Remnants of the Past

Jasper

Jasper enjoyed his time spent in the green hills of Indiana. The rustic cabin, once owned by his parents, provided him with relaxation from his time in the city. In his never-ending search for solace, he always traveled to the cabin alone. It allowed him the freedom to answer the call of the many voices in his head. A litany of characters resided in his mind. The script was an ever-changing ballad of insanity, with Jasper cast as the puppet, for the authors that penetrated his thoughts. His fight was futile when the strings were plucked by the puppet masters. This trip would be no different.

Jasper had lived with his sister, Aurora, since his parent's deaths ten years prior. Aurora saw to Jasper's everyday needs and managed the family funds left as an inheritance. Aurora knew only a sense of duty in caring for her brother; the voices were his alone to answer. Once a month she drove her sibling to the cabin leaving him with the needed supplies of living. She never failed to retrieve him when the moon rose full.

'You about ready to head out?" Aurora asked. The large boned woman reeked of her own special brand of toilet water, alcohol and urine. Her hair was frazzled in a frantic frenzy of fly-aways from the humidity of the day. Her lips, painted with a stick of dark burgundy, stood out like a stop light in the fog of night against her pale and vein-lined skin. Her bloodshot eyes and bulbous nose told the sad tale of someone who had found the answers to her voices in the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

"Yep, just have to grab my radio," Jasper said eager to be out of the woman's control and delivered to the puppet masters that loved him. First impressions of Jasper portrayed him as a farm boy with his denim overalls and slow emerging smile. Yet, there was intelligence behind the eyes that seemed misplaced. His hair, smooth and lightly peppered offered a sleek and shiny appearance, hinting at a nonexistent grooming regimen. Jasper, if tossed into a business suit, would present a fine figure with his muscle lined torso. He was proud that his biceps were the product of actual weight lifting and not cow tipping. Unlike his sister, he smelled of pine and gender-specific hormones dispensing a pleasant and masculine aroma.

On the drive, there was no conversation to be had, as they had said all they ever needed years before. The long and winding hills of Indiana seemed perpetual when suffered in silence. Even their shared telepathy brought consternation and boredom, the mutual mental playgrounds had been explored much too often. There were no exciting dips and turns, left to captivate the reader. They numbed themselves to the thought waves of the other.

Jasper was welcomed as soon as he entered the cabin with a chorus of voices greeting him.

"Hey, Jasper boy, how's it hanging?' said the disembodied croak of Jasper's old friend.

"J.J. my man, we missed you," said the second crooning boyish voice

"Hello, sweet boy. Sadie was looking for her some sugar. You're just what the doctor ordered," the voice said dripping in feminine glucose.

Jasper smiled as a hundred voices of his mind echoed jubilance in unison. He was home. Aurora brought the supplies into the cabin, ignoring the deafening sound of Jasper's playmates. The party was not created in her honor. Her parents had told her often to stay away from Jasper when his friends were visiting. She stared at her brother attempting to bore into his psyche, past the whispers of the wandering mutants congregated in his head. "I'm leaving now. Anything else before I go?" was the message she fought to relay. His demonic glare was the only response. She had been shuttled from his playground. She left quietly closing the door behind her.

He moved about the small three-room cabin, inviting all his friends to visit. Even in the heat of summer, he enjoyed a roaring fire. He pointed his silver orbs of vision toward the hearth and the fire crackled to life. There would be roasted venison for dinner, enough to feed the crowd that had descended on the cabin. He turned in a ballet-style pirouette and his clothes vanished because he willed it. Six-point antlers sprouted on top of his head as his incisors grew into the fangs of a predator. His hands spawned as the cloves of a woodland creature. He was so accustomed to the transformation that he no longer felt the mutant ribosome twisting to allow for the birth of his new characteristics. He slipped into the changes like a new pair of slippers. Jasper frolicked with his friends before dining.

Aurora drove the path home, trying to rid herself of indignant feelings towards her brother. Her molten thoughts were always there just at the surface waiting to boil over. Her resentment was built on years of being eclipsed by Jasper's powers. Their parents had promoted him as the golden child. The DNA injections, the pair had been subjected to as children had thrived in Jasper. The sequencing of the DNA had instilled her brother with capabilities beyond the scientist's expectations. Aurora had suffered serious adverse reactions to the injections and the experimentation had to be halted. Telepathy was the lasting residue for Aurora. She thought of herself as the failed lab rat of the family. As an added slap in the face, her parents had left Jasper the inheritance. Aurora was named as trustee with stipulations that Jasper be granted all of the funds needed to carry on their work. She was limited in her powers of veto for his use of the funds. The inheritance would revert back to Aurora only with the death of Jasper. The irony that her brother was their parent's executioner did not escape Aurora's notice. She also knew that Jasper had no choice but to kill them. They had started self-experimentation to retard the aging process. The outcome was dismal and grotesque. She had to give Jasper credit for standing up to the beasts they had become, for they terrified her in their final days.

After dinner, Jasper took his friends to the field near the cabin to play. The animals at the edge of the woods scattered. The animal instinct for preservation is well documented. They ran as if a forest fire was beginning.

Sadie called to Jasper from the depths of his mind, "Seems like the animals are afraid of you for some reason, sweetie." It was followed by a sinister belly laugh.

"Jasper, there's a fox that hasn't quite gotten away yet. Can you snare him?" another voice whispered in his head.

Jasper took off in pursuit. His hooves skittered across the dirt as he chased his prey, like a mythical phoenix taking off in flight. The fox was trapped before Jasper had even reached his full speed. He carried the whimpering canine in his mouth back to the field. His desire to eat the animal was weighted against the need to continue the experiments. He chose the latter. He injected the squirming and bloody dog in the hindquarters, releasing it back into the woods. The voices in his head cheered. They spent the next hour randomly grabbing wildlife creatures and introducing them to the same syringe full of DNA altering juice Jasper's parents had used on him. The woods near Jasper's cabin contained animals never seen in the traditional zoo. It was a menagerie of talking, thinking, maniacal beasts that now wandered through the woodlands.

On the drive home, Aurora had her friend seated beside her. She and Jack Daniels were an intimate duo. She continued to froth with anger at the thought of Jasper getting everything that she was entitled to. She had once tried to tell her parents that the injections were causing her brother to hear voices. Aurora considered the voices a sign of insanity, her parents believed them to be a gift. The injections continued for Jasper, with Aurora being pushed further into the cold and lonely childhood she remembered. She thought about the mental games Jasper and she used to play. They had practiced blocking out each other's thoughts. "Surprise" was the name the pair had dubbed the game. You won the game by being able to complete a task without the other one knowing, Her talent failed to impress her parents, but Aurora knew it was her gift.

Without concentrating on the reasons, Jack Daniels and Aurora looped the car back towards the cabin.

Jasper had crashed in slumber on the floor of the cabin, after finishing his lab work for the day. His playmates stood watch as he slept. They failed to hear the approaching car. Aurora crept from her seat, carrying her friend in one hand and large gas can in the other. She doused the cabin with the liquid. Jack steadied her hands enabling her to light the match. She tossed the flickering flame at the house. The fluid burst into flames lapping at the old and dry wood, like a hungry dog. The cabin was engulfed in the flaming fury of fire before Jasper came bursting through the door to make his escape. The voices screamed in agony behind him. Aurora was ready for him, she doused her brother, the hoofed creature of her parent's making, with her combustible fluid of salvation.

"Surprise! I win!" she yelled as she incinerated her sibling. Jasper melted on the ground, with his mutant nerve endings sizzling in an electrifying show of fireworks. His sorrowful cries frightened the woodland animals away for the second time that day.

Word Count 1620