No One Dies a Virgin

Chapter One: Chaos

Sometimes life comes at you so quick that you don't know where to turn. Sometimes life fucks you over so bad that you don't know how to speak. Sometimes life messes with your head until you do things you never thought you would do, never dreamed you could think of. Sometimes life and love mix and it gets messier than a drunk mall rat on pay day. Sometimes love trumps life and everything it's done to you and just makes it better...sometimes it makes it worse than ever.

Jason Dean is one of the victims of circumstance that you don't hear about on the radio on your way to school. One of the people that everyone knows will go out like a candle in the wind, but wants to go out like a bomb over Afghanistan. He was the one fighting a crazy war with himself, the war that had a made up cause and a made up outcome. Really, both sides lose and the kid dies. It's basic math-You set of a bomb inside yourself and you're blown out, not up.

Jason Dean was the kid everyone knew had secrets, he was the one that cried himself to sleep every night only to wake up and wreak havoc on anything too close to him. He was the kid that learned to punch before they learned to hug, the kid that never got to sit at lunch or go to recess because they had nothing to eat and no one to play with. He was the kid that left home to stop getting knocked around only to find that kids are cruel and school fucks you worse than your dad ever could.

Jason Dean was the silent survivor that would one day simply not survive. Someday he would give up his personal fight with the world and everyone in it to simply become a statistic on Fox News and people talked about the state of the teenage psyche today. He wouldn't stand out from the crowd of other bodies on the battlefield of life and death. His name wouldn't be remembered after the obituary. His struggles would never be spoken off. No one would ever look for a cause past the bullet wound through his temple-He would fade away into the distance as the seasons changed until there was nothing but a whole blanket of snow over his prostrate body, praying to God to find a place for him among the angels in Heaven. Praying for acceptance in a new world order.

Jason Dean was the accident of modern life, the car whose brakes wear out on the edge of the cliff. Jason Dean was the rebel without a cause to speak of, and without someplace he could hide from his dreams. Sometimes dreams come to life, and sometimes they eat you out...mostly they scare you so you cannot sleep. When you cannot sleep you die. Simple as that. Simple as dreams>reality.

Simple as one (pull), two (the), three (trigger).

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It was the middle of the night when Buddy Dean knocked on his son's motel room door, demanding that the 15 year old wake up immediately and put his damn clothes on.

"We're getting out of town now!" Shouted the older man, no doubt waking half the motel complex and making his way into the other halfs dreams as some sort of screaming oger or some equally horrifying monster. Buddy Dean was a monster, of sorts. He was the monster that checked for the monster under the bed but didn't tell you about the one in the closet. He was the monster that held you hand only to break your fingers later. He was the monster that society calls 'dad', and everyone else calls 'criminal'.

Jason Dean was one of the 50% woken by his father's call, and was soon tiredly grabbing all his possessions scattered about the mildew ridden room and opening the door, ready for a move at a moments notice from previous years of practice and a plethora of similar situations. He was already dressed, his hair mussed from sleep and his eyes only half open. He came when called, little more than a dog in the monster's cave. He was nothing but a slave to circumstance.

Now, only think if things had been different for Jason. What if the circumstances he was subject to were different? What if the man taking his bag and throwing it into the back of a car hadn't been the one his mother had chosen to procreate with in a moment of carelessness? What if that same mother hadn't herself broken back in Texas, a little Jason Dean waving at her from the sidewalk across from a rigged library and then been driven away by the monster as the library burned, taking the waving lady with it. That was the one time Jason Dean had seen his father cry for something he had done. What if those tears had meant something? Would have changed the future for his son? Probably not. Salt water never saved a man from dying of thirst before, and probably won't for a long time yet.

"Where are we going?" Jason asked, his voice thick with sleep and his movements slow as he tried to clasp the seat belt over his waist, only managing to nick his finger for his effort. Blood quickly rose from the cut, the site causing Jason to smile-Blood didn't lie. Blood was beautiful.

Buddy Dean reached across his seat to buckle his son in, frowning as he saw the crimson syrupy liquid Jason was staring too intently at, making note to buy bandaids at the next 24/7 7/11 they stopped at. Sometimes Buddy wondered if he had done the right thing by his son, but as quickly as the thought came it ran away again, leaving nothing more than a nagging feeling of forgetfulness in Buddy Dean's head. Life had left it's mark on him, and it was only too obvious.

"We're going to Sherwood, Ohio," Buddy Dean replied, starting the car and speeding out of the motel parking lot, leaving nothing behind but a mind wrapper on his bed and a few whispered echoes of a plan to blow up congress, which he knew would come to nothing.

'Sherwood...' thought Jason, rolling the thought around in his tired brain. Where had he heard that name before? It made him think of his childhood, of times when he would stay up late in the back of their camper van reading fairy stories and war accounts with equal gusto..one name struck a bell-Robin Hood, the rogue who stole from the rich to give to the poor; A sin and a bible verse in one.

It was a concept that Jason was all too familiar with-Kill the strong so the weak have a chance. After all, it's only war.

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It was Summer when they arrived in Sherwood, Ohio. School had just let out and there were kids Jason's age milling around everywhere, not sure what to do with the freedom they fought for all year long. Jason Dean stayed inside, exercising his right to be different.

He stayed inside and thought about things. Things that shouldn't be thought about when you are sad and all alone, things that no one his age should even know how to visualize. He sat in his new room thinking his old thoughts; What if...can I? What's wrong with me...Why am I different than the rest?

His father had always told him that to be different was a gift. it was a sign that you were the new being that would move in when chaos took the last being that just wasn't good enough to keep up in the genetic race for power. After all, Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, and what came of that?

Jason couldn't help but feel that his difference wasn't a social advantage though, and it was simply an unfortunate cross he happened to bare. He never asked to be special, to have a brain that could think of a hundred and one ways to kill someone before he thought to ask their name. That wasn't a difference that was worth much in the long run-What would be the point of surviving if you survived alone?

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