From Teens to Sparklings

Chapter 22 Backstory of an awful man

Ulysses Christian was not a kind man.

Of course, that never bothered him. Why be genuine when you could just as easily fake any emotion and get the desired result? In his youth he had been called a sociopath, a monster, a freak. All the cruel and true names under the sun. But, again, it failed to bother him. People could say what they liked, but at the end of the day he was the one who came out on top.

But there was one thing that had always bothered him. Growing up, he was surrounded by loving people. His parents had doted on him, his friends had always invited him to play games and never excluded him. As he grew, he saw more and more of the one thing he could never have, Love.

It was infuriating. To have something so close, but to be unable to reach it had driven him mad. He had tried, oh how he had tried, but he could never successfully feel genuine love. Sure, he could fake it, but that never satisfied him. He was convinced that he would spend the rest of his days alone.

Then, he met June. And for a while, he thought he could feel love.

June had caught his interest during his high school years when she broke the nose of a rather rotund bully with an intelligence lesser to that of a trilobite. She had hit the boy so hard, his head smashed against a locker a few feet behind him, knocking him out. June promptly got a 3-day detention, the sentence being so short because the brute had swung at her first. He purposely got into a fight with another student, goading him into attacking first so that he wouldn't be suspended. When he had arrived in detention, June was reading a book on first aid. It just so happened that he had injured his hand during the fight, a careless mistake on his part. That caught June's attention, and she insisted on patching him up. From that day forward, their relationship only grew. Through the hell that was high school they went from strangers, to friends, to best friends, and finally to lovers. June had made high school bearable, and, at times, even fun.

June was quite the prankster at the time, which he didn't mind. It kept his eyes open and forced him to develop a sort of sixth sense to danger. June often jokingly called it his "Spidey Sense". Once, on picture day, as he had been opening his locker, a bucket of slime dropped on his head. June had laughed and laughed, a melodic sound that became one of his favourite noises. She had offered to help him wash it off, but in an attempt to make her laugh more, he had his picture taken as he was, covered in green, sticky slime. He didn't know a human being could laugh so hard for so long. It was a wonder she hadn't passed out.

As his relationship with June grew, he began to feel jealous of her friends. They were very close to her, too close in his opinion. He started some rumors, and they spread like wildfire. June still doesn't know that he was the cause of her 10-year friendships ending. That time had been wonderful. Sure, June cried quite a bit, but she would always be hugging him while she did so, letting him say exactly what she wanted, needed to hear.

Eventually, it was just him and her. This made it much easier to get her to agree to move in with him after high school. He had tried to convince her to just stay at home, but she had been dead set on trying to be a nurse. Her studies began to cut into their personal time together, so he had tried to put a stop to it. He "misplaced" her homework, put sleeping pills in her drinks on the nights when she needed to study late and wake up early, he even tried taking money out of her bank account so that she couldn't pay for tuition. But nothing worked. June was as stubborn as a mule, and she was slipping away from him, and as she slipped away, so did the feeling of love that he so desperately craved. So, desperate, he did the one thing he knew would make her pull away from her studies.

He got her pregnant.

Having a family is what people who were in love did as one of the ultimate commitments, and rearing a child required almost 24/7 care. He was ecstatic. June was not. She had wanted to get an abortion, not feeling ready for a child. He had, admittedly, pressured her into keeping it. But it was not a decision he regretted.

Until the child was born.

He could remember the day clearly. One of the worst thunderstorms in years happened the exact same night Jackson was born. He could remember feeling a rush of emotion. Excitement, anticipation, fear, and love. But, when he finally got to hold his newborn son, all he could feel was disappointment. He had been expecting the tiny, pink, screaming thing in his arms to bring him joy, like it was supposed to, but the feeling never came. He just stared at the child as it screamed, wondering why he wasn't feeling anything. Was it defective? Surely, it couldn't be... him?

And then it hit him. He felt no joy from his son because he did not love him. He felt something suddenly break inside him, and the love he felt for June began slowly dripping out of his heart.

As the years progressed, his love for June dissipated, but he still wanted her around. She was still entertaining, and every now and again he would feel a flicker of the love he felt before, the love he craved. So he made June almost entirely dependant on him. He would verbally put her down and would do the same to Jack, and he would get physical when she wasn't looking. When she finally got back on her feet, she secretly contacted one of the few friends that had seen through the rumors and had developed a strong hatred towards him. Soon after, she announced that she was leaving him.

Anger. Anger was the only emotion he could feel at that time. He grabbed Jack by the back of his neck and held a broken beer bottle to his throat, threatening to kill him. He hadn't seen the gun June had on her hip. She shot him in the leg, sending him to the floor. She grabbed Jack and ran, disappearing under the cover of another thunderstorm, the damn things had a habit of showing up whenever it was most convenient for Jack, and least convenient for him. He hated thunderstorms.

It wasn't until he joined M.E.C.H that he discovered where they went. They lived in a little house in Jasper, Nevada. The dust bowl was nearly empty and nearly technologically void. A perfect place to disappear to. He had finally found the perfect moment to strike, when in came the Autobots. Who would have thought that his plain, boring, useless spawn would be among the first to contact and bond with alien life? He himself had known about the existence of these aliens long before Silas caught wind of them. He had seen the one called "Arcee" talking to Jack as they went into the garage. That one was almost always with Jack for some reason.

Then, right around when Jack and his little posse of weaklings supposedly died, they find a trio of little aliens, one of which bear a similar likeness to the small boy with glasses he had seen running around with Jack. But it was when he got a good look at the largest one's eyes that his suspicions were confirmed.

Jack always had a certain look in his eye when he was frightened. It was like looking into the eyes of a cornered animal, desperate and unnerving. The alien dragon they had caught had the same look. The exact same goddamn look. It brought him a sick sense of pleasure knowing that he could abuse him without being reprimanded for it.

When he escaped, it was the first time he had felt afraid. Seeing him suddenly much bigger, stronger, and bullet proof was terrifying. It had taken 2 weeks to clean up all the blood. Dr. Martian had needed 25 stitches on the outside of his torso, not even counting the damage done to his insides. He had presumed that he would run back to his alien friends, but he had just received a message stating otherwise. He grinned.

It was time to remind them that Ulysses Christian was not a kind man.