Jackson Lewis

Jackson Lewis was one of the most obnoxious boys ever to go through the required ranks of high school. It took him six years to complete four high school grades, and not once through those six years did he lose sleep over it. He was a rebel, one of those kids that you don't want your child to hang out with, one of those kids who can't help but laugh when they get in trouble. Yep, Jackson Lewis was no good.

Two years after he graduated, Jackson was working a dead end job as cook at a local McDonald's. He still didn't seem to care that he was going nowhere in life, or that he had no friends or interaction whatsoever with the opposite sex. He didn't have any intention of attending college or of ever leaving the security of his minimum wage job. One sad day everything changed.

It wasn't a dark and stormy night, in fact, it was one of the most beautiful days Jackson had ever had the pleasure of experiencing. His day was going perfectly. He usually spilled at least three cups of coffee on himself during the day, but that day he hadn't felt a single drop go astray. There had been no frustrated customers to deal with, and his dyslexic cashier hadn't lost the business any money that day. Yes sir, Jackson Lewis was having a wonderful day.

His boss, Mr. Blackaby, had given him a bonus and he had decided that he would very much enjoy a good cup of coffee. After two years of drinking the same brand of coffee every day, he decided that he would splurge a bit and buy a cup of Starbucks coffee. He opened the door and was immediatly hit with a wave of stench. It smelled as if something had died and then been left to rot twenty years ago. Then he realized that it was the man standing in line in front of him. Many people were just getting off from their jobs, and there was already a line backed up to the entrance. His predecessor in line looked as if he were a homeless man, he had on a dirty white shirt with holes in the armpits. He wore only a pair of tattered boxer shorts (with no shoes), yet he carried a beautiful leather bag with a brand new laptop inside. He smelled horrible, and when he ordered his Grande Cappuccino, the young woman standing at the register almost fainted. His bill was $4.95, and he promptly pulled a thick wad of unruffled hundred dollar bills out of a pocket in his laptop case and handed one to the young lady. That is when Jackson started to get suspicious.

You see, although Jackson took six years to finish high school and worked at McDonald's, he was a fairly smart human being. At the sight of this, the gears in his brain started turning thinking of every way a homeless man could have obtained a new laptop and hundred dollar bills. The only solution he came up with was theft. He had participated in his fair share of theft in high school, and had even spent some time in a correctional facitlity. He definitely knew what he was doing when it came to illegal activities.He ordered his drink, paid with a ten, got his two dollars change, and sat in the back of the small coffee shop. He kept a watchful eye on the old homeless man as he slowly sipped his outrageously expensive South American beverage.

The old man painstakingly pulled out his laptop, flipped open the screen, and started to surf the net. Jackson was too far away to see exactly what websites he was visiting, but he saw plenty of pentagrams and other strange demonic symbols. He started to get a little bit worried. He thought that this old man could be a demon or angel of destruction, he was pretty close.

After watching him for almost forty-five minutes (and spending $25 on mediocre coffee) the old man got up from his table and hobbled out the door. Jackson waited for close to fifteen more minutes for the old man to return. He never came back, so Jackson walked over to where he was sitting and sat down at his table. He opened up the laptop and powered it up. It worked perfectly. He opened up the side pocket of the beautiful leather carrying case. He slowly reached in without looking and pulled out over a thousand dollars in cash. He quickly shoved the money back into the bag, and then stuffed the laptop in and casually walked out the door.

He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but the temptation was so great that he simply couldn't not take the money or the computer. He drove like a maniac down the interstate on his way back to his hole-in-the-wall apartment. Every five minutes or so he would check the backseat where the carrying case was to make sure it was still there. He didn't really think that it was going anywhere, but he was still in shock at being lucky enough to find such a wonderful gift. This really was the best day of his life.

When he got back to his appartment, he immediately flipped open the laptop and reached in for the money. It was gone. The laptop was still there, but the money was gone. He frantically sprinted out to his car and tore it apart looking for the money. It was gone. He started up the car and drove back to the Starbucks, scouring the road for his money. It was gone, and it wasn't in the coffee shop either. He ran out the door and he thought he saw the old man out of the corner of his eye, but when he stopped, he was gone.

He got back in the car and drove back to his appartment. He was crushed, but he hadn't given up hope yet. After all, there was still a chance that he had just looked in the wrong pocket or had dropped it in his appartment. After six hours of searching, the money was still at large. He decided to power up the laptop and see what this strange old man was interested in. The wallpaper was his name, in red, on a black background. When he saw this his face grew pale and he started to shake uncontrollably. He tried to turn it off, but it wouldn't. Then pictures of him from birth up to that day flashed across the screen in a bizarre slide show. Then it flashed to live video of him in his room. Every move he made showed on the screen. Then the screen went black. Jackson frantically tried to turn the computer back on, but it was useless. A red light started blinking on the front of the screen, and it was accompanied by a beeping noise.The flashing and beeping dramatically sped up, beeping and flashing faster and faster. That was the last thing Jackson remembered.

Two days later he woke up in the hospital, and he felt like he had the worst hangover of his entire life. He was in a full body cast, and he couldn't feel his arms or legs at all. The light in his room was turned off, and he couldn't really make out anything in the room. He could see lights about thirty feet away, but there was none of the usual frantic scrambling that takes place inside a hospital. He heard no voices. He saw no other rooms, and when he was finally able to slowly move his head, he realized that he wasn't in a hospital at all. He seemed to be in someone's basement. His eyes were growing acustomed to the dark and he wished that he still couldn't see. He saw blood on the ground, along with chains, whips, and knives hanging from the wall. The lights he saw were candles, arranged almost cerimoniously. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the old man from the coffee shop.
"This was a test," he said,"and you failed."

The police found the body of Jackson Lewis three days later in the basement of an abandoned home in the mountains of East Tennessee. He had been visciously mutilated, almost beyond recognition. A message written in blood had been left on the wall. It read "I had chances all my life to change, I never took them." His killer was never apprehended.