The Bridgekeeper

The below is a odd story from /b/, posted on 09/16/07. It has been dubbed "The Bridgekeeper's Novel". It tells a horribly sad tale of woe that has no peer in it's sheer horror.

While some anons claim that it was plagarized verbatim from a printed book (Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey; By Chuck Palahniuk), there has been no evidence to support that notion.

Another anon states that it was copypasta from a forum called "Living With Style", and the OP stops posting after that. Unfortunately, the forum no longer exists, and there is no way to verify where the rest of the story is or whether it really was copypasta.

The thread where this story was found is linked [here, from the cache of the fallen chanarchive](https://github.com/bibanon/bibanon/raw/master/Files/the-bridgekeeper.html), but is missing the images. (Which is a good thing. The pictures the OP posted was of creepy anime guro. Perhaps it was his fetish.)

 39651922 (OP) 

When I was younger, my mother told me that I was a mistake.

I am beginning to think that that was true and that this is all her fault.

I'm the illegitimate son of accident prone degenerates. I was born a mess- bloody and smelly and slimy and with a face not even my mother could love. These days, I'm slightly less bloody.

I live in a small town on the west coast of Florida. I live right on the beach, but it's a developed beach. It caters to tourists. Cheap motels and run down restaurants and shops that sell sun tan lotion and bathing suits line the road as far as the eye can see. There's an endless sea of faces- red, sunburned faces. People come and people go but no one is ever dumb enough to stay.

Except for me, of course.

I work on a bridge. I sit in a tiny booth all day with no air conditioning, the sun hanging high in the air and beating at me through the window pane. The air is so thick with humidity that it slaps my face and calls me rotten names. I sit in this tiny booth all day every day and I wait for a boat to come. When one does, I pull a lever. Rails come down and the bridge comes up and the boat passes by. Then I pull another lever and the rails go up and the bridge comes down and the cars continue their monotonous journeys. They could train a monkey to do this job. My boss sometimes laughs at me and says that they already have.

A few years ago some kids were riding their bikes down the bridge. The rails came down and the bridge went up and all of the cars stopped and spewed their vomit into the air as they chugged in place. One of these kids got off of his bike and crept under the rail and leaned against the bridge that was in its upright position. It was also my job to stop this sort of thing from happening, but I wasn't much in the mood. Kids will be kids, my Grandpa used to say, until they grow up or die. What's the difference, he'd add in.

 39652319 (OP) 

I pulled the lever and the bridge began lowering and the kids went crazy with excitement. One of them had a video camera, an older one that recorded onto miniature VHS tapes. This was before Youtube. The bridge continued lowering and the boys who were still on their bikes nodded approvingly, their little heads jerking up and down like bobble heads.

When the bridge was low enough, the daredevil of the group made his move. He started running and his friends were all laughing and gasping and one was busy recording it. And he ran and he ran and when he came to the edge of the bridge he jumped to the other side. And he made it.

Kind of.

He skull collided with the edge of the other side with a nasty cracking sound that I can still remember hearing, even through the glass panes of my booth. And then the boy's body fell like a sack of potatoes and there was a splash. And his friends were quiet as ghosts. The rails went up but the cars went no where. People got out to looking at the blue monster below, to say things like “oh my god how horrible"" and “what happened"" and “that poor boy.""

A few hours later his body was found and his lungs were full of water. It was all over the news, maybe you heard about it.

It was all kind of my fault, but no one really blames me. I don't even blame myself. I blame my mother. She's the one that caused all of this.

 39652560 (OP) 

Later that night when I got off work and the police had come and gone and I had sworn up and down that I had never seen the boy, I went to Schiro's. Schiro's is a very nasty and run down bar on the beach and it's owned by an Italian prick named Emilio Schiro. If you're ever in the St. Pete area of Florida, look for it. It's not well advertised, but it's the brown building with no windows, right next to Floyd's hotdogs. Find it, and stay away from it. There's nothing waiting for you there except watered down piss in a mug and lowlifes.

Schiro's was kind of unique because it was one of the only buildings in the entire state of Florida to have a basement. Basements aren't that big down here, the ground isn't really suitable for them. Schiro's had one though, and he used it for prize fights.

If you knew Schiro well enough, and he knew you well enough, he'd pay you 50 bucks to fight another guy that you'd never seen before. Think of it as a Fight Club only without the glory and the bravado. The first rule about Schiro's was no outside alcoholic beverages allowed.

That night, I agreed to fight. He paired me up with this huge beast of a man, he was German or Russian or some shit like that. He had a foot on me and at least 100 pounds, but that was irrelevant in the long run. I didn't go to Schiro's to fight, I went there to get beat up. Think of it as my time to wallow in self pity.

 39652618 (OP) 

We stood in the center of the basement and were completely engulfed by a crowd of drunk pricks who wanted nothing more than to see blood shed and bones broken. Mine, specifically, seeing as everybody in the joint had bet against me. They always do.

This German or Russian had fists like jagged rocks. He socked me right in the jaw and it was sharp, splintered pain. I stayed on my feet as long as I could to give the crowd a good show, but this monster made quick work of me.

The last thing I remember about that night is being knocked to the floor. I couldn't hear much aside from the ringing in my head and the cheering of the drunk crowd. I had a pair of dog tags around my neck, they were my dad's. I stole them before I left. This German or Russian fuck grabbed them and then, with the side of his booth, kicked them into my mouth wedging them between my gums and molars. It knocked one of them loose and another one completely out and then he kicked me directly in the forehead and that's the last thing I can remember.

About that night, anyway.

 39652713 (OP) 

Years ago, I used to race motorcycles at a local track. I was never very good, but I just liked the slight thrill that I derived from it.

I remember one day in particular, throughout the entire length of the race there was a constant mist on my face. It was overcast out so naturally I assumed that it was raining out. Sprinkling, maybe.

At the end of the race I discovered that my face and my racing uniform was covered in droplets of blood. The racer in front of me had completely worn through his cheap steel toe boots and through ever turn he was grinding away his big toe.

Blood has been a constant in my life. Usually my own, sometimes that of others.

 39652876 (OP) 

I grew up in a trailer, a cage of a house. My father died shortly after I was born. Suicide. My mother says it was my fault. She's probably right.

My mother used to go out at night and come back with a man who always stank of liquor. If i was up when they got home, the very pleasant guys would ignore me. Most of the guys would beat me, following my mother's instruction. If nothing else, this taught me how to take a punch. Or a slap, from the pleasant guys.

Pleasant and effeminate are often interchangeable words when describing the essence of a man.

I had a best friend when I was younger. His name was Weston and he lived next door to me. It was a friendship based on proximity.

He lived with his Grandma who was very old and very sick so she rarely got out of bed. He was forced to fend for himself at the age of eight. I was lucky. My mother was a horrible person but she still put food on the table for me and bought me clothes, even if they were from the good will. A boy should always have some place to go, someone to turn to, regardless how horrible that place or person may be.

Having no where to go can have a toll on a boy.

One day Weston called me outside. I stood on my doorstep and watched him. He had a lawn mower and he started marching forward with it. In front of him he had buried four or five kittens up to their heads.

A neighbor across the street called the police. They came and discovered that Weston's Grandma had been dead for four days. They took Weston away. He is probably dead now. Suicide, most likely.

 39653040 (OP) 

When I was eight my mother sent me to my grandmother's in California for a month. My grandmother was a nice lady and she was always baking cookies. Looking back on it now, I think it was a coping mechanism.

She took me to Disneyland with my grandfather and my Aunt Dolly who always wore too much makeup. I remember getting one of those really big lollipops but I couldn't finish it. It was very hot that day but I was enjoying myself quite a bit.

My grandmother kept trying to persuade me into going on a particular ride called the Matterhorn. It was a bobsled ride and it looked way to fast and way to scary for me. My grandmother was a gentle soul but she had a secret wild side and she loved rides like that.

I think those are the people that you have to watch out for. The gentle souls that love thrills.

She wore me down and eventually I caved in and we waited in line until it was our turn. I remember when we finally got on I was so nervous that I was shaking. My aunt dolly saw this and she tried to comfort me but her caked on makeup just made me feel worse.

She sat behind me in the sled and as we went up the hill she tried her best to make me feel more comfortable. She unbuckled her belt and stood up and told me that there was absolutely nothing to worry about and that she was fine even without the safety equipment. Then she sat back down and as we went down the hill she was thrown from our sled into the path of another and I heard her bones being crushed beneath it.

It was suicide, kind of. And it was my fault, kind of.

My grandmother shrieked and I think that she threw up. We left and she sent me back home a week early and when my mother heard the news she was sort of glad and she said that Dolly had always been the favorite.

 39653330 (OP) 

By the time I was a teenager my mom had spiraled deep into drug addiction. She was on the brink of death and there was nothing that I could do. She wouldn't have listened to anything I could have said, which worked out well, because I didn't really feel much like saving her.

I met a girl from school. Her name was Victoria and she smoked cigarettes. This was back when it was cool to smoke cigarettes. I decided to run away from home and she decided to run with me. It wasn't out of angst, really. I just needed a change. I took my mom's car, a beat up old Acura Legend. I remember nearly driving it right into a tree. I wasn't a good driver, I blamed it on the fact that I was missing my ring finger. That's another story.

I drove with Victoria to the edge of the city. There was this stretch of road that overlooked a steep drop off and at the bottom there was a dried up lake. It was jagged and ugly and haphazard and it was the perfect spot to us.

Victoria had a brother who was 25 and still lived at home. He sat in the basement and jacked off all day and everything was sticky down there. Sticky and hot. She got him to buy us some beer. He was a nice guy, he would always buy us beer. It was very cheap stuff but it did the one thing that beer was expected to do. It got me laid.

 39653366 (OP) 

We slept there that night and when I woke up in the morning she was still out cold. I looked at her and I realized that I didn't want to ruin her life. I often find myself thinking this about other people. I don't get close to people, for their sake. So I left her there and I started driving to Memphis, where my uncle lived. He was my father's brother and he would stop by the house every once in a while to check up on me. My mother hated him and one time he tried to take me and she wouldn't allow this. One of the men she brought home busted his nose and he didn't come back after that. He just left me a note with an address.

Recently I discovered that Victoria is dead now. I'm not sure how. I wonder if she ever made it home that night. She probably did though, it wasn't too far. It was suicide, most likely.

 39653642 (OP) 

>>39653478 When I was 12 I woke up in the middle of the night and I went out to the kitchen for a glass of water. It wasn't too late, actually. Only 11 or so, I think. My mother was passed out on the couch and there was a thick puddle of vomit next to her that she would make me clean up in the morning. The man that she brought home was sitting at the kitchen table stabbing a knife between his fingers at a very rapid pace.

He was playing mumbleypeg. I've grown familiar with the game since, but at the time I was very intrigued.

I asked him what he was playing and he told me. He was one of the pleasant guys. I asked him what would happen if he messed up on accident and he said "this" and then he slammed the knife into my ring finger. I think he meant to miss and scare me because he screamed a bit and started to panic. I started to cry.

He tried to help, he really did. As I said, he was one of the pleasant guys. He grabbed my wrist and my finger just kind of dangled there, he must have sliced straight through the bone. He panicked some more and just pulled the rest of the finger right off. There was blood everywhere.

He tried to bandage it but that didn't work so well. I ended up going to the hospital and my mother told the doctor that I had gotten a little too worked up while trying to help her prepare dinner.

 39654440 (OP) 

>>39654014 I'm not sure what happened to Jim. I think his name was Jim, anyway. He had it tattooed across his forearm, in a design so that each letter laid on a card- an ace. Jim was around for a while, longer I think than any of the other men my mother brought home. I think this was because she had just gotten into heroine and Jim I think was a steady source. But it bothered me because he never shot up.

Those are the people that you have to watch out for. The pleasant guys that can get drugs but don't use them. You've got to watch your fingers around them, at least. That much I know for sure.

Jim asked me if I wanted to play catch with him one time when my mother was passed out. We went outside and threw a football around. He told me that I should play football when I got into highschool, and he was probably right. I was big for my age, really big, and I kept growing. And I could throw the ball well, too. But I never played. It wasn't really my thing, I guess. And I never could throw the same after I lost my finger.

We threw the ball around until sunset. When the sky turned that murky and messy orange and the sun was nearly out of sight, creeping behind the trees, he ran over to me and knelt down beside me. He told me that the sunset was the day dying, and that if I hadn't done anything worth doing on that particular day, that I had murdered it.

Then we went inside.

 39654440 (OP) 

>>39654014 I'm not sure what happened to Jim. I think his name was Jim, anyway. He had it tattooed across his forearm, in a design so that each letter laid on a card- an ace. Jim was around for a while, longer I think than any of the other men my mother brought home. I think this was because she had just gotten into heroine and Jim I think was a steady source. But it bothered me because he never shot up.

Those are the people that you have to watch out for. The pleasant guys that can get drugs but don't use them. You've got to watch your fingers around them, at least. That much I know for sure.

Jim asked me if I wanted to play catch with him one time when my mother was passed out. We went outside and threw a football around. He told me that I should play football when I got into highschool, and he was probably right. I was big for my age, really big, and I kept growing. And I could throw the ball well, too. But I never played. It wasn't really my thing, I guess. And I never could throw the same after I lost my finger.

We threw the ball around until sunset. When the sky turned that murky and messy orange and the sun was nearly out of sight, creeping behind the trees, he ran over to me and knelt down beside me. He told me that the sunset was the day dying, and that if I hadn't done anything worth doing on that particular day, that I had murdered it.

Then we went inside.

 39654520 (OP) 

I remember the day after I got home from the hospital he came over and he had something behind his back. It was a Chinese finger trap. He held it out to where the bandage was and then said that I was way too clever for his silly tricks. I laughed.

One day my mother came home from work and she freaked out. Jim had tossed her stash. All of it. Everything. Her stash really was everything to her. I heard them yelling, she was calling him names that I had never even heard before. He said something about growing up and settling down. About starting a family. About being a mother so she should act like one. She stabbed him in the back with a fork and kicked him out and I never saw him again. Although one time I was in the back yard while the sun was setting and the sky was that murky and messy shade of orange. A rock was tossed over our fence with a note wrapped around it that read "Did you murder it?"

But you're probably right. It was suicide, most likely. The pleasant guys always go that way. They're the ones you have to watch out for.

 39655391 (OP) 

>>39653366 After I left Victoria there I didn't get very far. I was still tired and hung over and I wasn't paying attention, and this is all on top of the fact that I was never a very good driver to begin with. I drifted off of the road and into a ditch. I walked away without so much as a scratch but the car wasn't so lucky. It was totaled, I think. It was damaged enough for me to say the word totaled without sounding way off base.

So I walked home because I didn't really have anywhere else to go. When I got there my mother was at work, she must have taken the bus. I felt bad about taking her car because I knew how much she hated taking the bus.

Then, for a while, nothing really happened. The days kind of just stuck together like pages in an old book, but that didn't really matter because the days were all the same anyway. The only thing that changed was the guy that she brought home. After Jim, they never really stayed very long. Never longer than a week, anyway. She made sure of that.

When I was 17 she brought home this guy that really scared me. He had a twitch, but he was the kind of guy that if you looked at it he would probably take offense. And he was the kind of guy that if he took offense, he would probably break your arms. So I never really made eye contact with him and I only looked at him out of the corner of my eye.

He was very violent. One time when my mother was passed out he was watching some boxing match. He kept yelling about how much he had riding on it and when his fighter hit the mat he threw our coffee table against the wall. And then he stormed off.

He stayed a week. Exactly a week.

 39655444 (OP) 

One night, exactly a week after he had first been brought home, my mother was yelling at him. She was telling him to leave, I think, and he was very upset. Then I heard screaming and then a loud noise and then not much after that. I went out into the living room and I saw my mother lying on the couch and her arms and legs were hanging over very oddly. And then I saw her forehead and it was very bloody and I saw that he was holding this fancy candlestick that my grandmother had given my mother and that it was very bloody.

It was the creep, in the living room, with the candlestick.

He saw me and I this was the first time I had ever made eye contact with him. One of his eyes was very odd. It was all milky white, like he had no pupil. It was there, just very faint. I was scared. I entered fight or flight mode, I guess. And I chose both. I grabbed this glass lamp that we kept on the kitchen table. I always found it to be a very odd place for a lamp but I'm now glad that we kept it there. I threw it at him with all of my might.

When I lost my finger, it effected my accuracy, not my power. And luckily he was a big target so even I could hit him. It smashed right against his face and he fell backwards over the coffee table that was propped up on one leg where he had broken it a few days earlier. I'm not sure what happened after that because I smashed through the window and I jumped the fence in our backyard and I ran. I didn't stop running for a long time. And I never went home again.

His name was Dorian.

 39656377 (OP) 

I can remember, very distinctly actually, running out of breath. It was a very sudden feeling and a very powerful force. I had been running at full speed for a very long time, at least a mile, powered completely by adrenaline. Then, suddenly, my lungs just collapsed and my legs were quick to follow and I can remember skidding across the asphalt and bloodying up my palms. My chest slammed against the pavement time and time again as my lungs struggled to fill with air as fast as they possibly could. My head was pounding and everything started spinning around me, dancing and taunting me, fading in and out of focus. Everything pulsated.

I felt like I was drowning and I thought that I was going to die. That would have made things so much simpler. Life is like a party that you host, but death is like going to a very fancy party of someone else's. When you leave, there's no mess to clean up. That's someone else's job.

I laid there, tracing that line between life and death, for hours. I didn't really think about anything in particular. It still hadn't occurred to me that I had nowhere to go now. A boy should always have somewhere to go. I just remained there, completely still aside from the fierce thumping of my chest, and even that faded away soon enough.

Then I felt the warmth of headlights on the back of my neck and I felt the ground vibrate beneath the roar of an oncoming car. I made no effort to move. I really wanted that car to run me over, to crush me. To pollinate the fiber of my being for miles as my blood slowly rolled off of its tires. I remained completely still, hoping that the driver wasn't paying attention.

 39656591 (OP) 

But he was and he crawled to a stop a good yard or two away from me. I heard a car door open and then I heard it slam shut and then I heard a quick series of footsteps. I could feel him hovering over me, examining me. I began to get worried because he hadn't said anything and it had been nearly a minute. He didn't check to see if I was ok or if I was even alive. I started to think that he was going to take my body and stuff me in a freezer somewhere. Serve me between two buns at some shitty roadside diner.

I probably would have made a tasty burger. I probably would have given someone food poisoning though. I was a pretty rotten person, all puns aside.

“Holy shit,"" he finally said. I wasn't sure what I should do. He asked me if I was ok. People can really ask dumb questions when they are under stress. He flipped me over with his shoe and I blinked up at him with a blank expression. I laid there for a few seconds and he studied me before I brought myself up to a sitting position.

 .39656682 (OP) 

He asked me what the hell had happened to me and I told him that a lot of things had happened to me. He asked me if I needed to see a doctor and I told him that my palms were just scraped up and that it was nothing serious. He was a pleasant guy. I noticed him staring at my missing finger and I told him that one time I got a little too excited cooking dinner. He asked me if I needed a ride and I was really in no position to refuse. He told me that his name was John.

The inside of his car was very cramped. I can't remember what kind of car he drove, but I can remember it being very cramped. And I can remember that he had the A.M. radio playing. Those are the people that you need to watch out for, the pleasant guys that listen to the A.M. radio.

We drove for a few minutes before he asked me where I lived. I told him that I didn't have a home and he said that everybody has a home and I told him not me. He asked me where I planned on going and I told him that I really hadn't had enough time for any planning and that anywhere he was going would work out evenly for me. We were in Daloniga, Georgia and he told me that he was heading to Memphis. I told him that Memphis would be great.

Rarely does life work out like that.

 39656780 (OP) 

He said that he had to pick someone else up along the way, that he was going on vacation with this person in Memphis. I told him that it would be fine. What else was I going to say? It's not like the idea of another person bothered me, anyway.

About fifty miles later, we stopped at a hotel for the night. He told me that he was very tired from the driving and that he had left from Miami. He called someone on the payphone, his wife I think. He said something about the flight being nice and the weather being “rainy as usual here in Seattle."" Then he said something about thinking that the meeting might be postponed so he would be back later than expected. Then I noticed that he had a thin line of pale skin on his ring finger. The next day after about thirty miles we picked up the person that he had told me about.

His name was Richard and he was very friendly with John.

When we got into Memphis I told them that this was a fine place for me and they dropped me off. I had never been to Tennessee before. I wasn't sure how I was going to find my Uncle's house but I knew that at this point it was really my only option.

 39657597 (OP) 

I have a tattoo on my left wrist. It says commotio cordis. It's nothing fancy, it just says those words. They are latin words, by the way.

I slept on the streets of Memphis which was really about as glamorous as it sounds. I tried to get an Irish Coffee from this bar that was nearby, the Blue Monkey. I wasn't old enough, but more importantly, I didn't look old enough either. I think I got a little drunk on the fumes of the place though. The air was very heavy in there, thick and full.

When I woke up the next day I started my search. With enough money and enough determination you can find anyone. I was working with half of the necessary materials. I found him though, eventually. But that's not important, really. Even if it is, it's another story for another time.

My uncle is a swell guy. It is important to distinguish between the pleasant guys and the swell guys. The pleasant guys are the ones that you have to watch out for. The swell guys are the guys that watch out for you. He greeted me with open arms and he made me feel at home. His name was Robert Staudsworth.

He had a beautiful wife and her name was Jenny. She died a few years before I showed up at his door step. It was a car accident. A drunk driver. Suicide with an extra unintended victim, most likely. There were pictures of her everyone and she looked very beautiful. He had a son, too. His name was Derrick.

Like I said, Robert was a swell guy. But he had skeletons in his closet. Everyone has skeletons, it's just that some people hide them better than others. But that's not important, not right now anyway. For now, let's just assume that those skeletons are alive and well and fat.

 39657836 (OP) 

Derrick was 7. If you asked him though, he would tell you that he was 7 and three quarters. He was a good kid, a swell kid really. There was a macaroni picture on the fridge that he made. He played baseball for a small little league team. He was pretty good, too. Better than all of the other kids. But they all played just to get the snow cone afterwards, so that really isn't saying much.

Robert took me to Derrick's game a few days after I got there. It was a nice day out and for the first time in my life I felt relatively peaceful.

Commotio cordis.

 39657889 (OP) 

This one kid made a diving catch in the outfield and everyone clapped enthusiastically and his parents jumped to their feet and cheered. I think it was more of an accident than anything else, though. Derrick played third base. There aren't really many plays made at third base in little league.

In little league they only play three innings. It was the bottom of the third and there were two outs. There was a boy on first and derrick was up and his team was down by 1. But there was still no pressure because most of the kids were totally oblivious to the score. The parents were very nervous though.

The pitcher pitched and it was a ball. Derrick slapped the bat against his cleats which I found funny for some reason.

 39658074 (OP) 

Pitch two: strike.

Some boy in the outfield whined about it being very hot.

Pitch three: strike.

A man next to me sat with his fists clenched together very tightly and he didn't make a sound. I think that he was the pitchers father.

 39658149 (OP) 

Pitch four.

Let me tell you a bit about commotio cordis. Commotio cordis is a rather rare medical anomaly. It translates almost directly to commotion of the heart. Commotio cordis is what happens when the heart's electrical activity is interfered with which causes an arrhythmia. Even when treated immediately it is still almost always fatal. It occurs when there is impact to the precordial region at a very precise time. A blow to the chest that knocks the heart off beat, really. Any type of projectile can prompt it. It is a very rare occurrence, it almost never happens.

Winning the lottery is a very rare occurrence, it almost never happens. But millions play anyway.

Things were very quiet at Robert's for weeks, maybe months. There were a lot of pictures of Derrick around, more than before.

Commotio cordis.

 39658834 (OP) 

When I was younger I met a man named Jacob. He told me that he was named after the biblical Jacob and that he came from a very religious family. He told me that they went to church every Sunday and that he learned to fall asleep sitting up.

He told me that when he was 14 his father built a large cross and mounted it in his backyard. And he told me that when he was 16 his father snapped and crucified his mother on that very cross, as a sacrifice to God. He killed her, Jacob told me, while she was sleeping. He took a screwdriver and placed the blunt end perpendicular to her forehead and in the other hand, he held a hammer. He took a mighty swing and plunged the screwdriver deep into her skull, so much so that it splintered a bit and split ever so slightly so that a little bit of her brains seeped out through the crack. And then he dragged her out to the backyard and beneath the glow of the moon he hoisted her on to the cross with an intricate pulley system he had built.

Jacob told me that he had stumbled in a slumber out to the backyard to investigate the source of all the commotion. And he saw her stretched up upon the cross, illuminated by the moon so that she was a sickly shade of dull gray. A crown of twisted nails tipped with rust was stretched across her head and it partially concealed the gaping crevice on her forehead.

And then Jacob told me that his father spotted him. And that he approached him very cautiously and spoke to him with barely a whisper of a voice. And he said to Jacob something about his mother being a brave woman, something about his mother being the strongest woman that he knew. He told him that she didn't deserve this, but she was the only soul strong enough to carry the burden of a world of sin, and that it was God's will and he was but a meek servant.

In the end, I think we are all meek servants. Some of us just refuse to accept it.

 39658925 (OP) 

Jacob told me that his father then went inside and went to bed and the next morning he was arrested and he plead guilty, but not before he told that judge that he would be punished for interfering with God's will. And Jacob was pushed into foster care because his grandparents were dead and no other relative wanted him. And he spent the next two years bouncing from foster home to foster home, and this is not where Jacob developed, but rather it was where he was ruined. It is here that his soul was corrupted and although he has since recovered a bit of his humanity, I can still see remnants of a beast lurking inside of him. And it is this that draws me to Jacob.

I met Jacob years ago, at a bar. He had just broken a stool over a man's head, the legs splintered and shattered in every direction and chips of the man's skull flaked to the ground. Jacob tossed the stump of stool that was left to the side and turned to me, casually, and told me that he had really messed up now. And then he said something else but it was muffed by a fist that had connected with his face. And the five men who were at the bar with the unconscious man with stool in his skull that was motionless on the floor below began beating Jacob into a bloody pulp.

And then they left and I carried Jacob out of the bar and my white shirt was smeared with streaks of rust colored blood. And then he spoke to me, through a swollen face and through a mouth that was missing teeth. He spit out blood as he spoke the words.

 39658951 (OP) 

I could have taken them, all of them, no problem. On a bad day, even, I could have handled them without struggle. But that doesn't matter. That's not the issue, you see, champ? I deserved to be beaten, so I let 'em. I let 'em because I deserved it, you see, champ? That's the way the world works, when you deserve something, you take it. When you need to give something, you give it. Even if you think you're stronger than the circumstances, you got to give in, champ. Because if you don't, if you fight when you deserve to get beaten, then it will snowball on you. You can beat the circumstances are first, champ, and at first it might seem easy. But it will snowball on you and the next thing you know you'll be knee deep. And if you're really stubborn champ, and you're really strong, you can keep fighting. But then you'll be neck deep. The world has a way of catching up to you, of evening the score. And champ, if you make the world go out of its way to make things even, it's gonna'' punish you even more. Even the strongest guy can't beat the odds forever, he'll just make it worse in the end. That's why, when you deserve to lose, you lose. It's easier to handle the punches one at a time then all at once, champ.

And he must have expended all of his energy because after he called me champ he passed out cold.

And this is the story of Jacob.