The cylindrical object spun through the space, end over end, in slow motion. Drops of condensation streamed out from its surface as it spun. Its contents were violently erupting inside the vessel and pushing out of the predetermined void at the top, also hurtling its volatile contents everywhere as it descended into ultimate shame.
The red, the white, the red, the blue, the white, the red, the white, the red, the blue, until you could no longer tell as it broke known speed records, gaining speed in a demented violation of physical law. Enough was enough. It was the actual limit.
Miles of wheels turning, music playing, temptation, recklessness, love, alienation, everything Jus thought he was passed through his mind as the bullet that would hurt more than any other was spinning towards him. If those with a similar fate could give one more statement, they would tell you that they never saw the gunfighter draw his weapon.
More defiance! Even though Jus had no case to defend, he did so without substance or merit. All of his failures sat right alongside him in this room tonight. Three years earlier, he sat in this room surrounded by people who loved him as he left for good. Tonight, he was back.
More boastful talk of defiance erupted from him, and that is when everything in motion made contact. With its blue inscription, the white and red cylinder made contact with Jus, striking him so hard and surprisingly that it instantly stopped his words. Its contents, ice cold, drenched him instantly. Rage beyond anything he had ever felt before appeared deep within him in less than a second. He had never felt anger so intense. The rage became him.
Instead of fighting as he had been doing before the collision, he went silent. Something had just changed in him. Every word that now came from the man who had made him and had destroyed him took him apart piece by piece relentlessly, and he was just getting started. Later in the darkness, Jus plotted another escape; this time, he would no longer talk.
In the light of day, the damage done during the battle that raged into the night was visible everywhere. This was the end, Jus was sure of it. It all came down on him at once. The last 3 months rained down on him and all of its corruption, and even worse, it was all on him. Now, he needed to fix it, because he was dead, and he just needed to set things right before he could no longer do so. He saw no future; he only needed to subdue his ability to inflict damage on anyone going forward.
As the days of devastation passed, Jus made all the hard decisions that didn't show him in a flattering light, but he began to repair the damage he had caused. This level of honesty was something he had not felt since he was a child. Each day, the outlook seemed better as long as he stayed down on the floor, silent and offering nothing.
Sitting in a room with strangers, stripped down to truth and bone, a path materialized before Jus. He would retrace his steps across the battlefields he had left burned and offer help building new paths and bridges. It was not his idea, and he was not even going to do it, but when he was so low, every bit of constructive advice seemed to be the right thing to do. This so-called self-improvement became his mission, and as it began, he couldn't imagine how far it would take him.
He had to break one more heart now, that would hurt one of them for seven more years, and Jus forever, as he rose early one morning in October and boarded the boat heading north. He could feel the world changing hard from cancer, thriving on the world stage. Echoes of his southern dream and crash landing played as he crossed the river into Memphis. In the corner, the piano man summed up man's folly in a foretelling of an ADHD society.
In the dark, he returned to the scene where everything unravelled. There was no more war, only a tender welcome from Maarja. He saw it as hope. Just like the year before, the mountains around him held great promise. It was where he wanted to be. The climate changed here. Work was scarce and not so easy to secure.
In the darkness, within days of arriving, an assassin mapped out a mission on the crisp night air. What had been taken away from him, he wanted it back. His mission would go critical depending on the opposition he received because it was personal. He moved in the dark, on foot, with great stealth. If his target, Jus, had gone down, the assassin would have appeared never to have left the public eye.
It was just another night for the Jus and Maarja, when there was a knock on the door. As soon as Jus saw him, he knew who the visitor was. Maarja screamed. But the assassin stayed on task; he just needed an honest answer to one question. Jus, who had been on a quest for brutal honesty, walked directly up to this man, whom he had been told was the enemy, dangerous, and abusive. He realized that everything he knew about him resulted from slanderous manipulation to get Jus to do things.
Jus stood before him and told him that with all he had seen, he would fight to the ends of the earth for the man who had, up until this point, been so wrongly accused. Jus had the evidence to clear him and help him get what he was fighting for with all his heart.
They walked outside and had the most starkly honest conversation Jus had ever experienced. He learned this might have been his last night on earth, but the truth had won. If matters were never straight before, they were tonight. He offered the man a ride, and a most unlikely friendship ignited that night.
Something about this man made Jus yearn for a certain quality he possessed. Jus had bared his soul for the last month, and he was so weak, but at the same time, great hope for the future surged within him; he just had no idea how to move forward, until now. The man he met was so sure of himself, like no one he had ever met. It was a treasure Jus wanted. He was done being what he had been his whole life, a victim of the wind's direction. He needed to be a rock. A rock he would be. He no longer feared the bamboo cages along the River Kwai. He was now used to incredible discomfort and humiliation. It was a price he was willing to pay. He would break himself, and now he walked into a building he had sworn to never set foot in and surrendered.
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