Jack: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

May 1941, New York City

‘New rules: 1. never steal from a mobster. 2. If you do steal from a mobster, never let your weak willed conscience talk you into returning what you stole to said mobster.’

In hindsight the entire situation was just stupid. Maybe it was the fact that I hadn’t eaten in two days, but I somehow talked myself into picking the pocket of some fat cat outside a club. I nearly got away with it too, but instead of calmly walking away like I’d seen Jimmy do a thousand times before, I stood there stupidly with the wallet in my hands. If there’s one thing that all Catholics excel at, it’s guilt. Within moments I managed to talk myself into returning it and asking for forgiveness. What the hell was I thinking?

 The punishing blow to my side brings me to my knees. It hurts to breathe and I’m fairly certain he cracked a couple of my ribs. I make the mistake of instinctively bringing my hands down to my side, thus allowing the pissed off gangster to have access to my head.

I consider myself lucky that he only yanks me up by my hair. The guy was your standard mobster; tall, stocky with slicked back hair, a pinstripe suit and pair of expensive Italian leather shoes. Looking into his face he sneers at me. “Stupid kid, I’ll show you to ever steal from me!” He snarls, revealing a couple of gaps in his teeth before throwing me down onto the ground so hard that my face bounces off of the pavement in an explosion of pain and blood.

For a few terrifying moments my world is nothing but pain, slowly the spots in my vision start to fade and I look up just in time to see good old Lou strut up to the club entrance. He nods to the bouncer who unhooks the rope and lets him in like he didn’t just watch the guy beat a kid half to death in the middle of the street.

I struggle to my feet, stumbling a few times before reorienting myself. The hospital isn’t too far away, if I take a few shortcuts, I could be there in about a half hour.  Just before I turn down the first alley I remember my hat. It’s my lucky hat, so can’t exactly leave it behind. The bouncer sees me and stoically picks it up off the ground and hands it to me. It would have been better if he’d called a doctor, but I’ll take what I can get.

Clutching the hat in one hand I turn down the alleyway and begin the long, painful process of navigating the six blocks to St. Luke’s Hospital. My boot catches on a rock and I nearly fall, digging my fingers into the bricks to keep my balance. 

Before I’m even out of the alley, I start feeling like something just isn’t right. When you live like I do, you listen to those feelings because they are what keep you alive. My first thought is that Lou decided that he wasn’t done using me as a speed bag , so I pick up the pace, nervously turning to look behind me.

While I’m busy looking over my shoulder for homicidal gangsters, I manage to run into something. Jerking my head forward I take in exactly what it is in front of me. I’m not exactly sure what I’m staring at, it’s about ten feet tall, and bears a strong resemblance to a praying mantis. It’s disproportionally small head sports two glowing yellow eyes that stare down at me. There’s a strange clankity-clank sort of noise and I notice belatedly that what ever this thing is, it sports more then a half a dozen long insectoid legs, each one of them ending in some sort of strange nightmare inducing object.

The black-green creature shuffles forward clumsily, as if it wasn’t really designed to support its astounding variety of torture devices. I learn that the limbs are far faster then the rest of it when it makes an awkward shuffle before trying to take out my eye with a scalpel tipped leg..

In my panic I gracefully trip over my own feet backwards, narrowly avoiding smacking my head on the brick wall in the process. The creature advances closer and I shuffle to my feet and run as fast as I can down a connecting alley. If I wasn’t already hurt, this would be a lot easier.  One of my few worthwhile talents is the innate ability to run faster scared then others can mad. Unfortunately, I’m so battered up thanks to Lou that just staying upright is enough of a challenge for me at the moment.         

I clutch at the wall, dragging myself around the corner before the thing gets any closer.  An ominous clicking whirring noise tells me that the thing is closer than I hoped it would be. The alleyway is really long, and there’s no way that I’m going to make it that far like this.  My only hope is the half broken dumpster that’s in front of me. I drop down and crawl under it, startling about half a million c**k-roaches in the process. The things crawl over me and I have shove down the urge to shuck them off as much as I can. This is not the time to worry about the ‘heebie-jeebies’, not with the thing coming after me.

The mechanical noises draw closer, growing louder with each shaky step of those creepy insectoid legs.  It shuffles past the dumpster and I hold my breath.  The thing pauses and for a moment I’m sure I’m going to get away. My sigh of relief becomes a blood curdling scream when a chunk of the dumpster explodes, loudly, right next to my ear. Apparently one of its many limbs bears a shotgun.

I can see the creature through the hole in the blasted out metal. It pauses, its cruel eyes stare down at me menacingly. I try to crawl away from it and out from under the dumpster, but the creature has other ideas.

The dumpster ratchets sideways with a horrific dragging metal sound. For the second time tonight I’m on my a*s in front of this monster.  I don’t even know what the hell to call it, but it’s going to kill me. I’m not all that fond of it’s plans for me, on account of how I like living and all, so it just seams reasonable to ruin the creatures fun by any means necessary.

Damaged ribs be damned I scramble to my feet, ducking underneath a weird rotating saw in the process. Do they even have a name for that thing? I shuffle backwards, and bump into a wall. Damn. It looks like I’m not going to be able to just run away from this. I reach into my pocket and wrap my hands around the reassuring smoothness of the knife’s strange wrapped handle before drawing it out of my pocket. The thing throws out one of its arms; this it’s the world’s scariest hypodermic needle which wobbles in the air in a malicious drunken sailor sort of way.  I bat the needle away angrily, sending the creature staggering slightly.

This thing really isn’t very steady on its feet, and that might just give me a chance. The now empty shotgun lunges for my face and I grab the barrel with my left hand and yank as hard as I can. The thing shifts awkwardly, just enough to give me the opening I was hoping for.  I charge forward and punch the knife blindly into the hard chitinous plates at its abdomen. At least I least I think it’s the things abdomen. I panic for a moment, worrying that I wasted my one chance by striking ineffectively.  Do these things even have organs? To my relief it screams as I drag the blade back out, so I must have hit something. I shove the thing with all my might and topple it over. It spins in circles on its glossy back as its dangerous limbs flail about. I could care less as I step over the creature and run down the alleyway it just came from.

I have no idea where I’m going. The bug-thing got me all turned around. All I can think is that anywhere has got to be better than here with that thing. I can hear the thing shrieking behind me. ‘Good,’ I think, ‘at least he’s having as s****y a night as I am.’

I manage to reach another turn when something crashes down in front of me. For a moment I think it’s the bug, then I it dawns on me that this can’t be the same one because I can still hear it screaming back there.  There are more then one of these things? How do we not know about them?

A saw tipped appendage drags across my shoulder, bringing me out of my thoughts. I shove the thing into a wall with enough force that I hear a crack.  It tosses me aside, as if I weighed nothing and scuttles upright. I take advantage of this glowing opportunity to get the hell out of the alleys.

I make it to the street but everything is wrong. For one thing, I don’t hear any traffic. Looking around, I see a guy walking down the street a ways.

“Hey!” I wheeze, “Hey, mister!”

The guy doesn’t even turn around. I limp over to him just close enough to see that he’s not alone. Strange shadowy creatures swarm around his feet, their red eyes glowing in their own darkness. One of the shadows opens its black maw and hisses at me.  After I jump backwards a couple of feet I decide to cross the street thinking that maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t get that guy’s attention after all.

Everything appears dirty, like it’s never seen fresh air or sunshine, let alone street cleaners.  Even the street lights cast a dingy sort of light that makes me want to scrub myself raw. Picking the better of two evils I keep myself close to the sickly gray of the streetlights as I try to figure out where I am. Nothing looks familiar to me. I should be on or at least near East 42^nd, but half the buildings are missing. 

That’s crazy, right? Buildings don’t just cease to exist.  And yet, here they aren’t. Hell, the ones that I can see aren’t exactly solid. Maybe it’s the creepy dirty light, but I swear I can see through a few of them; like they’re ghosts or something. This thought sends an uncomfortable chill down my spine and I shiver. The pain that follows reminds me of my battered state.

Any thought that I have of just being lost dies when I do finally recognize something. St Luke’s hospital is there all right, and as solid as one can expect a building to be when it’s twice as big as it should be. The east and west wards are swelling out ever so slowly… then shrinking.  It’s breathing, I realize. The damn building is breathing. That’s not even the worst of it, because now that I’m paying attention I notice that every time it exhales a horrible cacophony of noise whistles through the air.

I turn away from the sight, unwilling to look at its every horrific detail; the screams, shrieks and guttural cries still drift down the otherwise eerily quiet streets.

A shuffling comes from the shadows beside me and I bolt down the street as fast as I can.  I get about half way down the street before I feel something shift in my side, followed by a tearing feeling that nearly drops me to my knees. When I scream, only a gurgled gasp comes out.

‘My lung, I punctured my lung.’ I think in a panic. The hospital obviously wasn’t much of an option. I needed to get out of here, where- or whatever ‘here’ was.  Ideally finding someplace comfortable and familiar, like Central Park in the middle of the night. At least the muggers, rapists and freaks are technically human.  

I was struggling just to limp down the street when I heard it: The sound of someone clearing their throat. The more I listen the more I can hear a deep voice humming in the distance. I pause at an intersection, listening for the sound again. A clear chanting starts, definitely to the left. I grab the corner and haul myself headfirst around the corner with my good arm. I bounce off of something solid and land on the ground in a painful heap.

The man standing over me looks as surprised to see me here as I am relieved to see him at all. I’m so relieved to see another human being that I don’t care that his dark sunken eyes give the man an uncanny resemblance to the crazed Russian monk, Rasputin. I don’t care that his scraggly beard makes him look like a serial killer. I don’t care that the weird clothes that he’s wearing are so out of date that even Jimmy wouldn’t wear them.  Lying on my back, bleeding to death internally, I only look up at this feral looking man and laugh. As if it was the funniest thing in the world, I laugh until I cough, and when I cough I spray blood everywhere. I just don’t care about that either. In fact I care so little that I’m still gargling with laughter when I pass out.

 

 

 

I awake to a large blob beside me. After sitting up and wiping at my eyes, I look over getting a better look at it. The blob is some sort of rabbit I think. The biggest rabbit I’ve ever seen.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” A sarcastic voice mutters. I turn my head from side to side, trying to identify the source of the voice. “Hey, genius, I’m right in front of you.”

After the night I had, a talking rabbit seems like the least of my concerns. “Nice work back there.” The rabbit says to me carelessly. “I didn’t see it myself of course, but I hear it was really impressive.”

It’s a dream. This has all been some horrible dream and when I wake up I’ll be safe and snug in some nut ward, where I obviously belong. 

“Not much for speaking, are you?  I bet you’re the strong silent type.” He says before bringing his long, sinuous back leg up and scratching behind his left ear.  Correction, my unfortunate companion is a hare, not a rabbit.

“I don’t usually talk to wildlife.” I say sarcastically.

The rabbit c***s his head and stares at me a moment, his ears twitching furiously for a moment before sighing. “Please don’t call me a bunny.”  He asks in a long suffering plea.

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” I say quickly, hoping that it would just go away so I won’t have to be crazy. I can’t just try to scare it off.  Having been raised on a farm, I know very well how nasty the creatures can be and I don’t want a repeat of last night.

His voice is high and thin with a strange sort echo, much like children’s laughter coming from down a hallway. He stiffens his spine and imperially introduces himself. “I’m a Jackrabbit, which is technically a hare. If you must, you can call me a rabbit. Under no circumstances are you allowed to call me a … bunny.” It spits out the word as if it was some kind of awful.

I shrug, belatedly realizing that he wasn’t going away. Well, if I’m going to be crazy, I might as well enjoy it. “Jack.” I say before he interrupts.

“I’m not one for human names.” He says dismissively.

I narrow my eyes at the self focused Jackrabbit. “You may call me Jack. Not Jackie, not Jacqueline: Just Jack.”

The hare’s pupils dilate in realization.  “Oh… See, I thought you meant… You know since I’m a … Well it’s kind of funny when you think about it, really.” He says lamely before faking a cough.  Or at least, I assume he’s faking. I can’t see the massive talking animal being susceptible to something as mundane as the common cough. “So.. Jack, nice work back there. I heard that you put up quite a fight. The hare is very impressed.”

I don’t say anything and there’s a long minute of mute staring. “The snatchers!” He exclaims. “You know, the ugly creeps that were trying to kill you.”

I stare at him as the memories slide into focus. “What the hell were those things?”

He shrugs his furry shoulders, “A kind of bane spirit, they like to yank people into the spirit world and feed on their terror.”

Nothing he is saying makes any sense to me.  “Where the hell am I? The last thing I remember was…”   I gasp at a sudden thought. “Am I dead?”

Jack blinks at me. “Would I be talking to you if you were?” He drawls sarcastically.

“Probably.”  I mutter as I stand up and look around. White. Everything is white. It’s not like a ‘bathed in light’ kind of white, either.

“To be fair, I deserved that. However, you are not dead.”

I’m not dead? I remember the pain in my side, the punctured lung, the scary looking man that I ran into. “Yeah, and I’m the pope.”

The rabbit c***s his furry brown head. “I beg to differ. I have it on very good authority that the Vatican is preserved by the ‘Phantasmic Phallus’, which is to say the very spirit of masculinity.” He pauses. “It is highly unlikely that you could be the pope.”

 I scratch my head nervously, trying to make sense of everything, when I notice that my hat is missing. It strikes me that for a supposedly ‘lucky’ hat; I sure lose it a lot. In fact, the only thing lucky about it is that I haven’t completely lost it before now.

“Oh, yeah.” The creature shuffles sideways revealing my cap, crushed beneath it. “You’ll have to excuse me. I don’t come in contact with real things very often. It makes quite a comfortable cushion, by the way.”

I purse my lips and pick the cap up off the ground. Beating it soundly a few times against my thigh I pull it down onto my head.

“So I’m not dead?”

“That would be correct.”

“What the hell are you?”

“Jackrabbit.”

“A talking Jackrabbit?”

“Well, yes.”  He pauses. “I’m a spirit. No, it’s more like I’m a spirit’s spirit.” He c***s his head. “You ever hear of totems?”

I blink. “Like the Indian guides?”

“Exactly! So imagine it like this… You know how your God supposedly made you in his image? Well imagine if every living thing in the world had its own god of the same image. Now imagine that these gods like to drip pieces of themselves into existence so they can wander about doing the god’s bidding.” He says lightly.

“Like angels?”

“Um, no. Those are actually different creatures, but we’ll run with that… Catholics!” He says in dismay. “Anyway, I’m Jackrabbit’s ‘angel’.  A totem spirit.”

“Okay.” I say looking down at its massive ears.

“Anyway, I’m pretty impressed with how you handled yourself back there.” He says, ears twitching. “So I’m going to make you an offer.  I’m going to be your totem.”

I bite my lip as I think about this. My Catholic brain is screaming “Demon! Creature of the Devil!” But the rest of my brain, that happened to experience those ‘snatchers’ thinks that maybe this could be a good thing.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“It means that I’m going to help you be more like me: Fast, nimble, cunning.” He says proudly. “You can run and jump faster, higher then you ever have before. Survive freezing winters. Produce large numbers of children.” He rattles on sounding like a used car salesman.

“I don’t want large numbers of children.” I mutter. It was sounding so good until he said that. I can barely take care of myself, why would I want something else to feed? Little… people… and their… needs….  I shudder at the very thought.

“Are you kidding me?! You’re a Catholic, isn’t that what you people do?” He asks incredulously.

I glare at him and smack my lips in irritation. “I don’t want to alarm you, but I’m not exactly great shakes at the whole Catholic thing.” This of course should be obvious just by looking at me. I don’t want to brag or anything, but a 17-year-old girl in dirty, torn up men’s clothes isn’t usually the expected appearance of a good, god fearing Catholic. At least that’s what my mother always said…

The spirit quivers slightly. “Why would I care if you were a good Catholic? All I want is to take you under my paw and show you how to survive.  What you saw last night was just a test; a mere taste of what’s to come.”

I shrug. “So did I pass?”

“Well, you’re alive aren’t you?” He snorts.

“If that was a test, does that mean that it gets worse?” I ask warily.

The rabbit peers up at me. “That hospital you saw… Old Bear isn’t exactly thrilled with that bane fest. However, he has far bigger problems then that at the moment.”

“Bear?” I ask trying to distract myself from the awful noises forever trapped in my freak brain.

“Another spirit. You’d like him.  He’s all healing and snuggles on the rare times he isn’t calculating how to eviscerate people.” He starts to walk into the whiteness and pauses. “Are you coming or not?”

I follow the rabbit, feeling like Alice as she falls down the rabbit-hole. “So, why me?”

“Why not you? This doesn’t make you special. It just makes you more aware of the world around you.” He spits out never pausing as we walk through the white. It’s disorienting because there is no sky, no ground. In fact there is simply nothing but this monotone whiteness everywhere. “Humans like to pretend that half of the world doesn’t exist. Humans are fairly stupid, you see.”

“Gee, thanks.” I mutter, mildly offended.  “Where are we going?”

“I suppose that all depends on what you think of my offer.”

“You don’t seem to like me very much.” I state. “Why would you want to help me?”

“I’m a hare! What use do I have for people skills? ” He pauses. “I want to help you because I like you.” A perfectly circular answer if ever I heard one.

We walk a ways into the whiteness. “Where are we going, really?”

The hare snorts. “We aren’t going anywhere. In fact, we haven’t gone anywhere. This is the higher consciousness. It’s where you go when your body doesn’t have the dignity to die.”

“The higher consciousness? That may explain how I got here, but what about you?” I ask, curiously. If I have one real flaw, it is the complete inability to mind my own business.

“Spirit. Hello?” His nose twitches, a sign of irritation. “If you survive long enough to learn something, even you could force yourself into a state where you could be here at will.”

I don’t like the sardonic tone that he’s taking so I shrug. “I don’t know… Sounds like more trouble than its worth.”

The nose twitches furiously. “Are you serious?”

“No, not really.” I reply.

“Good, because I’d hate to think that I was wasting our time.”

“What do you care about time? You’re a spirit.”

Sharp claws swat at my leg lightly. “Enough! Let’s cut to the chase. Do we have a deal or not?” He snipes.

“What do you get out of this?” I ask.

“I get a new favorite to report to THE Jackrabbit. This puts me in his high esteem.  I need to get back on his good side after that unfortunate incident with my last favorite.” He says and stops suddenly.

“What exactly happened to your last favorite, again?”

“Well, it was more like ‘favorites.’ A whole pack of them. They were young and overzealous; I made the mistake of encouraging them to straighten out the hospital. Obviously that didn’t go as I planned…” He trails of, staring into the white.

I narrow my eyes. “They’re dead aren’t they?”

“Only the lucky ones! It was a huge mistake, one that I’ll be paying for the rest of your life. The Jackrabbit was less than amused that I’d essentially handed a mighty handful of his ever dwindling favorites directly into the mouth of the Corruptor.” He said wearily.

“Corruptor?”

“Girly, are we playing 20 questions?!” He whines.

“Don’t call me ‘Girly’.”

“You said I couldn’t call you Jackie, or Jacqueline.”

“I also said ‘Just Jack’.” I snap back at him.

“No you didn’t.”

“Yes I did.”

“Like you remember everything you say!” He argues.

“As a matter of fact, I do.” I snort and glare at him. I jam a finger to the side of my head dramatically. “I got a freak brain. Not only do I remember what I said, I remember what you said, what I saw, what I read…  Everything."

He looks up at me, his head cocked in a strange sort of way. “Serious?”

“Yes .”

“Well, you just got a whole lot more interesting.” He says in admiration.

“So besides making yourself look good, what do you want from me?”

He makes a strange grinding noise. “Oh, the usual. A pledge. You can’t eat rabbit.”

“I can’t eat rabbit?” I ask.

“Yeah, it doesn’t exactly bring you closer to me if you’re chowing down on rabbits.” He states.

“But you’re a hare, not a rabbit.”

He pauses. “Of course I am. But there’s enough of a similarity there that it counts.” He says.

“What else should I know?”

“Well… That’s it really. I mean I can explain some of the bigger picture with you later, but that’s not part of what I want from you.”  He sounds flustered.

“So I can’t eat rabbits. What about wearing them or keeping them as pets.” I ask.

“Hell, I don’t care if you raise them to cook, you just can’t physically eat them.” He says dismissively.

“Why me? I mean, why did you choose me?”  I ask plopping down on the… White.

“Well, like I said, the Jackrabbit was impressed. You ran, you fought, you ran some more. Pretty Jackrabbity when you think about it.” He glances up at my face. “You kinda look like a hare too.”

I frown at him. It’s not that I’m disturbed by my face, it’s a just a face after all. My features are plain, remarkable only in their generic qualities. Even nestled in my own confidence, I still don’t like the way that he suggests that I looked like a large toothed, beady eyed lapis.

“You’re all stringy and stuff.” He adds.

He probably had a point. I wasn’t exactly living the sort of lifestyle where regular meals were readily available to me.  “So what?”

“Nothing, it’s just… Well I don’t really have an answer for you. Why do people fall in love? Why do some people just feel drawn to each other. It’s kind of like that. I just like you.” He says looking at one paw.

“Bad analogy there, boy-o! People always leave.” I correct.

He’s quiet, staring at me as if he expects me to keep speaking on the subject. Crazy or not, I’m not having that discussion right now, so I decide to awkwardly change the subject. “So if I agree, you’re going to help me in all of these different ways, all for the low price of never eating another rabbit?”

“Sums it up.” He says.

“I don’t know… I’m rather fond of rabbit stew.” I say, not mentioning the fact that I actually detest the taste of rabbit.

“Bullshit. Nobody likes rabbit stew.” He says firmly.

He was obviously wrong, otherwise the stuff wouldn’t still exist, but I had to agree that I had yet to meet a single person who could stomach the tough ranginess of stewed rabbit. I shrug. “Okay.”

“So we’re in agreement?”

“Yes. Now… What happens now? Do you just hop away, or what?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, I’m afraid. You see, you need to do a ritual.” I shift uncomfortably, my immortal soul shrinking from the word ‘ritual’. He sighs. “It’s not that kind of ritual. It’s a ritual that will allow you to open up to me. “

“Open up to you how?” I ask suspiciously. Just because a talking hare says that they don’t want anything of importance, doesn’t mean you take them on their word.

“It kind of bonds us. Let’s me keep close to you. Like an anchor.” He pauses, “Otherwise I can’t affect the things you do in the physical world.”

“Like take over my body?” I grit furiously at his thinly veiled declaration of possession.

His nose twitches. “Why would I want to possess you? It won’t do me any good if you aren’t out there haring off in whatever direction you want to go. That isn’t how Jackrabbit works.”

“Sounds suspicious to me.”

“To be fair, it should. I am a spirit after all. Unlike the demon that you are trying to make me out to be, I’m not trying to corrupt you. I’m not selling you anything. I’m not asking you to do anything but not eat my brethren, as dim-witted and weak as they may be.”

I think about this and can see his point. “Demons… They always want something later.”

“Your God always wants something.” He points out. “Your un-broken faith, your purity, your virtuousness, your sacrifice, your suffering. Always. Because forging your faith in your suffering means having a greater connection to him. It makes him stronger.”

Maybe it was every single night that I had spent out in a freezing winter, or perhaps the days that I went hungry, but I believed him. I could easily see our ‘divine reward’ being his increased power. After all, aren’t we to rejoice in the strength of our lord?

 The thought of the god whom I’d been raised to worship blindly getting his jollies off of my pain and suffering made me angry. “What do I have to do?” I ask, brazenly tossing away my misgivings in a display of fury induced rashness.  

“Hold out your hand.”  I extend my hand to the furry creature. He stares at it a moment before swiftly sinking his teeth into the fleshy part of my palm.