The Desire Principle Ch. 01

The thugs had begun taking turn, kicking Jake's prone form to release aggression over their failed mugging. The second time that Jake took a foot to the head he had vain hopes that it would knock him out so that he didn't have to sit through the rest of the scene, but he was disappointed when it actually brought him more lucidity. The next moments couldn't come and go fast enough for his taste. Incidentally over those moments his taste was mostly that of blood.

When the cadre of miscreants finally wore themselves out, Jake was distantly aware of a liberal amount of moisture being deposited on his face and shoulders. He didn't want to know what it was, and for once he was granted his wish by a fast approaching unconsciousness. The last sound he heard was his car starting.

*****

It was still quite dark when Jake woke up. He was closer to the river than he remembered being when he passed out, but he accepted that pretty much anything he remembered was suspect given that he did clearly remember a severe head wound. He rose first to a sitting position and then tried his best at kneeling, resulting in him falling forward and catching himself on his hands.

Apparently stopping by his old hangout wasn't the best idea he could have had. He knelt there in the soggy dirt staring at his grimy, bloody hands. He mentally counted off all of the reasons why today had been such a shitty day, and sighed knowing that even his memory of actually witnessing someone get a hummer in a theatre would be tainted. He sat back on his feet and stared off across the narrow span of water at some swaying grass.

Somehow, without any confusion, he knew that this moment right here was, and would always be, the worst moment of his life. It wasn't that anything terrible was happing at just that instant, but it was now that everything sunk in. He had no job, was falling behind on his bills, had just been beaten within an inch of his life, and... Something caught his attention.

There was a cold sensation in Jake's left hand. He looked down dazedly and realized that when he had sat up he also drug his limp hands through the soil. He drew his hand back in revulsion at first, expecting that the feeling was a leech or some insect. He was surprised to see a tiny glint of light reflect off of something as it fell from his hand back to the ground. Ever the curious sort, he reached down to extract the mystery from the loose dirt it rested on.

Jake spent a matter of moments cleaning off a small, golden heart. It looked very much like a locket one might find in an antique store. There was fine engraving all about the front and back, and the raised edges were remarkably well polished for something found mired in silt and soil beside a river. A tiny loop at the top would allow it to be strung onto a necklace, but there was no chain attached. The weight of the trinket seemed to suggest that it could be actual gold, and it was certainly bright enough.

It wasn't much, but having found anything of value today was a major triumph for the fallen Jacob Watts, and he wasn't going to pass up anything. He attempted a few times to find a seam along the side of the heart. It looked so much like a locket that he had a hard time accepting that it was just a little lump of metal. He had to resign however that with all of the dirt packed onto it he wasn't going to make any headway. He crawled over to the edge of the water and briefly dipped the trinket under the surface, pushing away the dirt with his fingertips before extracting it again. He looked over it once more, seeing that it was now polished to a mirror's shine. He was impressed with how little it took, and then received his next surprise of the day.

"What's that you got there?" The voice startled him, and for a moment he thought that he was in for his second round of beating, but this voice was different, and coming from straight ahead. Jake looked up to find an old man with thin grey hair and pockmarked skin standing ankle deep in the water. He wore a very normal ensemble plaid shirt and khaki's, and was possibly all the creepier for it. And then he grinned. A lopsided smile which revealed uneven teeth, more than one of them cracked or broken off. Jake's ease faded.

"Where did you come from?" Jake was growing a bit of nerve this evening, and felt justified after all of the shit he'd been through that being a little short tempered was not well within his rights.

The weird old guy laughed, and Jake was even more unsettled. "I come from lots of places, sonny. Never you mind that. Still like to know what you found, though."

Glancing down at his hand, instinctively closed around the heart, he thought for a moment and came back with, "I don't think it's any of your business." He climbed to his feet and glared defiantly into the aging face's grey eyes. The old man laughed again, and curled his mouth back into that hideous smile. It unsettled Jake in a way that he couldn't describe, and in some small way it even angered him.

The old man tossed his hands up in defeat, still grinning like some evil imp. "Have it your way, sonny. But don't come calling to me when you can't figure out how to use it." He turned, surprisingly, toward the center of the river and began to take a step.

"Use what?" Jake was experiencing a lot of emotions ranging from anger to fear to general confusion, but he caught what the old man was implying. "What do you know about this thing?"

"I thought it was none of my business." His wrinkled face glanced over his shoulder with that same damned shit-eating grin he'd been wearing.

"Look, in case you couldn't tell by the blood and dirt, I'm having a bad day. Don't be coy, just tell me what this thing is, okay?"

Turning back to face Jake fully, the man looked and sounded a little more serious. "It's whatever your heart desires." That wasn't the sort of answer Jake had been looking for. He wasn't equipped, mentally or physically, to deal with any more bullshit.

"Don't jerk me around here, you know something."

Another laugh, and a return of the grin, this time wider. Something about that grin pissed Jake off a lot more than he was comfortable with. He diverted his gaze up to the full moon as it came out from behind a cloud and then headed for another. The croaking voice spoke. "You wouldn't understand it if I tried to explain."

"Try me," shot back Jake, flatly.

"Can't." The grin became larger and more annoying. "I don't understand."

This was getting old quickly. Jake shook his head, "If you're not going to give me anything I can work with then..."

"Now hold on, sonny. I didn't say I couldn't help, I just said I don't understand. You don't need to know how to build an engine to drive a car, now do you?"

Jake begrudgingly had to admit to himself that he wanted to hear what the old man had to say, so he stood his ground and gave him a 'I'm waiting' stare, which he clearly understood as he started talking liberally.

"What you've got there is powerful. Magical," he said, with all the emphasis he needed to make it sound ludicrous aside from actually wiggling his fingers at Jake. He kept going with, "It'll bring you whatever you desire most." He stopped, as if what he had said concluded something.

Jake looked at him with the same stare he would have given to a man offering to trade magic beans for a cow. "I don't need to listen to some soggy lunatic tell me about magical trinkets." This time he actually began to leave, having been subjected to quite enough madness for one day, and for his liking, a lifetime.

"No, you're right. You don't need to listen, but you should."

"Why should I?" snapped Jake, spinning back to face the man and instantly regretting it as his throbbing head suddenly returned, and brought friends. He clenched his teeth and focused his anger on the figure still standing in the water, who began speaking again just as his eyes focused.

"Because you'll want to know how that thing works," he said matter-of-factly, pointing at Jake's left hand. "Desire's a tricky thing. Not so easy to use as you're going to..."

It was Jake's turn to interrupt. "You know what I desire? I desire to have my job back. I desire to have not had the piss beaten out of me. And I desire you to shut the hell up and leave me alone." Jake looked down at the mundane looking golden heart in mock expectation. Looking back up he finished, "What do you know? It's busted."

The expression on the man's face was not what Jake expected. He was anticipating him to look wounded, or at the very least annoyed, but he just kept up that grin. That horrible, disgusting grin. "Not so easy, sonny. Desires aren't like wishes. You don't get the luxury of choosing your desires; they aren't needs and they aren't wants. You crave them, deeper than you could ever realize. You don't pick them. In fact sometimes, they pick you."

"Excuse me, but did you miss the part where I said I don't need to listen to this horse shit? This conversation is over." Jake turned away again, and heard the old man sigh. Finally, he thought. He spared a glance over his shoulder; he wanted to see the look of hurt on this crazy bastard's face. But, he was gone. Jake's head spun around from side to side, trying to see where the loon had disappeared to. He looked at the water expectantly and found not so much as a ripple. He glanced across the river and up the hill, and found nothing. He looked to his right up at the parking lot.

"Shit!" Jake yanked his cell phone from the inside pocket of his blazer, slipping the golden heart inside to replace it. Sparing a second to be amazed that the phone's screen hadn't been cracked by his earlier pummeling, he dialed 911. "Hi, yes, I was just mugged and my car was stolen."