The Challenge:
In
3000 words or less, write about a woman or man that has been falsely
imprisoned for half of their life. What do they do when they are finally
proven innocent and set free?
The Result:
Jack
~ A Short Story by David
Revilla
“Free?” The
word tasted bitter in my mouth, like a candy that had lost its sweet taste.
The judge
looked at me, aged brow furrowed into many folds. “Did I stutter?” His
condescending voice holds within it a tinge of venom. One would think he
despised the idea of letting me go. I was, after all, Jack. “Yes, you are free
to go.”
The sound of
the gavel was deafening, like the judge had a personal vendetta against the
podium on which he rapped. I would have flinched were I not so flabbergasted.
Truth be told, I expected to spend the rest of my life in prison. Men like me
did not go free. Then again, there are no men like me. I am no mere man.
I am Jack.
I felt the
strong hands of my guard grab me from behind. He firmly led me off from where I
had been sentenced for the crime of murder. It seemed so long ago then, like I
had just woken up from living someone else’s memory, my eyes fluttering open as
I tried to discern my whereabouts.
The guard led
me down the vacant aisles, out of the courtroom, and into the hall where two
more of his fellows, gruff, hard-looking men with dark eyes, muttered harsh
words at my passing. I didn’t pay them any mind. I was free. One would think
that would be a cause for joy and elation.
But not for me.
Do not
misunderstand, I don’t to go back to prison. Prison was where the soul went to
die. My soul was still intact, thank God, but…no. God and I have not spoken in
a long time. I don’t know who I should thank for my newfound freedom or even if
I should be thankful at all. I have spent the last 118 years in prison, my
jailers doing everything humanely possible to bury me as deep as the ancient
soil of England would allow; deeper than the cairns of old Celtic kings, to the
very rooftop of hell if it were at all possible.
118 years. It
might seem ludicrous to you. But as I said, I am no mere man. I am Jack.
To humanely
incarcerate an inhuman man is no easy feat. Scotland Yard tried to bury my
past, my legacy, along with me. As I was led out of the house of justice, my
footfalls as stoic as the pale features of my face, I thought back to that
night more than a century ago when my enemies, with connections in high places,
tried to have me put away forever.
Now that may
seem like a long time to you, but as I am no man, I could have spent ten times
ten that amount in jail and not aged a day. I am what you would call an
immortal, blessed, and cursed, with eternal youth. Atropos herself cannot have
me, though I have sent many an undead into her chilly embrace.
Undead? Ludicrous,
you say? Hardly.
The guard released
me and just like that I was free to go. I stepped through the double doors of
the palace of justice and squinted in the afternoon sun. My eyes watered, a
sting I had not felt in a very long time. I welcomed it. I embraced it. Though
my sudden release had me considering all manner of paranoia-induced plotting at
the hands of my enemies, I had come to realize one very apparent truth at that
moment: they’d let me out into the sun.
The
sun.
They didn’t
win, I thought as my eyes began to clear. The undead hated the sun. In my
incarceration, my one solace was in the belief that my actions had somehow
stemmed the tide of evil from overtaking my beloved London, my city. In
countless sleepless hours in the dark, the worst part was the fear of not
knowing what had happened. Now that I am free and seeing my home for the first
time in decades, I can breathe a sigh of relief the likes of which I didn’t
know my lungs possessed.
It was all
still here. We had won.
“Jack.” A voice
from the past greeted me upon my return to the world of the living. I almost
didn’t recognize him. While we immortal hunters may not age, we must adapt with
the times. After more than a hundred years of being left out of the loop, I
knew that clothing attire had undergone many changes while I was locked away.
But this…
“Abe?” I asked
aghast. The portly fellow whom I had shared many a close call with looked no
worse for the wear, unless one counted the cleanly-shaven head, thin mustache,
and what I assumed to be some sort of formal suit, as unfortunate. Which I did.
“Is that you?”
Abe greeted me
with a hug. Never one for formality, at least that much about old Abraham Van
Helsing remained the same. I gasped as he let me go. “You look…different.”
“And you,” he
began with a laugh, “look exactly the same.” He pinched his rubbery nose.
“Could do with a shower.”
Abe put his arm
around me and led me towards a strange four-wheeled vehicle that was oddly
close to the ground. I recall seeing something of the like, before I was
imprisoned of course, and my mind raced through a mental catalog of things long
past. “Is that a...automobile?”
“We’ve a great
deal of catching up to do,” Abe said, and wasted no time in escorting me to the
vehicle. As we approached, I caught site of a man dressed in black who opened
the door for us. His face was completely covered, his black cap pulled tight
over his pale face.
“Abe?” I began
as the man opened the back door to allow us inside. “Abe!” I said with more
urgency, my heart suddenly racing.
“It’s alright,
Jack.” He waved the chauffer off as he entered the car behind me. The chauffer
shut the door behind us and moved about, presumably, to start the vehicle. The
cabin we had entered was spacious, enough for half a dozen people to sit around
in a semi-circle comfortably and with ample legroom. Ahead I spotted the undead
chauffer enter the driver side and start the automobile, which rumbled like a
waking lion.
Glancing at my
old friend, I gasped my next statement. “That chauffer is undead.”
“Quite right,” Abe
agreed. Reaching into his pocket, the man pulled out—not a pipe, as he was well
known for smoking, but a large cigarette. An earthy scent filled the cabin.
“Smoke sir?”
The chauffer asked in an inquisitor voice.
“Yes, Ezekiel.
Excuse me.” Reaching over, Abe pushed a button beside his chair and a thin
black screen arose between us and the chauffer, cutting him off from sight.
“There we are.” Abe leaned back as he looked at me. “Union types get all up in
arms if we don’t respect our employees.”
“Employees?” I
bucked in my seat even though the vehicle felt as if it were moving on smooth
ice. “You mean they serve us now?” Had our victory been that complete? No, I
berated myself. My order had dedicated itself to eradicating the undead
centuries ago. Ours was a holy struggle that began after the fall of Christ. We
would never parlay with the dead.
Abe’s laugh was
irritating, the jowls of his cheeks bobbing. “Things have changed since you’ve
been away, Jack. We don’t fight them anymore.”
“We don’t?” I
would have stood up were the ceiling not so low.
“No.” Abe took
another puff of his cigarette. “We work with them. Sometimes for them.” He chuckled at my obvious surprise.
“Don’t look at me that way, Jackie. You had to have known things wouldn’t be
the same once you got out.”
“I didn’t
expect to ever get out, Abe. Speaking of which,” I settled down somewhat,
though my eyes kept glancing to the black screen. “How did you manage to get me
out of there? I thought Scotland Yard had enough of a false case against me to
put me away until Judgment Day.”
“They did. They
did quite a good of framing you.”
“Framing me?
How can I be framed for killing what’s already dead?” I still couldn’t believe
it. “I thought you had connections in Parliament. I rotted in that prison for
more than a century. What have you been up to all this time?”
“A lot.” Abe
glanced out the window. “Take a look out there, Jack. London’s not what is used
to be. Damned liberals control everything now and everyone has rights as far as
the new administration is concerned.”
“Everyone?”
“Everyone.” He
glanced at me. “The undead walk freely among us.”
“Bollocks!” I
cried. “They would devour us all!”
“Not so. A few years
after your incarceration, our side met with theirs, made a hodgepodge of
promises to one another and just like that, instant treaty. We now coexist
together in racial harmony.”
I could not
believe it. “And you, Abe?”
“I’m no Brutus,
Jackie. I was just as shocked as you when I heard our moms and pops upstairs
decided to play nice with the dead-heads. Just a moment,” he pushed the button
that lowered the screen. “Oh Ezekiel, take the scenic route. Jack and I have a
lot to talk about.”
“Yes sir,” the
undead said back before the screen went up again.
“I wasn’t the
only one, mind you. Rayne and Blake. Mike and Dee. We were all up in arms at
first. But we had to commit else face expulsion from the order. Sen did that.”
His face turned dour. “Haven’t heard from her since she stormed out back in
Brussels. Word is she’s gone rogue somewhere in Bangkok. There’s a warrant for
her arrest as…”
“We hunt our
own now?”
“We don’t hunt
anyone anymore,” Abe spoke up. “Take a look at me, Jackie. Do I look like I
stroll through sewers and aqueducts late at night anymore?”
“I daresay
you’ve gone turncoat, Abraham.”
“Now Jack. I
know you’re frustrated, mad even, but you don’t know what it’s been like out
here.”
“Out here?” I
almost exploded. “Out here! Do you have any idea what I’ve been through? What
I’ve been forced to endure?” I could feel my hands clenching as if they’d meant
to pummel ol’ Abe into a fat pulp. Honestly, the idea did sound appealing at
the moment. “That year, 1888, I was at the forefront of an effort to stop an
invasion! I was to hunt down those undead agents who were posing as
prostitutes. They were preying on high-ranking government officials who frequented
the Whitechapel district.”
I leered at Abe.
“We knew the undead would use the media to paint me as a murderer. A murderer, Abe. I saved King and Country
and God only knows how many people from an influx of undead who would have
placed their own people in Parliament and Buckingham Palace itself after the
politicians were dealt with, turning England into the Eighth Circle of Hell.”
I almost
collapsed against my seat. Pinching my nose, for I could not comprehend what
was happening around me, I spoke through troubled breath. “I knew there would
be repercussions for my actions, that the undead would do everything in their
power to stop me. That was where you were supposed to come in, Abraham.” I eyed
him. “When they captured me, I expected to be tortured for information, but
instead I was simply ‘put away’ in some dark hole while you talked to them, is
that what you’re telling me?”
“You would have
broken eventually, Jack. We had to come clean else the order might not have
survived the backlash.”
“So you just
all decided to leave me there to rot,” I demanded rather than asked.
“Hardly. We spent
the better part of the last century doing everything we could to get you out. A
few of the lads and lassies wanted to mount a rescue mission, but by then we
were in too deep with the negotiations and any hostility on the part of either
side would have plunged England into civil war.”
“It is our duty
to fight the undead.”
“It was our duty, Jack. We don’t work like
that anymore.”
My saliva
tasted like poison, so betrayed I felt. Out the window I could see the streets
of London filled with people. A few of them were wearing bizarre outfits. At
first I considered it was just the changing of the times, but then I began to
wonder if those individuals were in fact hiding something from the general
populace, something they didn’t want known. How many of those pedestrians, I
wondered, were the enemy in disguise?
“It wasn’t
easy, Jack. Believe me.”
“I stopped
believing in things while I was picking cockroaches off my bare feet.” I turned
to him, hurt in my eyes. “All this time, the only thing holding me together was
the thought of you, Blake, and the others fighting the good fight. I never lost
hope that we would win.”
“And we did
win. In a sense.”
“Peace with the
undead is no victory.”
“It’s no
defeat, either,” he countered. “They didn’t wipe us out, Jackie. Humans still
control England and Europe, for the most part.”
I questioned
him with my eyes.
“The French,
Jackie. Always the French.” He chuckled.
I was in no
laughing mood.
Abe sighed.
“Listen, Jack,”
“What’s
happened to you, Abe? What happened to us? To the good fight?”
“The only good
fight, Jackie, is the one where we get our people home alive. Not everyone is
like us, if you don’t recall. Most of our people are just brave, hard-working
men and women who have families to look after. When they die, who looks after
their children?” He took another puff of smoke. “The armistice brokered a
much-needed peace, one that saw many of our people grow old and live long,
happy lives.”
“And what about
us?” I said.
“As I said, we
weren’t pleased at first, but with time we learned to accept the reality of the
situation. We changed. They changed, Jackie.”
I glared at the
black screen.
“They’re not
all bad, mind you.”
I turned on
him. “How many friends did we lose?”
“That was
then.” The car pulled to a stop. “This is now.”
I glanced out
the window. “Where are we?” We’d stopped in front of an old building. Even
though the years had updated certain features, I recognized the neighborhood
almost immediately. “This is Dorset Street.”
“Indeed it is,”
Abe said as he waited for the dead-head chauffer to come around and open the
door. I stayed in for a few seconds after he left, unsure of what was going on.
“Come now, Jackie. Don’t be shy. These are your old haunting grounds.”
He was right.
Mary Jane Kelly was one of the undead lady-assassins I had slain back in 1888.
She had been very good at enticing powerful men with her childish innocence and
perk lips. I put an end to her dark exhibitions by removing her heart while in
her quarters. Of course, her allies arrived on the scene and mutilated her
body, which only served to sway further public opinion against me.
“What are we
doing here?” I asked Abe.
“To get you
some help, old boy.”
“Help?” I
glanced up at the building. It was unmarked with a white portico and a flight
of stairs leading up to a set of double-doors. “I don’t understand.”
“Exactly the
point. You don’t understand because you refuse to accept things are no longer
the same.”
“What are
you…?”
He stopped me
short. “This is where former hunters like you get the help they need to
acclimate themselves to the current world. Think of it as an AA meeting…for
immortals.”
I still didn’t
understand.
Abe put his
hand on my shoulder. “Listen, Jackie-boy. I know things are not the same as
when you left them, but trust when I say that this place can help you. It
helped me and most of the others back when we felt that there could be no peace
between us.”
“Is that it,
then? Free me and expect me to acclimate myself to the times?”
“We all had to
do it, Jackie.”
“But not all of
us had to go to prison.”
He sighed. “I’m
sorry for that, Jack. I truly am. Believe me when I say I did everything
possible to get you out sooner.”
“But why here?
Why now?”
He stepped
away. “Things slip through the cracks all the time. With all that was going on,
is going on, it’s a wonder you were released as soon as now.”
I glared at
him.
“We’re
immortals, Jackie. What is time to us?”
“Something we
can never get back,” I said to him, and he walked back to his strange, long
automobile. “Trust me, this place will help you. You’ll change soon enough.”
And with that, he was gone, along with his dead-head chauffer.
I looked back
at the building, located in the same district as one of my most famous
“murders.” Jack the Ripper, they called me then. I was hated and feared by the
very people I had been trying to protect from the undead. I was captured,
imprisoned, and forgotten—slipped through the cracks. I’d devoted my life to
fighting monsters, and instead I was pegged as the monster, the one thing that
waited underneath your bed or in your closet.
Looking at the
building before me, an old construct in a new and ever-changing city, I felt
just as out of place, out of time. I only wanted to find someplace cold and
dark and hide there like the monster people thought I was.
End
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