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The Jackyl

Written by castor :: [Thursday, 09 May 2013 01:09] Last updated by :: [Monday, 26 August 2013 01:55]

The Jackyl

By Castor

 (special thanks to Dru1076 for proofreading and editing)

 

Society, Janna had decided, was complicated. It wasn't precisely that she was against it. She had no ambition to destroy the world or the people who lived there. She similarly had no intention to rule it. She didn't know what she would do with Earth if she got it.
Nor was that strictly speaking possible. She was strong. Strong as anyone. Faster, more powerful...she had taken more then her fair share of bullets. Handguns were wind. Machine guns stun. She was so fast; she had taken out dozens of enemies. However artillery...grenades...she had tasted her own blood. And these where the tools of society in the end. 


This created the complication.


She pushed the stroller forward through the Disneyland street.


The stroller, like the 66 dollars she had paid to get her self in, and the 44 dollars she paid to get her son Thomas in, may not have been strictly necessarily. Thomas was 3, about the age where he could walk more or less by himself, but got tuckered out. Also, from his stroller he was able to appreciate the world. He liked Mickey Mouse, he liked Donald Duck. He was loving

 

Adventureland. She had been here once, many years ago. It looked different. She remembered a long line out of the jungle cruise. Now there was a neat rattan building...but still a long line. 


She wondered if the long line was, strictly speaking, necessary. Yes, she could jump over the park’s outer walls with Tommy, and no one would be the wiser. Here it would cause a...a fuss. And the fuss, fighting off guards and creating mass panic, that wouldn't be fun. At least, not fun for Thomas, which was after all, the point of being here. 

 

Thomas pointed, and Janna told him what had grabbed his attention. "It's the Jungle Cruise. You ride around in a boat, all around

the world, and see lots of animals, tigers, and zebras and..."

 

Thomas cried enthusiastically: "I WANT TO GO!!!!”

 

And so they went.

The line, as it turned out, wasn't that bad. She observed they had made an effort to make it visually interesting: little pictures, drawings old-timey radio. It was hot. She could feel hot. She was dressed in jeans, an old t-shirt...kind of fuddly. It would be easy to say she was beautiful, with her long legs, her muscled stomach, her toned arms, and breasts that defied air. However, in this outfit well...all that one could really see where her eyes. a dark blue that somehow defied description. Nothing to do with beauty or grace, but just description...something that words couldn't catch. A man in line looked at them for a second but turned away. 

 

But not Thomas. Even the lines were to his liking. He smiled and giggled. And even when he sat in his stroller, he was giddy. She had worried that this would be too much. She had recently robbed a jewellery store of close to a million dollars in jewellery...and picked up a 100k for the work, but still, a hundred dollars wasn't worth an hour with a crying toddler. One had standards. But

Thomas looked up and he caught his mothers’ eye. And she saw love.

When the time came, a woman in a safari outfit loaded her and Thomas, as well as 20 other patrons, into a 20-foot long boat...and then a tall handsome looking man started with his spiel. It was corny. Did it used to be this corny? Yes. The engine hummed in a way suggested it was real.


The animals of course, were also fake. However they were fake in a charming, slightly stylised, way. The park had the air a bit of being built recently, this however looked timeless. Rhinos chased explorers up a tree. Hyenas cackled.


"Ooh a lion," said Thomas. It growled.


She had fought a lion once. Several years ago. It had been on a merc mission in a druglord’s base in north Mexico. She faced guns, explosives as she came over the wall stupidly, some more stealthy manoeuvring. Then she had stumbled across the lion...she was lucky no bears. Disney’s lion was fearsome yes, but had the aura of health. That lion in Mexico had looked a bit sickly...yet strong, as strong as any creature she had ever seen, but it also possessed the air of hunger. Ravenous, flea-bitten hunger. Fleas couldn't bit her skin, but she still felt them. 


It was soon after that, when she was still in Mexico, that she learned she was pregnant. It was then she had decided to give up merc missions and turn to straight theft. It was easier. Rarely as lucrative once a fence came in, but easier. Less lions.
A hippo created a bump at the bottom of the boat. Thomas cried out and hugged her.


A few minutes later they got off the boat. There was a stand selling pineapple ice-cream. She liked pineapple ice-cream. Thomas did too. As they stopped, they sat down in the fake jungle while a 100 people walked every minute. Thomas was looking at a map. Space Mountain. Autopia. He was smart enough to realize they were on the other side of the park. She could have gotten them there in about five seconds at sprint, but...but...


She looked at the people. They were all kinds, all races and many people older then you might have expected at Disneyland. As a child you don't realize your parents were actually young. Her parents where young when they died. But the crowd was older...many without children, many alone. But many.


She paused. 


It was moments like this that she realized the absurdity of her life. She was a wanted criminal. To the media a monster...a fearsome thing. Yet here she was. Caring for her child. Make no mistake. He had jumped with her as super-powered muscles carried her a 100 miles, travelled with her 70 miles an hour(as fast as she dared). But he was too young to realize the contradiction.  


At some point that would change. At some point. She stole from the rich...it was easier, and less morally repugnant. Europe, America. It also meant, however, it would be harder to hide. She had toyed with changing sides, of becoming something else. But too many bodies lay in her wake. Far too many. So even if she got enough money to live for a thousand years...there would come a day.


And Thomas would be at her side. Asking what she did. And she would have to answer, for she could not lie to him. 


However, that was not this day. She took her child’s hand, and walked by the River of America’s Past, a Dixieland band.  

(Hope you like the story. There’s a phrase in LA that everyone goes to Disneyland) 
 

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