The Soldier... Judgement Day

The suns barely starting to rise and the humidity is already reminding him of his last trip into the jungle. Except this isn't some jungle and he isn't on foreign soil. No, today he's in the area of the country known as the Ozarks. A rolling hill, heavily wooded area that the locals decided to add the word mountains to the name. Mountains, yeah what the fuck ever he thought to himself.

The summers keep getting hotter and hotter and the world keeps turning faster and faster. As if all of it will fix itself, on its own. I guess if you haven't reached temperatures over 120 degrees you can still say that it's not that hot. But he knew how hot the world could get. Afghanistan, Iraq, India...ask them what they think of the heat.

Taking the gas nozzle out of his SUV and placing it back into the gas pump Thomas knew that certain things would never take care of themselves, on their own. Certain things in life require unpleasant solutions and often those solutions are planned out by unpleasant men and the plans executed by even worse...

Such has been the life of Thomas Wayne Thibodaux former US Navy SEAL...

For years Thomas carried out his orders with precision and impunity. Never having failed at an assignment in his 5 years as a SEAL He'd become anesthetized to the human suffering that he'd witnessed around the world and, in some instances, caused himself. Some special forces warriors struggle with the thought of killing and almost all struggle with the baggage of knowing that they are responsible for bringing death upon so many.

This has never been a problem for Thomas Wayne. If following orders or following his conscience meant that someone had to die, he had no problem being the executioner. From the beginning he understood that there was good and there was evil, right and wrong. His abusive father taught him evil at an early age.

Thomas didn't come into this world being what the majority of us would claim as normal. Don't get me wrong, he doesn't have a limp or a speech impediment or some physical deformity. Far from it, he has been blessed with a perfectly massive physique. One glance at this massive specimen of humanity and one can clearly see that physically, he's as close to perfect as possible.

No sir, Thomas's self perceived malfunction is within, it's in what he sees as a deformity, in his own mind and maybe in the minds of certain prejudiced people. Thomas is a homosexual. So, from the beginning life has taught him that nothing would be fair. Ever...

Early on he understood that you are who you are and for some accepting who you are would never be an option. From the beginning he understood that defending who and what you are comes with a price. He understood that if you don't defend it, protect it yourself, you may as well just die before someone kills you because of it.

Better you than me...That's how he saw it.

The fact that Thomas saw these things through that lens of right or wrong was the reason that he could no longer be a SEAL. Over the years being a SEAL started to change. More and more he started noticing that the men he was assigned to deal with or end, were not necessarily evil men but more of a hindrance to a government that is slowly becoming unhinged.

Some would like to blame this new administration but he knew better. No sir, he knows that the corruption within special forces started happening way before this administration checked in. It would also be incorrect to say that this administration was without blame or fault. On the contrary, this administration put its foot on the accelerator and quickly pushed an already fragile situation way passed the tipping point.

No sir, Thomas knew that they had passed the point of no return and it was time to get out...

On his last mission he had barely survived. He had taken multiple rounds in the back that could've ended him. But by the grace of god he had managed to live. However, that wasn't why he got out. The why, is that he was tired of killing for an ideal that no longer existed.

It's the corruption from above and in the field with certain units that enjoy killing just for the sake of killing. A corrupt government that has become an enforcer for corporate America, those are just a few of the reasons why he got out.

There were others, like maybe a chance for some kind of happiness? At the very least he owed it to himself to at least try to have a happy life, didn't he?

In his personal life he had finally found someone, a young man that he thought was different. Someone genuine, caring and someone that he thought that he may be able to allow himself to love.

Love...that was an emotion that he thought he would never experience again.

Long ago he started his journey at West Point; he was Army. He earned a football scholarship and this was a place that he thought he could begin his training for fighting all that is wrong in this fucked up world. A place that would teach him to become a warrior. A warrior so he could face the wrongs in life and deal with them appropriately.

Calling him naïve at that early stage of his life is an understatement...

West Point was where he met his first and only love. A beautiful young man that taught him that it was ok to love, to love who he wanted to love. Love without fear, without guilt, without shame.

Looking back now he realized that it was all bullshit because all that freedom came from behind closed doors. In the real-world cruelty was all that both of them should've ever expected with the way of life that they had been born into.

Then just like that...

A year later those with hate for his kind and with malice in their hearts towards his kind; they would kill his young love. For no other reason other than because of the way he had been born to love. That's when Thomas first broke. His father never broke him but this, this broke him. Life had lost its meaning and it was clear to him that he needed to bring suffering to those that deserved it. Right away he knew that he had to leave West Point and remap his path.

A plan that would end with him being able to learn the skills needed to do what needed to be done. He needed to exact a reckoning for what had happen to his young love and rid the world of as much wrong as possible along the way. Being a Navy SEAL would be his path.

Driving down the long winding roads of the Ozarks he started to think back to his new love. David was someone that gave him hope that maybe he could love again but in the past month he had come to accept that for all the feelings that they both shared for each other this was a relationship that was probably going to end badly.

He had told him that keeping things from him is the same as lying. But because he's young and barely coming into his own sexuality David thought it easy to ignore this important part of Thomas's code of life.

Don't lie to me...

Finding out that David had been with multiple lovers and was currently in the beginning stages of a new relationship at the university stunned him if for only a brief moment. The young man's saving grace was that Thomas understood; David was new to his lifestyle. Having lived as a heterosexual male for all of his 20 years of life up until 7 months ago; David had some growing to do as he embraced his newfound sexuality.

Unfortunately, Thomas knew that he didn't have the patience to wait on David. To allow him to figure it all out. He knew that he may have to leave the young man behind or else he may have to...no he couldn't do that.

Pulling over and driving a few miles off road, he parked his SUV out of sight...

Gathering his tools, he started up the side of the steep wooded hill when the thought of his father crept into his head. He began remembering his father growling at his mother in the other room about his sexuality. His father hated him and even at that early age and without any proof his father knew that his son was gay.

Henry Thibodaux hated his son...

But growl at his wife was all he could do because by this point Thomas had grown way to big and too strong to deal with. Every winter when a cold front started to move through Louisiana, his elbow would remind him that he had better not lay a hand on his wife and he better keep his growling low. He knew his son would have no problem breaking his arm, again.

Fag, queer, homo...on and on he would go about his son shutting up only when Thomas would have enough of it and start to make noise, letting his father know that it was time to shut the fuck up.

His mother accepted him once he confirmed everything that his father said about him. He wasn't expecting the response that he got from her, "I know baby, I've always known." She would say.

That evening she held her son in her arms and reassured him that she would always love him no matter who he chose to love...

Damn it, it's still fucking hot he would think to himself...

Sitting there in the spot that he had scouted in advance months ago before his near-death experience. Over the years Thomas had tracked a group of men and on this night, he knew that one of them would be here, on vacation with his family.

For the past three nights he had watched and he knew that Michael Lewis would be coming to this spot to smoke a joint while his family lounged in the cabin that he had rented for the week. All Thomas had to do was wait.

Blending into his surroundings Thomas knew how to hide in plain sight. As he waited, the thought of Allen crept into his mind. Allen Sims was the young man that he had fallen in love with those many years ago. He thought of his smile, his laughter, his handsome boyish face. They were both barely 19 years old at that time.

"You are a bad ass Thomas and you're going to be just fine. Once you get to camp and let loose your first hit, everything will slow down for you. Now kiss me before we have to take you to the airport." Those were Allen's last words to him.

Days later he would get the call that Allen had been murdered by a group of young boys. These boys, taught by a cruel world that Allen didn't deserve to live because he was less than human in their eyes. He was a worthless fag, perverted.

The boys protected by their rich fathers never set foot in a jail. Claiming that they had to do what they did. They were defending themselves from a man that had tried to sexually assault them, they killed him because he had attacked them.

It was self defense...

That was their story and their privilege made sure to protect them from the contrary or from any consequence.

It was all bullshit and everyone knew it. But now as he leaned back against a large tree and the sounds of footsteps approaching, it was to late for all of that.

Still, Thomas couldn't help to wonder what was going through Allen's mind at that moment that he was being beaten to death.

Was he scared; did he know that he was going to die? Did he suffer? Did he think of his loving mother and father? Did he call out for help?

As he lit his joint and stood out in the woods in the darkness Michael was thinking of his life. Working for his father and how the family business would be his upon his return back to Pennsylvania.

"Take Molly and the kids on your camping trip and relax because when you come back it's all yours." Remembering his father's words as he took a big hit off his blunt.

Life was good, he thought, until it wasn't...

He never heard a sound. One minute he was inhaling and the next, Thomas's hand had reached around from behind and grabbed him by his forehead tilting his head back slightly. At the same time, he pulled his head back the tip of Thomas's Bowie knife started sliding into him at the base of his neck where his skull connects to his spine.

At 6'5" and with his almost super human strength, holding Michael perfectly still for that split second was easy for him. The blade slipped quickly and easily upward with only the faint sounds of a few bones breaking and giving way to razor sharp steel.

In a split-second Thomas had his blade buried deep inside Michaels skull...

Stepping into Michael and wrapping his massive arm around his head, he held him up. Twisting the knife before pulling it out then gently laying him down on the tarp a few steps over.

Once again, he had ended a life but not before whispering in his marks ear... "For Allen."

The rest was easy. He bagged his kill and took him down the side of the steep hill, 4 miles to his SUV. From there it was an hour drive to the house he had rented months earlier. There a big table, some large, very sharp cutting utensils and a tub with a few select chemicals would do the rest. All that would be left to do was to clean up, lock up and go home.

Life can be cruel and exacting on those that least deserve it...

Henry Thibodaux didn't have to be vicious and cruel towards his young son, yet he was. Allen didn't deserve to die for not being able to choose how he loved, yet he did. Michael Lewis's children didn't need to go through life without knowing what had happened to their father, yet they will...

Right or wrong this is the reality, the consequence of it all...

A week passed and as he boarded his plane to go home before heading to his next mark; Thomas had made his peace with what he had done. He started moving on to other thoughts.

There were three more men that he had to visit in the coming year. A trip to Vale at Christmas, a trip to Paris in February and finally a trip to Beaver Falls in the spring.

But for now, the pressing issue on his mind, what was he going to do about David...