss, torn down, and without much of a roof, the Hideout's glory days were far behind and nothing left in the structure resembled what it had once been. It was the kind of dump that even a homeless person would by pass - and yet, for Jazz, seeing the structure looming in front of him, seeing it, made his insides warm and it felt like coming home. I can torture myself in private here, Jazz found himself thinking idly as he pushed through mountains of weeds to get to the hideout. His foot sunk into the wet grass, and the swamp water filled his shoe making it hard to walk straight. I can be alone, perfectly alone here. No Howie, who I accidentally hit, and nothing but me.

To be perfectly honest, though, Jazz couldn't pin-point why he'd stopped taking care of the Hideout and when he'd begun to abandon it. But if he seriously considered it, Jazz suspected that his rejection of the hideout must have come after last Spring, when, on one of the warmest April nights the Nod had seen in years, Jazz lost his virginity (His second-chance virginity, as he liked to think of it) to Connie. It had been a quiet, unseeingly affair, and it came only out of Connie announcing that she was moving back to New York and would be leaving Jazz alone for months. He couldn't even get into it at first, and spent most of the hour it took trying hard to fight between flashbacks - something he covered up with first-time nerves - and being present. But, eventually, after much inner wresting, and touching, and kissing, Jazz managed to get it up enough to get the deed done. It had hurt a lot though, there was some blood involved, and he went home after the fact, covered in a cold sweat, and took three consecutive showers.

Walking into the Hideout now, Jazz's eyes fell to the mattress on which it happened, and his heart squeezed against his chest, and hot tears suddenly purged onto his face. Thinking them to be tears of guilt for hurting Howie, for swinging his arms like pinwheels while he fell from the bed and accidentally striking his hemophilic friend in the face, Jazz was surprised to find his tears were actually more out of anger. Look at what you did to me, Mom. Jazz found himself thinking, his eyes glued to the mattress. I couldn't even get it on with my girlfriend properly because you fucked me into bad habits first. She's gone now, and you're haunting me. You've dead bolted my feet together, and I can't take a single step without falling on my face. He clenched his fists, and then dropped to his knees on the floor of the hideout, like a limp doll. He began to shake, and stuffed his fist into his mouth and bit as hard as he could. As he fucking quivered, Jazz welcomed the flashback. He welcomed the soaring, roaring - intrusive - visions in his mind, like a sick movie playing with full sound, and he let her words echo in his ears. He let Rusty come into his mind again, and let himself see the image of his dog, his only dog, being shredded again. He let the smell of dead bodies choke his memory, and he let himself turn cold and warm and cold and warm and he let himself feel everything.

It lasted for an hour, and after he managed to get out of the fetal position and convince himself that he was alone and no, Jazz, Mom was back in the hospital and no, not near the hideout, Jazz texted Howie. His fingers were trembling, so the text had some spelling errors: yew alrweight, Howee? After a minute: I'm fine, bro. Are you alright? You seem shaken. Talk to me, bro. Call me. Jazz thought about doing it, about calling his friend and letting it all out, but decided against it and instead crawled over the mattress - it was bug infested, sure, but Jazz didn't really give a damn - and let himself pass out.