Thunder Rolls

Jay was a man, or what was left of one. He sadly waited in painful agony. Leaning against the door of a luxury sedan, watching its owner, and Jay's formerwife as they left the door of the office building and started to approach. They paused momentarily then came closer as he lifted his arms, showing his lack of weapons. He then balled his fists at his side.

Jay stood there, feeling like a shell of the man he once was. Her betrayal had diminished whatever character he had left. She had dumped him for her new boss. The new man was everything Jay was not. Rich. Confident. Powerful. Connected. A true Alpha male.

They had first clashed in middle school. The wealthy bully picking on the poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks. As they grew older, things escalated. It seems that whenever Jay accomplished anything of value, "J J" Jameson was there to tear it down. Maybe it was just a chemistry thing, but they were born to conflict, and everything he did seemed to antagonize his tormentor.

When Jay had tried to report the bigger student's actions, J. J.'s family stepped in, and everything was swept under the rug. The fact that Jay's single mother worked in the Jameson Family's Factory and depended on them for the food on their table only made things worse.

When J J left for College, Jay went to trade school on a delayed entry program for the army, believing he was finally free. There he met Joan, another poor kid from the wrong side. She became his everything, and they married two months before he left for boot camp. She got a job in a local business before Jay was sent overseas. Imagine his surprise, ten months later, when he learned that her company had been bought out by Jameson Holdings, LLC. Naturally she was now working directly for the man who had tormented him since childhood.

Just before his tour ended, he was served with her petition for divorce.

Jay was now just another crippled Army veteran with severe PTSD, a surgically repaired body, and scars over most of his body. Not that it mattered, as she had dumped him before the injury that ended his only combat tour. The divorce was all but finalized as he lay recovering from the IED blast that should have killed him.

It was only after he returned home to try to pick up the shattered pieces of his life that his destruction was completed. The explosion, on that dusty street in Afghanistan was just the beginning. By the time she and her lover were done with him, he was broken, financially ruined, under police investigations for drugs, child porn, and several lesser crimes. He knew he'd been set up, but he needed an answer.

Standing before his tormentors, Jay asked him.

"Why?".

"Because something about you has always pissed me off, and when I found out she was married to you, I realized that fate had set this up for me."

Joan's smug look only reinforced his words.

The trio made a fitting tableau as she clutched her prize, who stood, imperiously looking down at his broken opponent with the majesty of a Roman conqueror. Jameson Jennings, head of Jennings Holdings, LLC smiled down at his bent and broken victim, whose shaking fists hung uselessly at his sides.

"In what universe could you ever beat me, Jay?", the animus dripping with each syllable. "You were never a match for me. Do you think you could actually beat me in a fight? Your fists are shaking so bad I doubt that you can even throw a punch. Face it, we both know that you are no match for me."

Jay nodded his bowed head, sadly, as he spared a moment to scan the empty parking lot.

"That's true, you bastard. You've won. You have taken everything from me."

He finally raised his eyes to look at the pair of monsters that had totally destroyed his life.

"But my fists are not shaking from fear, or rage."

Locking eyes with his tormentor, he allowed himself a rueful hint of a smile.

"It just takes a lot of pressure for my thumbs to hold down the springs."

With a searingly bright light reflecting off the nearby buildings, the explosion caused a roll of thunder that broke windows more than a block away, leaving a dark depression in the parking lot, where once stood three people.