Page 1 of Jester

JESTER

Rayland Crest/Road Captain

Inever apologize forwho I am. I might not seem like a man whose cup ought to spill over with pride. I probably seem like a monster. I’ve been told I act like a caveman. I know I think like a predator.

But long ago, I decided if no one was going to love me, I might as well love myself, warts and fucking all.

I was nothing more than an angry boy when Brody Marsden entered my life. He was barely a man, yet not so different than me. People hated us before we were old enough to do anything wrong.

I’d never been loved. My shitty parents hurt my sister and me in many ways, but none were enough to make them feel better. Sometimes, they’d just walk through the door and start hitting. The world fucked with them, so they fucked with us.

My parents got so used to busting us up, they never considered to hide the abuse. As soon as my mom dropped me off at kindergarten, I started bouncing around foster homes.

I have no fucking idea why my parents ever did anything to get us back. Was there a reward for them to jump through the CPS’s hoops? I’ve sometimes wondered if my grandparents were paying for shit and insisted my parents reclaim what they clearly didn’t want.

Whatever the reason, I’d end up back with my parents until the bruises showed up again. Child services would intervene. Sometimes, I’d be taken away. Other times, I’d be monitored.

After my father diddled my sister, she never came back to the home. He also had to move out to ensure my mom kept me. Yeah, there must have been money involved. After all, I knew for a fucking fact that my mom loved my dad more than she loved me. She would have only given him up if keeping me meant cash.

Several weeks after he moved out, my mom lost her shit. She just kept hitting me with anything handy. Finally, she cracked my head open and laughed hysterically as blood pooled on the floor beneath me.

“Am I finally free?” she screamed in my face.

Since I figured I was dying, I finally hit her back. The bitch was so shocked. I was, too. Hitting her felt damn good, so I took that meat tenderizer she liked to use on my back. I swung it at her, over and over. Once she was on the ground, I kicked her.

The bitch screamed for help. That only made me laugh. We were both going to die that day, and I couldn’t be happier.

For some reason, her screams of terror drew more attention than mine ever did. The cops arrived to find nine-year-old me on top of my weeping and bloodied mom. I’d cracked her head open to match mine.

Years later, when my sister claimed I took after our parents, I just shrugged. I’d rather be the one throwing the punches than the one taking them.

After I put my mom in the hospital and they fixed my broken head, I started bouncing around foster homes again. The problem was I knew how fucking great it felt to fight back. Submissively taking a beating was no longer an option.

But I overestimated my stamina and resolve. Each foster home was worse. I ended up in a group home run by religious nuts with special ways of dealing with “troubled boys.” I got abused worse than anything my parents could conjure up. My time there nearly broke me.

By then, there was no one to save me. CPS was done caring about a little monster like me. All the boys at the group home were the worst of the worst.

As bad as the religious nuts were with their punishments—beatings, starvation, sleeping in the cold barn, locked in a coffin—they were child’s play compared to what my fellow monsters did to pass the time.

In the end, I set a fire to the group home and ended up in juvenile hall. Burning down that house was one of the smartest things I ever did.

Around that time, my long-gone sister visited me. She’d found Jesus, thanks to her current foster home, and was trying to better herself by slumming it with me.

Seeing her look ashamed of herself, I asked, “Why do you need to change when our parents are the scumbags?”

Her religious foster dad didn’t let her answer. I don’t know why he even brought her to see me. Maybe it was a “scared straight” tactic, where she’d witness her future if she kept causing trouble. Whatever the reason, my sister looked right in my eyes and said, “God doesn’t make mistakes. Every heartache is a test. Will you pass or fail, brother?”

Man, her foster dad fucking loved that shit. He smiled and looked around the visiting room to see if anyone had noticed how fucking well she puked out the crap he’d taught her.

“If I ever see you again, I’m going to do to you what I did to our mom. Now fuck off,” I replied before smiling at her foster dad. “But first, I’m going to kill you.”

To my relief, they never visited again.

I liked juvenile hall. The beatings weren’t so common. The food wasn’t good, but it came at regular intervals. I wasn’t expected to do well with schoolwork. If I behaved, I got left alone for the most part. Life made sense.

But eventually, I got out and ended up in another group home. The system was just passing time until I was tossed out into the streets. My future was prison and death. Everyone knew that much. Hell, even I was just waiting to see which way it went.

At the new group home, I kept my head down, especially after I heard a few guys talking about how “he” was coming to visit me.

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