chicago had always been a dreary place. the bright lights, the infectious, ear-deafening sounds had never been amusing, or enthralling. in fact, most times, while walking home from school, jude would clamp his hands over his ears and press them to his pink skin until he felt like his brain would explode. he hated the loud noises - the trains, the engines, the cars, the sirens, and just generally
the city. growing up in such a city had always been a pain, always been a little too much.
he'd had a rather simple childhood. he lived at home with two parents who loved each other - enough, that sometimes he looked at other parents with scorn and contempt. they would spend most nights staring into each other's eyes as if nothing else in the world mattered, as if they were the only ones there. their fingers would be entwined, and their voices would be low and affectionate - and jude was always slightly disgusted by it. but he couldn't complain - they were happy, and so was he. and although his father worked most hours during the day, jude came to respect and admire him. he was a mysterious man, his history clouded by rumors and lies. the only one who knew the truth was our mother, and she never really spoke of him minus the occasional comment about his return to the household.
jude had never been very open in school either. the children would sit around their desks, interacting with one another.
oh, you're drawing looks good. wow, you're really good at spelling! the teacher really likes you. but never,
never, were the comments aimed at jude. he would occasionally get the glassy-eyed look, it was mostly because he was shuffling around and for a moment the other children were reminded that he did, indeed, exist. he was a person, and he was physically apparent, but he seemed to blend into the background. and he never minded. he was content to be just a part of the wall, because that way he knew that he didn't have to be afraid of defeat. he could be content with just being
ordinary.there's spray paint
on the teleprompter
the anchorman screams
that he saw a monster
there's bloodstains on his shirt
they say he's gone beserk
belonging to something had never been something jude had ever worried about. he'd simply floated - quite like a ghost, a separate anonymity that had always blended into the background, grazing by on the outskirts of society and hiding in plain sight - through the past few years. so when his parents had suggest, or rather told, the three children that they would be moving to new york - a city where people where drowned in the crowds, by the fact that they were only one of many, that they had no
meaning - jude saw no problem in the matter. and at first, he didn't differentiate between the two places - chicago and new york. they blurred together into one, and merged through his memories.
jude remembered, vividly, the last time he spoke to his father. he had never been very close to the man - lance was a man of impeccable taste, with dress suits and a young and handsome face with deep set, understanding blue eyes. blue eyes that could make you lose track of your thoughts and simply want to
peer into them, and wonder if they're peering back. and jude was a scruffy, young-hearted and free-spirited boy who took more interest in the creations that flew from the tip of his pen rather than what was being sold - and the two never found a common ground. but one night, lance came into his bedroom. he always seemed flawlessly
alive, but on that certain day, there was a lack of interest in his usually bright features. his blue eyes were outlined with purple shadows and unfamiliar lines, and although still all knowing and open, they were slightly shadowed by his lack of energy.
he settled into the crease of jude's bed, where he sat staring at his elegant, smooth fingers for only a moment, before he peered up at jude, his blue eyes patient and calm - not compared to his usual sea-colored, stormy eyes. his face was chiseled, as if perfectly made by someone else, and jude couldn't help but be jealous. there was a little stubble on top of his upper lip, which was pursed, and around his thick jaw, which moved now as he ground his teeth together - as he did whenever he was thinking. and he spoke that night, and told jude that he had a bad feeling, brewing in his stomach. he'd told him that he loved him, after a long period of strange silence, and then had hurriedly exited the room. jude had been left, rather confused, his fingers tangled in his sheets, and after a few hours of war, he finally found sleep. what he hadn't known, is that his father would indeed leave his life the next day.
sometimes when i
wanna shut out this world
wanna rip up this page
wanna pour out this heart
wanna get up on this stage
and my lips become percussion
and my fists become the rage
september eleventh was the day jude's life changed. the horrible day. the worst day. the day to end all days. the day that would never be forgotten. the day a plane crashed into the two towers. a day when innocent men where killed. a day that had begun just like any other, and changed into a day of
pain and
sadness. a thousand prayers must have been said that day, by those who believed in a god and those who didn't or couldn't. faces were searched for among the rubble and not all of them were found - some simply slipped into the faceless
dark. but one face had been pulled out from among the shattered remains. the face of lance owens.
grief had racketed jude's body like a bullet when the three short words had been muttered to him in a dark room on a dark day.
your father's dead. he was killed, while he was waiting for a meeting in one of the towers that had come crashing down. his family couldn't stay in the apartment where their lives had changed, and they moved back to the dusty city of chicago - which compared nothing to new york, from what jude remembered. he returned to his old school, but nothing could ever be the same. he walked through the same halls, had the same set of friends, worked the same way he always had, but despite all this, everything was
different. he had to watch as people existed as if nothing had affected them, and it hadn't, because they hadn't felt that pain in their chest, or their inability to sleep. had he died quickly? or had it been painful?
what was worse was the fact that only two short years later, his mother had simply moved on. when jude had confronted her, furious that she seemingly had happened to
forget that what had seemed to be a brilliant man had only be at her side years prior. jude intentionally tried to make her feel guilty, using insolent and disrespectful words in an attempt to provoke some emotion from her fragile core. and she'd only given him one excuse - something he'd always held against her.
he would have wanted this. jude could never understand, presumably. and he didn't
want to understand. he wanted his mother to be happy again, but he wanted it to be without another man. and after a few months, he was introduced to the son and the daughter of aaron clark. and from first sight, jude knew that he would be eternally trapped in a downward spiral of his own humanity.
the present tensions no threat
it's just a fence across the path
that we're all ready to walk
rock solid footsteps
let them put up obstacles
and prove it isn't possible
true liberty and freedom's at stake
with her, hours blurred into days, which would blur into weeks and months and
years. with her, time seemed endless. a spinning wheel that simply halted, just for him and her. he could never know if she felt the same. fleeting looks, slurred speech, stuttering tongues. it was all he knew. the proximity of her presence made his chest tighten, made him lose his focus and distract him from his prior intentions. she had the ability to make him hold his breath, wish that he could blend into the wall. but he couldn't
want her, which carved a deep and painful hole into his chest. he couldn't want her, because she was his step-sister.
so he desperately tried to escape her spell. in the last year of high school he spent extra hours at school, though he wasn't really a part of anything, he tried desperately to join a club that would help him fill his time. and straight after school, he would wander around the nearby park until the horizon would start to darken and the monsters would start to appear, and so he would file away back to his home - knowing that his mother's rage would be awaiting him and a fight that would hurt the both of them was looming in the horizon, almost over his head. he would return home, to
her, and he would lock himself in his room for hours and hours. he didn't want to be a part of the family that he didn't know, and he didn't want to pretend.
and finally, after his graduation, which
she attended, he decided that he would attend a college that was so far from chicago he could simply forget about her and move on with his life. so when he was accepted into princeton university, his father's old college, he eagerly accepted the offer. he was soon in school, and he forgot about her, and the fact that his father had passed, and mostly
everything. he delved into his studies, learning thing after thing - as if he expected that if he could fill up his brain with useless and important facts, he would forget the other things he didn't want to linger in there, like pictures of his father and of his family and of
her - but he couldn't escape. when he returned, she would always be waiting, with that same smile that drew him in and made him lose his thoughts. and all he wanted was to escape. so once graduated from college, he searched for knowledge about his late father, and moved here, to portland.
