Journal of a Tortured

SOUL

Written By: Kain

Episode 1:  Innocence Torn from the Young

It is the year New Beginning 35.  Thirty-five years ago, the world began to see horrible consequences of natural resources being depleted when the mighty leader of humanity, the Dominion, died from a lack of these resources.  The general in her army came in front of the people and announced her death.  With no body ever given an autopsy or even seen, her death is still mysterious.  With the resources nearly gone, the world is afflicted with chaos and madness.  People's bodies litter the streets.  What is left of the mighty army left by the Dominion has become a group of ravenous vultures.  They steal what they want and kill whomever tries to stop them.  A single group has set out to stop them.  Led by a man named Guerin, the group has succeeded in halting many attacks from the renegades.  In the last attack, Guerin's men managed to fight off the renegades, but a family was killed.  Guerin tried to find out the surviving boy's name, but the fifteen year-old could not be found.

The trees seem so blurred when you run past them, as the boy can see.  Though he has been in this forest many times, he has never run through them in such a hurried fashion.  He runs without fully knowing what he is running from.  His black hair flies in the wind.  Tears fill his clear, blue eyes.  He can barely make out the path that he is running on.  He doesn't see the root of the tree.  He hits the ground with such a force that the wind is knocked out of him.  He scurries back to his feet, not even feeling the pain.  A deeper pain, a deeper realization, is too strong to feel any physical pain.  His family is gone.  All he can do is think to himself, what would have happened if I had been there?  Could I have stopped them from killing my family?  If he had been there, he would have died too, but he cannot see that now.  He will hold the guilt of his family's death for ages to come.

"Ha ha, we got some loot from that place, now, didn't we?"

"We also got to put some fear in a family before we killed them."  Renegade soldiers sitting together talking about their latest theft attempt, always a gruesome scene.  They gallantly talk of what they would have done to the family if the Resistance didn't show up. 

"Shut up all of you!"  The renegade leader, Sasha, walks in.  She turns to all of the soldiers, disgusted.  "We do not attack to kill families or to torture children.  We do it to survive."

"Aw, can't we have some fun anyway?"

"Fun?!  Do you realize that the family you killed back there had a son?  That the son wasn't there?  Do you think for one second that killing people won't just make others support the Resistance even more?"  The soldier went silent.  He hadn't thought of that.  Deep down Sasha feels so sorry for the boy that had to watch his family's bodies burn from a hundred feet away.  She is sorry that he had to watch the culprits make a clean getaway without having any consequences.  She hopes to God that she and her soldiers didn't destroy the boy's innocence.  No, she knows that they had.  It was too gruesome a site for anyone to stay pure.  "Sooner or later, we will have to deal with this boy.  I hope we can convince him that we aren't all that bad.  I have a bad feeling about this."

Three months pass.  A family works in the family garden.  A boy walks along the road, nearby.  He looks about fifteen.  He scans the fields with focused, clear, blue eyes.  He sees a little girl, a twelve year-old sitting on the fence, peeling onions.  He walks up to the girl.  "Who lives here?  What's the family's name?"

"Bo Sharelton lives here.  I'm his daughter."

"Hello, may I speak with your father for a moment?"

"Fine.  Daddy!  A guy's here to see you!"  Mr. Sharelton comes over.  He looks the boy over.  He sizes him up.  The boy sizes Bo up as well.  "What do you want, boy?"

"I wish to speak with you," He looks at the girl, "In private."

"Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of Jade."

Frustrated, the boy commences: "I want to know if you need any help working these fields.  I'm a hired hand.  I'm looking for a job and..."

"I'm not looking for help.  I don't have any money to pay you."

"I don't want money.  I want a meal a day and free room and board.  I will only be here for as long as needed.  When the harvest is over I'll be on my way."

The farmer thought this over.  "Okay, if it's that cheap then I guess we could use a hand for a month."  With that, Bo tells Jade to show the boy where to go.  Jade shows the boy all of the rooms and where he'd be staying.  "What's your name?"

The boy turns around, annoyed by her constant need to talk.  "I call myself Damien."

"That's a funny name."  The girl is more annoying to talk to then to argue with.  After a barrage of questions, the girl finally dismisses herself to go tell her dad that Damien is settled.  Damien sits down on the bed.  It is too soft for Damien's taste.  He pulls a picture from his bag.  The dust from the farmlands covers him and his bag.  He wipes the dust from the picture, revealing five people.  A man with dark hair, a goatee, and blue eyes stands with his arm around a woman with blonde hair, green eyes, and a wide smile.  In front of the parents, stand three children.  A girl, looking to be around eight years-old, with brown hair and green eyes looks up at her father.  A boy, looking to be about eleven, stands there with a playful smile.  His blue eyes looking straight at the camera and his black hair finely combed, he stands at attention.  Another boy stands in front of the girl.  He has blonde hair, green eyes, and looks to be three years of age.  He looks, not at the camera or anyone in the family, but at a box of toys behind the cameraman.  Damien remembers the day that this picture was taken.  He could barely remember the faces of his family without looking at this picture.  He misses them.  He didn't even get to say goodbye.

Bo sees Damien walk out of the house.  Damien walks straight up to him.  The boy doesn't have a lot of fear, Bo thinks to himself.  That could come in handy.  "Tell me where to start now, I don't have all day."

"You start by shuckin' corn."  Damien nods and walks off to the cornfield.  Bo goes back to work but is unable to get Damien's courage out of his mind.  He doesn't know how a boy of his age could possibly be so fearless.  He doesn't know of the tragedy of three months ago.  A nightmare to Damien.

Sasha sits by her desk.  She has been working for hours on end to find a suitable target.  The soldiers are growing weaker.  The Resistance has been able to halt their attacks far too frequently.  She needs a sure fire target that would get her soldiers fed and would allow them to go into hiding.  She came across a farmhouse on the edge town.  "This should make a suitable target.  At least we can get food."  Two soldiers have been monitoring the farmhouse for two days.  The house has plenty of corn, rice, wheat, cattle, and sheep.  Many photographs were taken of the fields, the livestock, and the people working the land.  She looks over the pictures carefully.  She comes to a few with a note on it.  <<The family has a hired hand that is working the land with them.  This is the boy>>.  She looks over the pictures.  One by one, she checks every detail.  She couldn't shake the feeling of déjà vu.  "This boy looks incredibly familiar.  I wonder if he was one of those kids in the parade two weeks ago."  Suddenly, it hits her.  A flashback to the slaughter of a family by her men brings back the emotion.  The boy, held back by the Resistance, staring straight into her.  He never took his eyes off her.  Normally, she would blush at this, but the boy looked so cold and spiteful.  She shivers at the remembrance of it.  How many times would we have to kill those close to that boy?  She keeps muttering this question to herself for hours.  There was no helping it.  The soldiers have to survive.  The boy is just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  No matter how she tries to justify it, it still feels wrong, horribly wrong.  She decides to do some research on the boy.  It may help her save him from becoming like her soldiers.

After a long day of work, Damien finds himself completely covered in dirt.  He figures it may be time to wash away the day with a cold shower.  He steps into the bathroom.  The linoleum floor is yellow with mildew and age.  The sink, rusted and dripping, looked as if Jade had tried to fix it.  He looks in at the shower stall.  A white tub and silver trim cover the bottom of the shower stall.  Bo Sharelton's wife usually cleans it three to four times a day.  There wasn't even a sign of dirt or mildew anywhere.  Unfortunately for her, Damien thinks to himself, there really is no way to keep this clean.  With that, Damien takes off his clothes and slips into the shower stall.

Bo had to admit it.  The boy is an excellent worker.  He swings the scythe with expert precision.  Not to mention the fact that he works fourteen hours a day.  Bo even found his son, Tim, admiring Damien like a boy admires a big brother.  It's a shame that he will be leaving in just two weeks.  He didn't want to see his son sad at losing a friend, though Damien really isn't a friend.  He barley talks with anyone in the family.  He thoroughly avoids everyone when the workday stops.  He eats in his room, and never comes out until the workday begins again.  Jade comes waltzing into the room.  "Hi, daddy!  Can I go see Damien?  I want him to teach me to do some of the things that he does in the fields.  Can I, daddy?"

"Oh fine.  Don't bother him, though.  That boy is unstable."

"Okay, daddy."  Jade leaves to seek out Damien.

Damien sits in his room, fresh out of the shower.  No lights are on.  Silence thunders through the room.  Damien sits there, eyes closed, thinking.  He thinks of the past.  The tragedy.  The instant that sealed most of humanity's fate.  Thirty-four years ago, the Dominion led her army to victory only to be killed in the coming tragedy.  Twenty years later, Damien is born.  Twelve years after Damien's birth, the tragedy hit its climax, the single point where millions of people died.  So many tried to save themselves in the shelters.  The political pigs only open them to the wealthy.  They put all those people out to die.  We have to do something, Damien thought.  We can't just let them die.

Damien thinks back to the day that he and his father tried to get their family into a shelter.  They wouldn't let them in.  He begged and pleaded with them.  No one would tell them that they could go in.  They just snickered in the distance, pointed, and gave quick disgusted looks at him and his father.  For the supposed "top of society", they were worthless to Damien.  He wanted to see the shelters collapse on all those people.  On the walk home, Damien's father gave him a lecture on something, but Damien couldn't remember what his father and he talked about.  He couldn't even recall his father's name.  His memory has been shot since, as a boy, a car hit him.  He wanted so badly to remember.  He knew he never would.

Damien hears a sudden creaking as a beam of light enters the room.  He looks back and sees Jade peak her head in.  She flicks on the lights.  "Why do you just sit here in the dark?  It makes no sense."  Damien just continues to stare at her.  She walks over to him and places her hand on his shoulder.

"Remove your hand before you lose it."  She quickly takes it off.  She looks casually around the room before bringing her gaze at Damien's photo.  "Is this your family?"  Damien looks coldly at her.  She doesn't notice.  "Why would your family let you go out into the world at such a young...?" She finally catches Damien's stare.  "I see."

Damien wants her to go away, but she won't.  Damien stands up, straightens his pants, and walks over to the photo.  He puts it down face first.  He looks once more at Jade, and then lies down on his bed.  She sits down at his side and puts her hand softly on his chest.  His eyes flash open.  She asks him quietly, "Will you show me some of the things you do in the fields?"  Damien looks at her and slowly nods.  She smiles.  Damien closes his eyes and rolls over.  Jade doesn't go away.  Damien tries to ignore her but when she lies down next to him, it gets difficult.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm insuring that I wake up when you do so that you will keep your promise to show me some moves."  Damien rolls his eyes, calmly knocks her off the bed, and goes to sleep.  When he wakes up, Damien notices that Jade just got back on the bed.  He quietly gets up and gets dressed.  He walks out of the room and goes to work in the hayfield.  Two hours later, Jade runs up to him as he is laying out hay.  Her hair is full of static and her shirt is hanging off her shoulder.  She obviously just woke up.  "You let me sleep in!  You said you would show me your moves!"

"And I will, now go away and let me work.  Ask your dad when is a good time for me to do that."  She storms off, red-faced and angry.  Damien laughs to himself and goes back to laying down hay for the animals to sleep on.  He hears an intense scream.  He throws down his pitchfork and races to where he heard Jade scream.  He thinks to himself, she probably saw a spider.  He catches up with her and freezes in his tracks.  Three soldiers are giving a beat-down to Bo.  More are ransacking the house.  Damien lunges at one of the soldiers, knocking him down into the dust.  He starts to pound into the soldier when the butt of a gun slams into his temple.  Everything goes black.

When Damien comes to, he finds Jade leaning over her father crying.  Bo is dead, lying in a pool of his own blood.  The house has burned down to ashes.  The fields are barren, the livestock gone.  Damien knows who did this.  The renegades are really pissing him off.  He walks over to Jade.  "Are the others...?"

"Yes, they were burned with the house."  Jade can't keep herself from crying.  "Don't you feel anything?  I know these people were the same ones who killed your family!  I heard them say it!  And yet you don't even..." Damien's eyes shoot toward her.  Fear strikes her heart.

"They said they knew me?"  Jade starts stumbling over her words.  Damien ignores her staggering speech.  He aches all over, especially where the dried blood on his face originated.  He focuses on the renegades.  He wants to make them feel the horror that they caused everyone else.  A thought suddenly pops into his head.  "Why are we still alive?"  He turns to Jade.  "Why didn't they kill us?"

She thinks for a moment.  "Some woman came to the soldiers.  She told them that they had done enough to you and that enough had been done to me as well."  She narrows her eyes.  "Do you know her?"

"No, or at least I don't think so.  I saw her when the renegades killed my family in almost exactly the same fashion.  So, she kept them from killing us.  Maybe one of the renegades has a conscience."  Jade looks at him ever so closely.  She looks around at the farmland.  "I guess I go with you now."  Damien eyes widen.

"What do you mean?"

"My family is gone and you are the only person that I know.  Besides, I'm twelve.  I need someone to be with me.  I can't stay by myself."  She looks at Damien, begging him.

"Alright, you can come with me.  I want you to know that I have no intention of going to work again for a while.  I wish only to find the renegades."  She nods.  They both walk away from the smoldering house and toward their destiny.  Damien can't help but feel the pain that he will never again know his family.  The last remembrance of his family was just burned with the house.  He hates the renegades.  He wants nothing more than to destroy them.  He won't let Jade get caught up in this.  He owes that to Bo, if nothing else.

Sasha looks around the renegades' new hiding place.  She hates this game of Hide-and-Seek that they are playing with the resistance.  She wants to bring the boy back with them, but she feels that would make a conflict of interest.  She wants to meet the boy so badly.  She wants to make sure that he is not scarred beyond redemption.  Now, she has a little girl that needs redemption as well.  She doesn't know what to do.  She will keep as close to the boy as possible.  Maybe he could become to think of her as a big sister or a guardian angel.  She hopes that her act of good faith would make him realize that she is not like her soldiers.  She doesn't want a boy that is capable of such hate to be her enemy.  She still has a bad feeling about this.

Dusk is falling quickly.  Damien and Jade have come to a little motel to spend the night at.  When registering for a room, the keeper asks Damien his name.  Damien looks at him a moment.  "My name is...Tom."  Jade looks up at him sharply with a questioning look in her eyes.

Upon entering the room, Jade twirls around and asked, "Is Tom your real name?"

"Hell no, I just gave him a fake name."

"So you just changed it on the spot?"

"Why not?"

"Okay, so my new name is Kylie."

"Whatever, if that's what you want to be called.  You just keep calling me Damien.  Oh, and you get to sleep on the floor, seeing how there is only one bed."

"Why do I get the floor?"

"Because you're twelve and I'm not sleeping on the floor."

"We'll share the bed."

"No, you're twelve."  Jade looks at him furiously.  "I'm not asking you to sleep with me.  I'm asking you to share the bed."

Damien sighs and laughs a little.  Jade starts to feel easier.  He's going to share the bed with me, she thought.  He isn't as uncaring as I thought.  Damien throws a pillow and a cover onto the floor.  "Bastard!"

"Good night to you, too."

To Be Continued...

Next Time on Journal of a Tortured Soul:

With Damien and Kylie now on the hunt for the renegades responsible for their families' murder, they try to buy some supplies from a boy in the junkyard.  He's a dastardly one, that boy.  What's this?  A new boy tries to join up with Damien and Kylie?  Let's check this one out!