Prologue

“What is ‘desire’?

I believe it is a person recognizing their own deficiency and striving to make a change, but desire can turn us into the most horrible of beasts, you know.

Your desire is ‘power’, isn’t it? Didn’t you know that power corrupts?

Will you lose yourself too?”

John and Marla Ransom were a rather interesting couple. Well, maybe interesting is a bit of an exaggeration, but they were good people who tried their best with their own story.

They had been married for two years having celebrated their anniversary just five days ago and were still blissfully in love with each other.

John was a nice enough guy but he wasn’t very good at talking to people. He was extremely shy which is rather funny to see with a guy who is a little over six-and-a-half feet tall and all muscle blush and stammer when trying to talk to a store clerk. He had red hair that he had darkened to a crimson with dye at his wife’s recommendation and had some of the clearest blue eyes you’ve ever seen. No beard, but not for lack of trying; just for lack of ability.

Marla was so opposite to John that it was almost a jaw-dropping miracle that she married him, at least until you saw how much she loved him. Marla had blonde hair that she streaked with a vivid and eye burning orange; the kind that makes you wish that it were illegal. She was also extremely short at a flat five-feet tall. She was also the most outgoing and loud person most people would have ever had the [dis]pleasure to meet. Marla was never afraid to express her opinions for an entire room to hear. Thank pizza she never got into politics. She could have easily started WWIII with her opinions.

John and Marla had spent a good chunk of their two years of marriage trying to conceive a child without much success, but finally-after a lot of patience-Marla was able to get pregnant.

The whole pregnancy wasn’t all too interesting; Marla let everyone in a three mile radius that “morning sickness sucks” and grumping about being unable to fit in her clothes anymore. John spent the pregnancy catering to Marla’s cravings and stammering apologies to everyone within a three mile radius.

Finally, after the the nine months-plus three days-had passed John and Marla were able to meet their infant son.

Unfortunately their son was in an ‘unexpected’ condition when he was born. His legs were malformed and it was clear something else was wrong, they just weren’t sure what, the doctors informed them that he appeared to have some issues with his spinal cord, and that he might not be able to properly move his arms.

It was quite the shock for them to discover that their son wouldn’t be able to live a normal life. The usually loud Marla was quiet for the duration of her visit in the hospital, and her husband sat by her side and held her hand as they both stared at their son.

Despite the shock they both felt, they never considered not loving him. He was their son and the loved him with all their hearts, Marla felt exceedingly sad that her beloved son wouldn’t be able to run around with the other kids, enjoy games with them, and enjoy a regular childhood. Every time she thought of someone looking down on her son in the future she was torn between crying for her son, and smacking the imaginary future person. Marla had always laughed at her own mother when she got over-protective, but she found out for the first time what it was like to want to protect her son with everything she had.

John had a similar, but very different response than Marla. He didn’t worry too much about the future-aside from his concern that his current job might not pay enough to support the three of them-his response didn’t show on his face, but he was blissfully happy. He had a son to love! Proof of his love of Marla, and someone for him to be proud of. What did it matter if his son couldn’t walk? It didn’t matter, he was perfect!

On their third day in the hospital John broke the silence built from solidarity.

“Can we name him James, after my father?”

Marla had instantly agreed, John’s father had been a noble man, the kind who made people proud to know him. She agreed because she hoped that her son-James, might inherit the same kind of nobility. John had suggested the name simply because he was proud of his late father, and he knew he’d be proud of his son.

Despite the difficulties, despite the shock, despite the opinions of others, Marla and John loved James, with all their hearts and showered him with love as he grew up. They had to make some adjustments to their home and their lives but to these two doting parents they didn’t care. They loved James for all he was.

It became apparent as James grew older that his other issue wasn’t quite as detrimental to his life as his legs. Unlike the doctor’s original concerns that he wouldn’t be able to move his arms he was able to move them, but he got tired very quickly, and he couldn’t put much strength into his arms or fingers.

Because of his difficulties James had to be homeschooled and didn’t often interact with kids other than his cousins. Aside from his almost zealous studying he spent most of his time in the house reading when his hands were too tired to play any more video games, they were pretty much all he could do. He didn’t feel the motivation to make a difference, he didn’t have an ambitious drive, he spent every day wishing that he could make his parents proud and hiding his growing hatred of his own weaknesses.

Overall he made the best of his situation and tried to be cheerful and show his parents that bringing him into their lives was the best choice they ever made, and hoping he succeeded in that goal.

Now fifteen-almost sixteen- James had yet another appointment coming up.

*********

James reached above his head and stretched as best he could trying to relieve some of the build up strain from his hour long gaming session. While the game he was playing wasn’t very stressful and didn’t require a feat of finger gymnastics it was still exhausting to him because of his body’s condition.

James got up and walked….kidding James has malformed legs, he can’t walk. Only in his most far away dreams would he get to walk. They looked like someone grabbed them right below the knee and twisted them out wards leaving his two feet pointed in opposite directions and the bone itself being horribly misshapen.

It was quite a nuisance to put on pants so he usually wore basketball shorts or something similarly loose. He had once considered wearing a kilt like his father’s ancestors but had discarded it. Plaid does not look good and skirts are way too breezy. Plus, there was the whole ‘wearing a skirt’ thing too. His cousins would never let him hear the end of it.

James had quite the vested interest in his few hobbies mainly reading, video games, and studying. Despite what his cousins said, he did consider studying a hobby. Essentially, James loved information.

Learning things was one of the few things James could do without his condition slowing him down, too much. So it was one of his biggest pleasures in life. He fell in love with learning about cultures, physiology, psychology, weapons, and a lot of other stuff.

But, even with all the things he worked to be able to do being unable to walk was still a serious source of frustration for him, and he couldn’t type for long periods of time either, which had become an even greater source of frustration as he’d started a blog for the game he’d been playing recently. His blog was mostly there for boss guides and hidden collectables, he was good at recognizing and memorizing boss patterns quickly, and he was also good at finding collectables. So long as his fingers and arms could take it he could even get guides out faster than other more ‘official’ blogs. It was one of the few things he was proud of.

After closed all the programs on his computer and shut it down he wheeled his chair over to the door. It was almost time for his hospital appointment and he had a burning desire in his gut for food. He was more or less ready for the appointment aside from doing his hair, changing his clothes, brushing his teeth….he wasn’t ready at all. Well, that could all wait for after he got some food.

James glanced over at the clock on the oven as he rolled into the kitchen it read 10:05am. He’d slept in that morning and had only gotten up at 6 instead of his usual 5:30.

He had been a habitually early riser for the past few years and found mornings to be very peaceful. Usually, after he got up he used the first half hour to meditate, it was apparently used by monks to great effect so he had started doing it as well. The biggest trick of meditating first thing in the morning was not falling asleep, which had happened several times when he first started.

James worked his shoulders again then rolled himself over to the fridge to get the milk and fixed himself up a ‘super filling’ bowl of cereal for breakfast.

As he finished up his bowl of milk soaked oats his mother walked into the room.

“Mornin’ James!” She called to him, 15 decibels louder than necessary.

“Good morning Mom.” He calmly responded back with a fond smile. His mother only had three modes: Loud, Very loud, and Mother Bear. So her being this loud was nothing unusual. That didn’t stop James from loving her with all his heart but it made it difficult to be with her in public, not that he was in public very often anyway. Her orange streaked hair was also defying gravity in an almost awe-inspiring way.

“How did you sleep sweetie?”

“I slept fine. Where’s Dad?”

“He was right behind me.” She responded glancing behind her. “Nope nobody there. Well, you know how your father is, he probably fell asleep on the stairs or something.”

John was not, is not, and will never be: a morning person. He worked as an night security guard at the local bank with a shift that went from 6pm-3am which guaranteed his hatred of mornings, and the fact that he considered 10 ‘early’ was still something that James found amusing.

James shot his Mother a quick grin after glancing behind her and said, “Speak of the sleepy devil and he will appear.”

True to James’ words his father performed a zombie shamble into the room. The most impressive part of John’s entrance was the fact that his eyes were still closed, and he appeared to be sleepwalking, not actually awake.

John cracked one of his eyes and glanced at James-his only greeting a grunt. Talking to John before he got his morning coffee was like trying to use your forehead to pound a nail into concrete: a pointless exercise that won’t affect the nail at all and cause you a severe headache. The same could be said about making his mother speak at a reasonably level, or at least one that wouldn’t make everyone in a mile go deaf.

John shambled over to the coffee maker and started getting it running. His eyes were still closed. John had practiced until he could go through almost all of his morning routine with his eyes closed. His dedication to sleep was as unwavering as his love for Marla, which is pretty impressive.

Marla looked over at James, grinned like a mischievous child, and spoke in a ‘quiet’ voice that John could hear like a foghorn, “Give him a few minutes, I think he has something to say to you.”

He nodded back, giving her his ascent. She went about getting her own breakfast, also cereal, she couldn’t cook more than that.

To explain it in an over complicated way: if James being a morning person was like being a Herbivore and John being a night person made him a Carnivore, that made Marla an Omnivore. She was able to stay up late and get up early. Both James and John questioned if she got any sleep at all, but she did prefer getting up with John. James didn’t do nights, he could stay up late if he wanted, but being alone with his thoughts was never pleasant; there was something about the night that brought about uneasy thoughts.

John shuffled back to the kitchen table with a mug of coffee in his hand and slid clumsily into his seat banging his knee during the sleepy process. He slowly started to sip at it wincing as it burned his tongue a little, rubbing his knee the whole time. James stared him down as he was doing this; trying to make him as uncomfortable as possible.

John finally cracked his eyes and glanced at James finally ready to give him more of an acknowledgement than a grunt, “How are you feeling? Did you sleep well?” John had a very deep voice that reverberated so strongly in is chest that if you didn’t pay attention you wouldn’t be able to understand what he said.

“I’m fine Dad; my legs are a little sore and my hands are still shaking, but I did sleep well.”

Marla cut in right after he said that her Mother Bear voice working in high gear, “You shouldn’t push your self so hard! I know your hands are shaking because you’ve played too long! You shouldn’t push yourself so hard!”

The two men unceremoniously removed their fingers from the ear closer to Marla and John nodded at James while ignoring her, “It’s good that you slept well. Your hospital visit today may let us know if there is anything else we can do to help your legs, and arms.”

“Oh, really?” James questioned skeptically, “How is this quack any different from the other quacks?”

John gave a rumbling chuckle in response, “Who knows? The only difference between this ‘quack’ and the other ‘quacks’ is how long the waiting list was, and how much the insurance company complained.”

Marla came up for air from her cereal long enough to hear what John said and gave him a strong TWHACK on his head with the wooden spoon she was using to eat.

“Don’t talk like that dear! This doctor will be able to help, you’ll see!”

James kept a blank expression on his face as he held back the urge to rub the top of his head in sympathy as John clutched the top of his head.

Marla went from calmly tearing apart her frosted diabetes to Mother Bear mode-her most dangerous form-in an instant. James deemed it better to not say anything; he would get hit too. Marla really did love them, but she often acted before she thought. It was especially bad when she was in ‘Mother Bear’ mode.

They finished up breakfast and made small talk with less dangerous subjects and then split up to get ready for the hospital visit.

James threw on a new shirt slathered on some deodorant then spend the next five minutes carefully wiggling out of his basketball shorts and putting another pair on.

Fortunately the house they lived live in had most of the important rooms on the first floor with the basement used mostly as an impromptu storage facility. So getting around as a wheelchair bound teenager wasn’t too difficult.

James had to rest after changing; his hands and arms trembling from exhaustion and strain of exertion. He was even breathing pretty hard, just from changing his clothes!

His temper flared up; he grit and bared his teeth from rage before forcibly controlling his expression and emotions. His condition had always frustrated him to no end but he couldn’t let his parents know so he always did the best he could. He loved them, but there were some things they were better off never knowing, and they tried so hard to make him happy that he felt he couldn’t ever show that being trapped in his own body enraged him.

After the shaking stopped he rolled himself into the bathroom and brushed his teeth. The sink was specially designed to handle wheel chairs being like a low table with a sink build into it. He brushed his teeth, then rolled out of the bathroom and into the family room to wait for his parents.

Shortly after John tromped into the room and began putting his boots on.

“Where’s Mom?”

“She’s dealing with her hair. She even called it a rat’s nest.”

“Really? It didn’t look that bad at breakfast.”

“Right, at breakfast. She tried to style it.”

“Oooooh. That explains it.”

James’ mother wasn’t a girly girl in the slightest she, like her husband, wore boots everywhere and loved her denim jacket to death. She almost always dressed entirely for comfort rarely even looking at a bottle of makeup. But, whenever they went to the hospital she did make an effort to look less like an angsty androgynous teenager. The fact that her hair’s natural state made it look like it belonged in an anime didn’t help anything.

Fifteen long minutes later she walked into the room; she had clearly given up on styling her hair. It looked like a twister had blown through her anime protagonist locks. Marla lived by one simple creed when it came to getting ready in the morning: “If you spend longer than five minutes in the bathroom you’re doing something wrong.”

“Let’s go!” She shouted.

They all loaded in the car after agreeing with her, wisely choosing not to comment on how long she took. Well, the process of ‘loading’ wasn’t very quick they had to carefully finagle James into the back seat then put his wheel chair in the trunk. He gritted his teeth and winced a few times during the process as his legs were jostled.

John got into the driver’s seat and his Marla plopped down into the passenger seat right in front of him. They slowly pulled out of the driveway and started the long drive to the hospital. The drive was supposed to take 3 hours, but with his father’s driving plus traffic it would probably take an extra hour.

James stared out the window the entire time to occupy himself -aside from the time that a car almost hit them as they passed though an intersection-, he didn’t have the issue a lot of other teenagers his age had of needing to be on his phone constantly, but that was probably helped by the fact that he didn’t have one. It didn’t bother him though, he didn’t really have anyone he wanted to talk to, and those he did he could reach through his computer.

Watching the world fly by wasn’t all that bad either.

When they reached the hospital James had to be finagled out of the car and into a wheelchair his father had grabbed from the hospital, since regulations required that visiting patients used the hospital’s provided wheelchair. There was a note taped to the back of the back rest: “WARNING: BRAKES BROKEN” In response to the sign John commented in a rolling rumble:

“If they are going to force us to use their equipment, they could at least make sure that it functions properly.”

Marla shot back in her ‘Very Loud’ mode, “Then why didn’t you grab another one?”

With an amused and fond smile on his face John responded, “Because this was the last one.”

“It’s fine,” James cut in, “It’s not like we need them, and we’re going to be late. We can’t afford to waste time here.”

John glanced at his watch and nodded in agreement. Marla jumped behind the wheelchair and started pushing James before John could.

James noted that the chair was designed for someone else to push, and there was no way for him to wheel himself without putting his hands directly on the wheels.

“Goody goody! Yet another prison.” He mumbled under his breath. Neither John, nor Marla noticed the cold expression on his face.

The interior of the hospital was very open, with a lofty ceiling that was a few stories above them, there was a grand staircase behind the fort desk that led to the upper floors and connected to the balconies and hallways that assumedly led to patient rooms and doctor offices. The staircase went in a straight shot from the first, to the third floor and had accesses on both sides so people could exit onto the second floor. Well, not that any of this mattered to him, he wouldn’t be able to go up the stairs after all and going down would be a painful experience; he’d be using the elevator bank hidden in the shadow of the overwhelming staircase.

James had to be the one to inform the guy behind the expensive-looking front desk who we was, and who he was there to see. John wouldn’t have been able to speak up enough for the secretary to hear him, and Marla wouldn’t have been able to speak quietly enough to avoid bothering the other patients. He’d gotten used to this kind of thing over the years. Personally, he thought he was a good balance between his two parent’s extremes.

They were told that their appointment was on the third floor of the hospital, in room 3-66.

Inwardly James was slightly amused at how the room number was only one 6 off from being 666. A slightly morbid amusement, but amusement none-the less.

*****

A good few hours of poking, prodding, invasive questions, stripping naked, a blood test, an x-ray, and a cat-scan later James was quite happy to finally be done. The doctor -despite the long waiting list they had been on to see him- had enough time to walk them over to the elevator bank right next to the ‘grand’ staircase.

James had his mother angle him in such a way that he had a good view of the rest of the front area and waited patiently as the quack assured them that the tests would show some positive results and help them determine what was needed to ‘fix’ the issue. He’d heard a few of the suggestions before, and hated them all.

No, he did not want to hack off his legs and replace them with prosthesis, it might work for someone else, but he liked having limbs with nerves. No, he did not want to take highly addictive pain medication to deal with his legs, the idea of being controlled by an addiction enraged him to no end. No, he did not want extremely risky spinal surgery that could potentially leave him completely paralyzed.

He may hate being trapped in his own body, but the thought of it getting any worse was something he couldn’t bear-that, and the thought of how guilty his parents would feel if his condition got worse anyway. He still remembered his mother’s sobbing when another kid accidentally broke his legs the only time he attended public school when he was six. He remembered her apologizing to him for bringing him into the world broken while she thought he was sleeping. It was then that he’d sworn to himself that she’d never know how much he hated his condition-he’d hide it from her, and all she would see is her smiling happy boy.

John had always been supportive of his son and spent a lot of time joining in James’ interests. He’d had to immerse himself in video games and books that had never interested him before, but to John it had been worth it to connect with his son.

James truly loved his parents, and they loved him more than he could ever comprehend, which made what happened next truly soul-crushing.

Congratulations on your up coming death!!!!

Based on the Afterlife Lottery that every mortal is entered into, you will be given a chance at reincarnation! Since your upcoming death is classified as ‘Tragic’ the odds of winning this lottery are only worse than winning the lottery three times in a row; much more difficult than winning the Martyr or Extremely-Tragic lotteries! We look forward to seeing you soon!

Without even a moment to process what he’d just read James felt an even greater literal shock at what happened right after he finished reading: an earthquake started, his parents and the doc were too far away, he was close to the stairs, and the brakes on his wheelchair were broken. It was a perfect storm of misfortune.

He tumbled down the stairs, the wheelchair -his prison- also became his murderer as he tumbled down from a third story to the first. His fragile legs broke and the bones pierced his arteries, he slammed his head into several stairs because his hands wouldn’t listen to him. He had no chance of survival. The last thing he heart was his mother and father screaming as the pain rose up and dragged him into a world of darkness.