A New Beginning

Jason awoke to the sound of Sasha barking and whimpering as she skittered around on the apartment floors chasing some invisible figure. The movie had just finished, and the credits were playing. The herbs he bought from Roots were having the desired effect as he entered the fourth level of experience and found the clarity to see to how he should proceed. He finally understood that the past twelve years had been a waste. He had been wallowing in depression and his own self-pity. He remembered countless times where he promised himself he would live life happily and to its fullest but he always failed

Now it was different. Now he was ready to find someone who he could care for as much as he had for JLC. He reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out the slip of paper that she had placed there the night before and called the number. A smooth, sensual voice answered the phone, addressing him by his full name.

“It’s over. You have tried to pull me back in for the last time. I no longer feel the desperate desire for the physical pleasure which you used to keep me coming back. You had your chance, and you blew it. I’m moving on and this is the last time I plan to talk to you.” Then the line went dead, and as Jason’s heart beat steadily returned to normal, he began to think what his next move would be.

Was there anyone he liked or felt close to that lived in Thallow Flats? Anyone he felt he could trust and tell them anything and everything he was feeling? There was one person. She always seemed to walk around by herself and whenever she was in the Tavern, she never drank. She sat alone with her notebook at one of the old, grimy tables for hours, writing and watching. That’s one of the things he noticed about her, she was always watching people. A few times he thought he saw her looking at him. There was something different about her, a detachment from life, yet seeing the secret present in it. From what he knew, she was around 23 and was from the Middle East. She was very attractive and had a mysterious beauty surrounding her and her beautiful, innocent eyes. Whenever she smiled, her entire face lit up, making her that more beautiful.

The only problem was he had no confidence. He had never asked a girl out before, not even the one with whom he had spent two years of his life. That was one of the reasons he drank. He hoped that one day it would help him become looser and less nervous around women, but it never did. He was utterly pathetic, but hoped that it would be different just this once.

By this time Sasha was jumping up and down on the couch barking to be taken out. As they walked through the lobby, a man raced passed them, stopping just outside the door with a bewildered look in his eye, as he began to look frantically for some item of interest. He remembered this strange man as having introduced himself as Jimmy at the Tavern the night before. Jason thought it would be polite to say hi, but before he could say anything, Jimmy ran off down Main Street. As Jason walked with Sasha, he began to wonder how he would approach her.

A New Friend

“I love you Jason,” JLC whispered in his ear.

That was what she said last night as she came up behind him. Last night was the first night he had seen her in over 10 years. She was shorter than he, but still average height for a woman and slender, with medium length dark brown hair. As always, he found those brown eyes with a hint of grey. She was wearing a black dress; in fact, it was the same black dress he had given her for their two year anniversary. He had tried to forget what she had done, but nothing could replace the heartbreak he had felt. Then here she was, right in front of him, and he remembered everything. All the love. All the passion. All the hatred. He didn’t know what to say, what to feel, he could only stare. After a couple of minutes, seemingly an eternity, he got up and left, returning to his apartment.

It had been 12 years since someone had called him Jason. Twelve years of James. Twelve years of hiding his emotions. Twelve years of looking through life but never finding what he wanted. Twelve years of isolation. It had been 12 years of letting no one close, letting no one know what he was truly thinking.

“Why? Why now?” Jason thought. You see James was not his real name. His real name was Jason. “Why should I care? She betrayed me. Why do I still care? Do I care? If I don’t care why haven’t I moved on? I haven’t trusted anyone for so long, why should I trust her now?” With this thought Jason finished his breakfast and decided to clear his head by going for a ride. He put on his leather jacket, which though years old, smelled of new leather, dirt, and smoke, and left the room.

He went to the garage to get his bright green and black YZF-R1 Yamaha bike, and turned onto Main Street towards the expressway. Weaving in and out of traffic, his surroundings blurred around him as he fought for freedom. Signs raced passed him as he pushed his motorcycle to its limit. He didn’t worry about the police, they never bothered him. He enjoyed these rides. It’s not like anyone ever cared whether he lived or died, so why should he. These rides always cleared his mind, but this time he couldn’t stop thinking about the past and about her. He had given her everything, she was his first and last. Everyone says how hindsight is 20-20, and now he understood why. She had manipulated and used him to get what she wanted. He had loved her, and loathed her, but now he didn’t know what to think. Had he over reacted when he found out? Could it really have been a simple mistake, a slip up, and that “word” still held meaning between them? “No,” he thought. “I was right for leaving, if she had loved me as much as she said, then she would not have…” And then Jason realized that he had ridden 200 miles outside the city. He needed to get back before he ran out of gas.

Once back in town, Jason stopped by the new root shop, Roots’ Edible Herb Emporium, which had just opened. As he approached the door, he saw a box lying just outside the door and a sign which read “Free Husky Puppies.” By now only one was left, a girl, who appeared to be sleeping. She was tiny and had a beautiful black and white coat. Jason wondered why someone would get rid of such a beautiful animal, but decided to think about it later as he walked into the slightly run down, hole in the wall store with the freshly painted sign. The owner immediately came up to greet him and asked him what he wanted, saying all the time that he was so excited about opening up this store and it was wonderful he already had his first customer. Jason told him he wanted the Salvia divinorum, a plant containing one of the most potent hallucinogens known to man. All of a sudden the man stopped all his giggling and dancing and was very serious. “Are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked. “Yes,” Jason responded. Jason paid and left, paying the man no more attention. Once outside, Jason found the husky puppy had awoken, climbed out of the box and was sitting next to his bike. The puppy just sat there looking at him with her beautiful blue eyes. The same color as his, but with more emotion. His were dead. He often heard people refer to his gaze as that of ice and death, lacking complete emotion. Jason carefully placed the puppy in his jacket, zipped it up, so she was not in danger of falling out and returned home.

Back in his room, he pulled 10 Things I Hate About You, one of his favorite movies, from the rack under the TV. He had given a lot of thought to naming the little puppy and finally came up with Sasha. Sasha on the other hand was skittering around the room, still not able to walk completely, sniffing and biting everything she saw. He sat down on the couch and began to smoke. Sasha jumped up in his lap, curled into a ball, yawned, and went to sleep, while Jason began to watch the movie.

The Beginning

What day was it? Was it Saturday or Sunday? None of these questions truly mattered because James was long past caring, in fact he couldn't remember the last time he truly cared about anything. It was 6:00 a.m. according to his clock and the first rays of the sun began shooting over the horizon and through his window in room 215 of the rundown apartment building. Last night had been a long night, but not unlike many others, where he had gone down to the local tavern to find answers at the bottom of every glass. Something had been different. He remembered something that had seemed out of place last night at the bar, but what was it. It wasn't the smell of the place, which by now had no distinct smell, having been covered by years of odors from various patrons and food, unwilling to be washed away. It wasn't the furniture of the tavern either, although for the first time in years there appeared to be some cleaning going on. Not that it mattered much by now anyways since the layers of grime could never be removed by now. In fact there wasn't to much to find interesting or pleasant in the tavern except for the mind numbing drinks they served in large quantities. By this time James was fully awake and began to get dressed for his morning run. He did not enjoy the company of people and so was glad to find a time when he could run without having to meet very many people. He ran several miles around town trying to remember what had been different about the night before, but at the same time he remembered a familiar feeling, one that he had tried to bury a long time ago. Once James got back to his room he unlocked the door and headed two rooms over, straight to the shower. There was nothing fancy in his apartment, just a few pictures hanging from the walls, a tv (which by now had lost most of its appeal), a table in the kitchen, and a few other pieces of furniture. James stepped into the hot shower glad to feel the pulsating heat from the shower head on his back and stepped out fully awake and refreshed. He went to the kitchen and fixed himself breakfast, but he didn't feel like cooking so he made cereal. Then it hit him. He remembered what had been so strange and yet so familiar the night before. He remembered seeing her...

Trust and Love

There's no such thing as a person you can trust. Human nature dictates that we are completely selfish creatures. If someone wants to no more about you, ultimately they must have a hidden agenda. Whether it be for the benefit of their own knowledge about you or so they can use it against you, either as blackmail or so they can spin their own thoughts to their friends. If you want to be able to trust someone, you can only rely on yourself. Opening up to someone else only shows a sign of weakness to that person and they will use that against you. It is not worth the risk of being betrayed by someone you thought you could trust, only to find out that they had completely ignored the importance and truth of what you had told them. Those who speak of the concept of love and how you must trust those who you love, don't truly understand the nature of love. There is no truth to the saying it is better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all. To speak thusly, you show yourself to be incompetent, and not capable of understanding what it truly means to be able to love someone. Your only options are to harden yourself against the world or to continuously fall to those who you thought you could trust.