A Divine Intervention

“You know,” Gabe muttered, attempting to lose himself in the Poker game a third time before finally giving up, “I was never really religious. Didn’t think much about what came after. If there was some kind of Heaven or Hell or whatever, I imagined what everybody thinks about. Pitchforks, demons, fire, all that.”

Jason merely nodded, silent.

The first thing he’d noticed upon walking in the front door was the smell of beer and cigarettes. Sure enough, on the table next to Gabe’s chair were several beer bottles and a recently-emptied ashtray.

Now torn fabric of an old couch pushed against his back as he listened patiently to the man who appeared to be talking more to himself than anyone else.

He cares more about himself than anyone around him. At least, that’s what most would assume.

Electricity hummed between his gut and diaphragm unmistakably familiar. His instincts could sense something was off about that interpretation, and when they sensed something was off, he learned a long time ago to listen.

“Centurion Dakota, lower your weapon.” he said, hands shaking but getting steadier as the electricity in his gut began to settle towards laminar flow.
Something is off about this cavern. This doesn’t make sense.

Dakota’s blade hovered over the myrmeke egg, generating just enough light to expose the cracks beginning to claw their way out.
“Are you giving me an order, Legionnaire?”
The cave was so dark that he couldn’t see his hands in front of his face.
“Yes.” He—Legionnaire Jason, Fifth Cohort—insisted, not knowing why, “Yes I am.”
Centurion looked to Praetor. Praetor looked at Jason. Jason looked back at her.
“You aren’t seriously going to—” Dakota muttered in disbelief.
“The order stands, Centurion,” Praetor Gwendolyn said, “Heed it.”
Dakota glared at him, both of them.
“If this gets us killed, their blood will be on your hands.”
Jason nodded.

“Both of you.” Dakota’s eyes narrowed at Gwendolyn.
“Understood, Centurion.” Jason and Gwendolyn answered as one.

Except it wasn’t just one egg. It had been a nest. Saving them from the one would’ve doomed them all.

If my gut tells me there’s more to him than meets the eye, then that is what I’m going with.

“Imagine my surprise when there is somethin’ that comes after, and my personal Hell of sorts…“, Gabe said, putting the cigar choked between his fingers back to his lips. He blew smoke towards kitchen, “is the life I was livin’ before!”

The laugh rose out of his throat and tripped on his lip, falling out as a disoriented sigh. The sigh batted his gaze down, taking one long look at the hand he’d been dealt…and dragged down his double chin, hitting his beer belly as a bitter grunt.

“The beer ain’t bad, and the Poker is…well…I was never a math guy,” he pointed to the poor DELL Latitude running video poker against its will.

A list of scores hammered their way onto the screen trying to signal for help amid the layers of cigarette smoke, dust, ash and burnt nacho dip that were pressed against it.

P-L-A-Y-E-R-S-|-W-I-N-S-|-L-O-S-S-E-S--
G-A-B-E-J-|-3-|-1-9-7

(Laptop displays a table of Players, Wins, Losses. GABEJ is recorded with 3 wins, and 197 losses)

“But I’m pretty sure something with horns is trying to make a point about human greed, because there are casinos with better odds than I’m getting.”

Jason continued to nod in acknowledgment, offering a gentle smile. Gabe rambled like a man who didn’t have many people he could talk to. Laughing at his own jokes, talking without any expectation that someone was listening.
Jason had always been good at listening.

The loner studied him. Eyes narrowing, then blinking slowly.

“The silent treatment, eh? Never liked quiet. Makes you reeeally start thinking about things.” His head leaned back as he began staring at the ceiling, hand reaching for the one bottle on the table with anything in it. “Kind of thing that makes you sit on a Saturday morning with a hangover and wonder if this is really what you wanna be doin’ with your Saturday mornings.”

From the stories Jason had heard, Gabe Jackson was not a self-reflective man. He always blamed other people, especially his partner.

So Jason squinted a bit.

“You don’t seem to be blaming her.”

He waved it off, taking another sip from the bottle and belching.

“Used to. Don’t. Always talking crap about her, easier that way. But once you know that she’s gone and she isn’t coming back, that what you do each day is all on you, well…to tell it to you straight, kid, I got sick and tired of lying to myself.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed.

“Lying to yourself?”

“If there are saints,” Gabe pointed at the cracked and marred ceiling, “then I expect her to be up there with them.”

He set the bottle back down, eyeing the kitchen…mournfully?

“If she made a mistake, I didn’t see it and don’t care to be reminded of it.”

He glared at the boy sitting across the table from him in warning.

Like he could make Jason pay from where he was sitting.

“It was all on me.” He pointed to himself, frowning. “I didn’t deserve her, and I was bringing her down thinking I did. She stuck with me through it all, months after I’d given up on myself, and she never got so much as a thank you.”

He pulled the old DELL into his lap, scoffing to himself as he stared at the useful distraction.

“No, I will not activate Windows you piece of junk…”

The living piece of computing history coughed and sputtered hot air through the sides as a definitely-pirated copy of Windows XP wrung the startup sound out of very shot speakers.

“To be frank, I was the deadbeat dad in somebody else’s tragic backstory. I never went anywhere, never changed, never grew. Just as pathetic as I always was.”

Pathetic? You don’t sound pathetic to me.

“Do you know how I died?”

Jason shook his head.

“No, I’m afraid not.”

The older man began gesturing around the house, towards the kitchen fridge and then towards a pair of framed katanas hanging on the opposite wall.

“Medusa. Her kid—err, Sally’s kid, sorry. He was a hero, straight up,” he said, his eyes lighting up within seconds, “facing things I never saw in my nightmares, cutting a snake lady’s head off with his own sword.” He made a slicing motion with the beer bottle that sloshed the lukewarm contents. “And he knew how to use a sword, too,” twitchy fingers gestured to the framed katanas. “Not that stupid Kendo crap I did at 8 thinking I was Samurai Jack incarnated.”

His eyes went back to staring at the ceiling as he remembered the exact turn of events.

“She left it in the fridge. I… became the meal I was lookin’ for. Fitting, oddly enough.”

His smile was just as crooked as his relationship had been. His laugh as cracked as the dining room table.

He can joke about it now.

But that thought, the man he’d been, the man he was now…

…made him frown again.

“Twelve years stuck in stone, never moving, never changing, never gettin’ any better or worse. Finally stared at something that was as ugly on the outside as I was on the inside, and it made my body and my heart match. Stone all the way through.”

Jagged fingers held the bottle limply, setting it back on the table with a tiny clinking sound. He heaved a sigh, and stared at the floor. At the beer belly, at the double chin of the man in the mirror.

This poor soul…

“The same pathetic loser too scared to look at the man in the mirror, now frozen exactly as he was forever.”

‘pathetic loser’.

That’s how he sees himself.

The cracked coffee table, the old laptop, the beer bottles, the body he hated. The swords he hadn’t touched in years.

This is what he thinks he deserves.

“Poetic, and…actually…Jason said quietly, leaning forward now. Studying the self-loathing man’s face as the loner had once studied his. “…may I ask you something about what I’m hearing?”

The old eyes raised, staring at a point above the boy’s left shoulder.

“Oh? Go ahead. I have literally nothing but time.”

Then, quieter, under his breath:

“I’m surprised you care.”

“Perhaps you were a ‘pathetic loser too scared to look at the man in the mirror’. Even if that may be true.” Jason said, looking down to choose his words carefully. “Did that framing help you?”

Then, quieter, under his breath:

“All that hate, and it never made you any better.”

Information can be entirely accurate, and still fail to be useful.

Gabe’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Framing. That word, I’ve heard it from therapy speak and the like.” He muttered, scratching his bottom chin. Turned, straightened. “You tryin’ to fix me, kid?”

Jason nodded slowly.

“Seeing someone loathe themselves is a difficult thing. Besides, I like helping people.” He said, gesturing to the apartment at large. “And we’re both dead anyway, so if I lose a decade on a fool’s errand, barking up the wrong proverbial tree, what does that cost me besides the one thing we both have an unlimited amount of?”

“And if I ignore you and fight it tooth and nail?” Gabe countered, smirking like his old stubborn self again.

Then the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees, both figuratively speaking, and literally…given who Jason’s father was.

“You’re the one who has to live with your choices, Mr. Jackson.” Jason said, and finally gestured to the wreck of a room.

CRT stuck on the same baseball games for so long that the Yankees logo had permanently burned itself into the bottom middle of the screen. Dining table cracked and bruised from years of Poker games with friends who’d never really been friends when the chips were down and the bets were off. Random Baseball cards from half-hearted attempts at the whole ‘being a Dad’ thing kicked into piles in corners. Playing cards and Poker chips scattered around table legs from particularly bad games—and bluffs he should’ve caught but didn’t. Paper wads gathering dust bunnies under liquor-drenched couches.

“Do you want to live like this? Is this the room you want to wake up to tomorrow morning, and the morning after that?” Jason finished.

Gabe groaned and cracked open another beer with a hissing sound. His fingers froze over it. His eyes widened then narrowed as he watched the bits of foam rise at the corners.

“No,” he said, so quietly you could’ve been mistaken for assuming he was talking to himself. “But changing is hard,” his hands rose defensively at his sides, “rotting away is easy. I like easy. Easy’s nice.”

Then Jason hit him with the question that made a dent in the armor.

“I think I’ll just wait until you get tired of telling yourself that lie, too,” Jason said, then stood up and straightened himself. He brushed cigar ash off his monochrome shirt. “Let me know when that happens. I won’t be checking up on you. You’ll have to track me down yourself.”

“Hey now, wait just a minute.” Gabe muttered, and tried to stand up, but the fat resisted his struggle and he gave up, sinking back down into the chair. “You’re from Elysium. I’m in the Fields of Punishment. They aren’t going to let me just leave, you know…”

His eyes batted left and right.

The door. The kitchen. The doorknob. The swords.

Jason stepped around the couch, opening the door with a wind gust.

“I thought you said you like easy,” The boy asked, “why would you want to leave this apartment?”

He picked a cold beer out of the cooler and tossed it over. Gabe caught it instinctively, and stared down at it.

“The beer isn’t so bad, you’re getting better at Poker with every game. There’s nobody around to trip on the floor. What’s not to like?” Jason offered.

step-step-step-thud.

Jason was standing in the foyer now.

“Not fair…” Gabe whined under his breath.

He was a two-hundred-eighty-something-pound alcoholic who hadn’t done an exercise regimen since Senior year, trying to catch an Olympian-level athlete who’d just made his apartment door automatic through sheer force of will.

The wind gust rebounded off the foyer wall to waft the smell of beer back into his nostrils again.

“What if I change my mind?” he insisted, trying to haul himself out of his chair again. He made it all the way to his feet before his legs buckled and he dropped to the floor, groaning at his own body as he pulled himself up by the arm of the couch. “What if I decide I don’t like it? You can’t just offer me a choice then take it away when I don’t immediately bite!”

He grabbed the cold beer off the table and chucked it in the boy’s general direction. His aim was terrible, and he knew it.

All the boy had to do was flick his wrist.

The adrenaline of the man’s struggle turned the world into two polished still-frames.

Rogue spark. Friction.

Katana grinds against mount.

Blade cleaves bottle. Two clean halves.

Brown frost bleeds. Entry wound.

Katana falls—

—fell to the floor next to the frozen cylinder of amber-toned desperation, surrounded by two clean halves of glass. Jason rested his foot on the top half.

“Son of Jupiter,” He remarked, rolling the other half back towards Gabe as the old drunk got back onto his own two feet again.

“You could’ve blocked that,” Gabe mumbled, “or swatted it way. Show-off.”

Jason shrugged.

“I’m starting to lean more into theatrics.” He sighed. “I blame Octavian.”

The two paused and stared at each other for a while.

Jason, analyzing Mr. Jackson’s body the way Octavian had taught him to.

Chronically dehydrated. Malnourished. Severe muscular atrophy. Compressed lumbar. BMI of 37.5.

Then past the numbers the way he’d taught Octavian to.

Mr. Jackson’s body heaved at the strain as he stood at full height. Seventy-three inches and two-hundred-eighty-four pounds of tired, bitter man who’d long since given up on himself. Eyes with lost sleep and chronic dehydration carved into them like scars. Beer belly that played echoes of every movement he forced himself to make. Knees drowning in fat and cartilage, a heart somewhere above them pushing blood down bore-hole pipes to keep the sinking ship out of the water a few hours longer.

And finally Mr. Jackson, reminded of how Jason… was the very soul of Senior year Gabe Ugliano. Athletic, lean, tall, charming smile, gentle demeanor. Strong enough to be gentle, wise enough to be kind.

Reminding him of all the ways Gabe Jackson wasn’t any of those things. Too weak to be rough, too stupid to be considered cruel.

“Probably thinks I’m pathetic.” Gabe muttered to himself.

With more water in his diet, more greens, and cardio three days a week, he could be in good physical health in six weeks or so. The only thing holding him back is himself.

“You always have a choice, Mr. Jackson,” Jason began, and gestured to the CRT, “what you put on that TV is a choice,” then the paper wads gathering dust bunnies, “what your floor looks like is a choice,” the beer bottles on the table, “what you put in your body is a choice.” He said, slow and steady. “Each moment is a choice, and one rarely set in stone.”

Gabe fixated on the beer bottles. “You think I can just—”

“Quit drinking?”

A nod from Gabe, then from Jason.

“Possibly. Over 70% of alcoholics get sober without medical intervention.” Jason said, then gestured to the Poker game. “Your odds are better than you think, Mr. Jackson. You just need to find out what winning means for you, and learn to take a couple chances on yourself.”

“I’ll never be able to track you down.” Gabe countered, gesturing to the apartment door.

Jason stiffened slightly.

“Your apartment isn’t even locked. There’s no guard outside. If I were a betting man, I’d say they don’t really consider you a risk. The worst you’ll get for leaving is a stern talking to from an over-worked skeleton.”

“You ain’t a betting man,” Gabe muttered, and Jason squinted at him.

“I beg to differ. You are quite a gamble, Mr. Jackson.”

“How would I even find you?” Gabe grunted, dodging the compliment.

“I have a lot of friends, Mr. Jackson. Ask around. People are more than willing to help, you just have to let them know how.”

“Guess I’ll… see you around.” Gabe laughed at the notion, but played along anyway.

Jason just laughed and smiled back at him.

“I look forward to it.”