Haze (EDITED) Ch. 2

CHAPTER TWO

Origin

Jacksin hadn’t worried about much then. He worried about the normal stuff--a shark coming up and eating him when he swam in the ocean, even though the odds of that were astronomical, and, you know, Ebola and stuff. Otherwise? He got good grades; Kasey and Chelsea, two sort of nerdy-pretty girls, hair cut just like everyone else’s, hung on his every word in class; and his parents left him to his own devices, so he played shoot-’em-up video games if only to have something to do with other dudes and he biked around the old tracks near his over-sized house. Everything was so frickin’ simple. It made everything else that had happened hurt more, if only because he hadn’t expected it.

Apart from that, it started on a sunny day in early fall. School had just started and it was a Indian Summer, leaves dotting the ground in russet, brown, and mottled yellow heaps. Girls still wore short skirts but the breeze made that interesting, guys were back to playing sports, and there were, thankfully, no new kittens at the cat lady’s house next to Booker’s. If there were more kittens, her equally senile husband tended to sit out on the porch, maybe to get away from the smell of ammonia and the feel of kitten claws, in boxer shorts and yell at Jacksin, calling him Henry, to groom the horses or to fix the leaking pipe under the sink. Apparently, Booker’s neighbors hadn’t had horses in twenty years--and Henry hadn’t been alive for thirty. It reminded him of the reason he wasn’t too religious. The little, AC-lacking church Booker’s family went to had a pastor who did about the same--shouted instead of spoke and talked about bygone, dead times.

Jacksin’s own parents hadn’t taken him to church.

Nonetheless, today Blaze was smoking by his old Ford, a hand-me-down from the father that left when he was three. It had enough key-related-scratches that it really shouldn’t have surprised Blaze’s mother that he eventually bolted, which was something Blaze had simply stated once and not Jacksin’s personal opinion. Its fender was also dented from having a baseball bat taken to it.

The sky was shadowed by the pines that stood like dark-stained toothpicks in every direction, most slightly burnt from a wildfire that had ran through the area back in the beginning of summer. Tiny green patches, proof things were healing despite the continued rare and sporadic rain made the place less haunting. Pine needles made excellent padding against the hard yellow-red earth, though the dust of it always managed to get into Jacksin’s clothes no matter what he did. It was good that was there because there was one thing Jacksin did like to do that was more, you know, athletic except for biking--that is, fighting.  

Him and Booker were scrapping on the ground then and he was pretty certain he was sure to win. Booker’s glasses were off--boy never wore contacts, so he was always at a disadvantage--and Booker was scrawny. Jacksin still wasn’t sure why Booker tried, but that was Booker for you.

“Oi! No clawing, birds,” Blaze said from across the clearing, voice raspy.

Jacksin gave him the finger and Booker took the shot to kick Jacksin in the chest--lightly, but the breath was still knocked out of him. Jacksin fell to the side and Booker punched at him, quick, not-too-hard, in the jaw repeatedly. Blaze started a slow clap and Jacksin caught one of Booker’s hands then, even as the blue sky reeled dangerously. Jacksin twisted Booker around until he had his nose pressed into the dirt.

“I win,” Jacksin said, smiling like something feral, and loosened his grip, letting Booker flop onto his back.

Booker gave him a perturbed look, one that sort of reminded him of one of his old history teachers when dealing with a particularly lazy student.

“Only you would beat up the blind kid,” Booker said, making his eyes bigger.

“Oh shut up,” Jacksin said, laughing. He stood up, dusted the dirt off his pants. He held out a hand for Booker, who was now squinting at him. Booker flailed about for a moment, and then grasped Jacksin’s hand--and pulled Jacksin down hard.

Next thing Jacksin knew, he had Booker’s foot to his throat.

“I win.” Booker gave a sheepish smirk and took his sneakered foot off Jacksin’s neck.

“Cheater.”

“The rules are: no biting, clawing, poking eyeballs, and nothing under the belt. Cheating is a-okay.”

Blaze raised his hand by the car. “Is licking allowed?”

“No!” Jacksin shouted out and then fell into laughter, unable to help himself. Blaze was the weird one, Booker was the book-smart one, and he was the seemingly-shy one--they made an odd, motley trope, but they got along okay. He’d gotten used to Blaze’s off-color and inappropriate comments a long time ago, anyway.  

“Pity,” Blaze commented. “That would be an awesome defense. The fallout would be awesome.”

“You still trying to get a prom date that will wear a tux?” Booker asked curiously, in relation to fallout. Blaze was--a prankster, maybe. Not really. Close enough. He seriously kept trying to convince all his female friends that getting a short or shorter haircut and wearing a tux would be awesome, because it would be like Carrie.

Like that was a good thing.

“Yup,” Blaze said proudly.

Jacksin chuckled.

The scary thing was, in Jacksin’s opinion, Blaze still had at least two years to convince a girl to do it--or just really mess with everyone and go with a guy. Which no one did. Ever.

Jacksin still wasn’t quite sure what Blaze considered himself. Probably Casanova. Blaze probably assumed he could get into everyone’s pants if he so chose, maybe except Jacksin, because Jacksin was one person he couldn’t quite convince to do the craziest of things, Booker, and Shelby Francis. Because both Booker and Shelby were on super-abstinence by the name of nonfiction-books-in-the-lap.

“Can I have my glasses back?” Booker asked eventually, changing tone as he squinted over at Jacksin.

Jacksin shook off his mild concern of Blaze-is-going-to-be-ironically-burned-at-the-stake. “Sure, but first can I take a picture of that face you’re making?”

“No.”

“Killjoy,” Jacksin said, faking a pout, but then straightening out his face when he realized Booker couldn’t see him. Buzzkill.

“It’s not my fault you want to take bizarro pictures,” Booker commented, even as Jacksin grabbed Booker’s glasses off his jacket sitting a ways off and rubbed the dust off them with his shirt. Jacksin handed them back to Booker and Booker slipped them on, face automatically changing drastically. His eyes got bigger and suddenly became focused. The stark black of the frames made Booker’s semi-tan seemingly dissolve and made the black of his hair look duller.

“We should check Blaze’s camera. Bet he has some weird pictures.”

“Already have. There’s, like, ten of weird-looking bugs, one of a three-legged cat, and then there’s this upside down redhead girl smiling at the camera, which leads me to believe Blaze has finally grown up and gotten a lady-friend--” Booker word-vomited as he straightened his glasses.

Jacksin’s fingers twitched in the sandy dirt, about to say something, when Blaze went and stage-whispered, “Shhh.”

Both Jacksin and Booker looked over at him.

“What?” Booker asked. “Don’t like us talking about your weird photography skills, man?”

Blaze looked weird, Jacksin noticed. The muscles in his arms and shoulders had gone taut, clearly defined, and his eyes were narrowed. He looked like a cornered animal. Jacksin’s shoulders tensed in response, wondering what was going on. Blaze was normally easy going, but Jacksin had learned that was mostly a play, something to make his terminal seriousness seem less boring. Blaze didn’t normally slip character.

“Did you hear that?” Blaze asked, sounding like someone out of a horror movie. Jacksin smiled to himself at the thought.

“Hear what? Bigfoot? No, I didn’t, sorry. Better luck next time,” Booker said, using his own shirt to clean off his glasses now.

Jacksin made a face at him and Booker elbowed him. “They have to be perfect because I look out of them, Sasquatch.” Booker smirked. “Hey, Blaze, no need to look for that crypto--we got Mister I’m-Way-Over-Six-Foot here.”

“I’m not that tall,” Jacksin said.

“You are over six feet?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’m still a truth-teller, my man. And, what, you like wear size fourteen shoes or something?”

“Shut up, guys,” Blaze growled.

Booker automatically went still at Jacksin’s side. Jacksin awkwardly recalled how Booker, a few years younger and pounds heavier, had gotten beat up plenty before Jacksin and Blaze stepped in and adopted him. Jacksin let his shoulder touch Booker’s in reassurance. Blaze wasn’t mad. Well, not really. At least not specifically at Booker.

“Blaze?” Jacksin questioned, taking a small step forward. Booker fell into step slightly behind him.

Jacksin’s eyes widened and he looked over at Blaze. Blaze snubbed out his cigarette, returned his lighter to his pocket, and fished out his Swiss Army Knife from the opposite pocket. Jacksin watched as a muscle twitched in Blaze’s jaw and then he turned his honey-brown eyes on him.

“I’m assuming we should check that out, Jack.”

***

“I have to say,” Booker wheezed, “this is a really stupid idea. What if it is a wolf--or wolves--attacking a deer? That could be it, right? Nothing to worry about and it’d be really stupid to interrupt.”

Blaze huffed out, “With all the building going on, I doubt there are wolves here. I mean, my mom saw one when she was fifteen, but there haven’t been any here in a long time.” He didn’t sound tired, more so annoyed.

Jacksin frowned to himself. “I don’t know. This land has been untouched for, what, ever?”

Blaze shrugged where he was stopped a bit ahead of them, the shoulders of his ill-fitting leather jacket rising and falling. “It’d be stupid not to go and find out, right?” he asked. “Anyway, half-wolf hybrids are more likely to attack you, Booker.”

“That doesn’t help damp down my fears, Blaze,” Booker snapped.

Blaze rolled his eyes and kept walking, quickly getting meters ahead of them. Jacksin tried not to jump when another dog’s noise pierced the air, sending a few songbirds into the skies and away from their pine tree homes. Booker gave Jacksin a look, eyes going all, like, manga behind those glasses of his and Jacksin could only shrug helplessly and spread his hands. Blaze could be like a dog with a bone--and a very dumb dog, too.

“You can head back if you want,” Jacksin said softly. “I just have to--”

“Make sure he’s okay, I know, I know.” Booker squinted, this time in a thoughtful and not I’m-somewhat-blind-about-now way. “I know you’re too caring for your own good.” He snorted. “Mother hen.”

Jacksin raised a hand, two fingers up, and walked faster.

“What does that even mean?” Booker asked.

Blaze growled something Jacksin didn’t quite catch; Jacksin who just followed as they went down a hill, trees thinning out, and onto some old property. He wasn’t sure who owned it, but they jumped the fence, anyway. He could hear growls crystal-clear and had to wonder how close they were to the highly possible mayhem they’d soon be stumbling over.

He tried to hold back a laugh as Booker walked around the fence, going through a gap; maybe not feeling the need to strain himself like Jacksin and Blaze had stupidly done. Booker was always oddly free from the I’m-gonna-best-you-little-beta testosterone.

Probably a good thing, really.

***

Jacksin listened to the steady stomp, stomp of Blaze’s feet against the shifting pine straw as they rounded a hill. They’d found a deer trail that wound its way back where they were supposed to go, close to the fence and Blaze’s Ford but surrounded by steep hills that would have made other routes pretty inaccessible. Now they were close. He could hear pained cries which set his heart thudding in his chest and sweat trickling down his back, down the dipped line of his spine.

Blaze was once again in the lead, but he suddenly stopped having rounded a spruce. Jacksin froze too, an automatic motion, and Booker ran right into his back, glasses and forehead hitting his shoulder blades.

“Dude,” Booker muttered.

“Shhh,” Blaze said. His hands drew up slightly, fists clenching as his elbows bent, and he ducked his head, all signs he was in a bit of stress. He looked like he was getting ready to pray, but more so like he was going to lash out than clasp his hands together at chest-level. Jacksin frowned again. It was a familiar gesture; Blaze’s version of someone taking a seat and putting their head between their legs.

“Jacksin, come over here, will you?” The tone of his voice made Jacksin serious, mental running commentary on Blaze cutting off.

“What about me?” Booker asked.

Jacksin could only shake his head. “Stay,” he uttered, before trotting quickly to Blaze’s side, careful of the twisting roots, pine straw, and leaves that covered the path they were on.

“What is it?” Jacksin asked, not daring to look. He risked a look at Blaze’s face instead.

Blaze’s face looked like it had been drained of blood and he was biting hard on his lower lip, making a clear white mark even on it. His eyes were wild and his pupils flickered in constant motion.

Jacksin’s ears picked up a clear, masculine sob.

“Do you have your phone?” Blaze asked softly.

“No, left it back at the car,” Jacksin admitted.

Blaze swore, whispering, and looked back at Booker. He made a gesture of a phone at Blaze; putting his hand in a flip phone shape--well, more or less--and raising it to his ear. Booker shook his head and then did some sort of wild move that made him look like he’d been kick-boxed in the head.

Jacksin turned to look then, finally. What he say nearly sent him stumbling away, back into Blaze and then straight onto the seat of his pants, most likely, or into a tree.

He wasn’t sure what it was--some sort of carved sandstone archway, only it was more a square-shape than an arch. It looked new, or the carvings did anyway. He kept his eyes on that to ignore what was going on below a little longer. He noticed a ring of barb wire circling a pit in the ground, it only a few feet deep and easily seen into from here. Then he finally, swallowing hard, took in the man. He was on all-fours, two dogs latched onto his skin with their teeth and pulling as he screamed. The man’s clothes were bloody and torn and so was the rest of him--and he looked like he’d been in there a while. Two more dogs circled, clearly waiting for their turn. He saw a dead-eyed brindle; a massive, long-coated giant with patchwork fur; a black chow-mix; and something that looked like a dark-colored, maybe black or chocolate, lab, which probably scarred him for life a little bit because his family had one that looked just like that when he was a kid--something he loved but after a vet trip the information that it had heart worms to a horrible extent came into play.

Jacksin’s mouth went dry--from being open, he supposed, and pure horror. His hands shook a little. Blaze just flicked out the knife section of his Swiss Army Knife and gave Jacksin a determined look. Jacksin knew what it meant.

“We’ll go around and sneak up on them, and then we’ll try and get him out and pray that the dogs don’t jump well,” Blaze said stiffly.

Jacksin then had to wonder how good of a kamikaze pilot Blaze would have made. Probably a good one.

***

Jacksin walked to Blaze’s left, them in the stark shadows from the pines and few oaks that dotted the area surrounding the clearing. They moved slowly, careful of what was going on, but Jacksin could feel the anxious energy both of them had flooding their veins. This was some criminal-level stuff, no way the guy decided to jump into a pit filled with mangy, skinny dogs on his own, right? That’s what Jacksin thought, anyway. People were crazy, though.

Soon they were three feet from the edge, crouched down. The guy hadn’t noticed them yet, but Jacksin sure noticed him--noticed his polyester shirt, a name emblazoned on the front pocket but covered partially in mud, unreadable; noticed his sweat and rolls of fat when the dogs tugged at said shirt; and noticed his gray-brown hair and wild, couple-day-old facial hair.

Jacksin’s new sneakers’ soles hit the hard packed earth hard and he let out a puff of breath before he scanned the area quickly.

The man still had one dog chewing on his arm, the dark lab-mix, but the other dog, the chow, was fallen on its side, scrambling to get up but somehow failing. Jacksin saw pooling blood under it and realized that Blaze had already dealt with that one dog, at least temporarily. Jacksin then snapped into motion and headed towards the man.

The lab snarled at him, baring teeth around the hair-covered flesh of the guy’s arm, and Jacksin just snarled back at it before bringing the makeshift club down hard on its back. It yipped and skittered away, allowing him to grab the walrus--Jacksin’s opinion--of a guy and move him away, to his best ability. So, Jacksin was tall, but he wasn’t the most muscular guy around, really. It was difficult. Soon, though, he had the guy’s back to the wall. Adrenaline worked wonders.

Jacksin felt sweat trickle down his face and felt an ache in his forearms, remembering the fact he’d been scrapping with Booker and Blaze all afternoon and now wasn’t the best time to do a two-man rescue mission. But he looked into the man’s bulging, pale eyes and panicked face and made shushing noises, even as his heart’s tempo increased and increased as he heard yips, yowls, and a few human noises coming from Blaze, who, going by sound, was in a frenzy.

The guy didn’t seem to be calming down but didn’t seem to be in cardiac arrest or anything--like Jacksin would know, though. He left him and turned to Blaze, only to see a dog directly behind himself, its hackles raised, yellow-brown eyes flashing, and yellowed teeth drawn in a toothy snarl. Jacksin’s eyes widened further and he stepped back onto the guy’s leg. The guy cried out in pain, only egging the dog on. It lunged for Jacksin’s ankles and he, belatedly, realized he’d dropped his stick helping the dude away. He kicked out, though, and nailed the dog in the chest, sending it flying.

He raised his eyes only to see Blaze’s Swiss Army Knife glinting in the sun a bit north, a meter off. Jacksin’s heart constricted in his chest and his eyes flew to Blaze, spotting his friend’s dark-clothed chest as he kicked at the chow, eyes deadlocked on the animal. Jacksin felt something cold momentarily settle over him, but he quickly went to Blaze’s side. He started to reach for his friend’s wrist, still about five feet away but really only two strides off, when the dog with the patchwork fur, forgotten in the struggle, launched itself suddenly at Blaze’s throat. Jacksin had no idea how it got there or how it managed to get itself airborne like that, he just moved. The movement turned his vision red, something he didn’t know existed out of video games.

He felt something snap in his hands and the next moment he was standing there, chest rising and falling, frantic to keep blood flowing to his brain, and sweat trickling down onto his lips. He looked at Blaze and saw horror and shock on his best friend’s face.

“Blaze?” Jacksin questioned, wondering what the look was about.

“You gotta teach me how to do that sometime,” Blaze said, but there was a level of fake cheer to his voice that sort of creeped Jacksin out.

“Do what?” Jacksin asked, still confused. He looked down at his feet. The huge dog, some sort of big mountain sheepdog or something, was laying in an awkward heap at his feet, completely still. Jacksin choked.

Blaze came to his side and touched his shoulder gently. “Hey, it’s okay. It was gonna get me, man. No harm, no foul. Pretty dog but was probably loco, anyway,” he said. He patted his back rougher and took his hand away. “You okay, though?”

“Yeah, I’m--” Jacksin felt something sticky on his fingers and looked at it. Blood was pooling in his palm. “Oh.”

Blaze followed his gaze and then suddenly let out a harsh breath. “Did you get bitten?”

“I don’t know,” Jacksin admitted, a small amount of fear running through him. “I don’t know,” he repeated.

Blaze let out another hiss and then took off his jacket and followed the move with a quick strip of his navy over shirt. He balled up the shirt and handed it to Jacksin, who could only look confused, still too caught up in adrenaline.

“Put it on your wrist and press hard, idiot,” Blaze said.

“Oh” was all Jacksin said. He took the shirt and did as instructed.

“Can you go sit by the other guy?” Blaze asked softly.

“Huh?”

“I need to go get Booker, get him to go back to the truck and call nine-one-one. You and that dude are both pretty rough, man,” Blaze said.

Jacksin felt Blaze’s eyes which were unabashedly lasered right onto his face. I can wait, sure.” He hoped that dude could wait too. He looked over at the fat guy, who didn’t look so fresh.

“Good,” Blaze said. He shook his head then and a sort of a curious smile took over his face, a barely there thing that set Jacksin feeling weird. Blaze was looking down at the dog, and then nosed the body with the toe of his shoe. “You know, I think you broke his neck,” he commented. With that comment to horrify Jacksin a little, he put a hand on Jacksin’s shoulder again.

Blaze steered Jacksin to the other guy, glaring at all the dogs. Blaze pushed at Jacksin and he just slid down the red dirt wall, not really caring if his clothing got more ruined. Blood had already sprayed up his side. Blaze looked content if a little resigned in response and then pulled out a thing of bear spray out of his pocket.

Jacksin blinked at him slowly. “Couldn’t we have used that on the dogs?”

“Forgot it,” Blaze muttered. He handed it to Jacksin, nodded briefly, and then clambered out of the pit.

Jacksin sat there feeling weird still, wondering what the heck had happened in the past ten minutes or so, and then took the time to steal a glance at the other guy, whose head had lolled. Jacksin took a deep breath and then leaned his head back against the dirt wall. He let out a long breath through his nose and tried not to notice the brindle dog’s ghoulish eyes across the pit; the mid-sized monster was watching him way too close for comfort.

He toyed with the bear spray canister carefully, deciding to keep an equal vigil on the mutt.