Jack’s Greed

Jill’s earliest memories were ones of joy, love and comfort but that all changed when she was ten years old. That’s when she started to feel like a servant while her older brother, Jack, was treated like a royal prince.

Jack was born a prankster and would always be playing tricks on everyone in the family. In the early years his jokes would fill the house with laughter but the time would come when his prankster ways would have dire consequences.

Looking back on her childhood, tears would come to her eyes as she thought about all that she had endured and lost in those early years. Now, every time she tried to speak the word, family, it would get stuck in her throat like unreleased vomit and make her gag.

She had faint memories of her home always smelling like a skunk lived there, and knew it was coming from the funny cigarettes that her parents smoked every day. She knew now that what they were smoking was cheap weed, but back then it just felt normal to her, as she didn’t know any different. They would smoke their cigarettes and become happy, playing music, eating snacks and dancing with her.

Life was good until, suddenly, it wasn’t!

Jack was five years older than her and would walk down to the harbour, once a week, to buy their parents weed for them. He would always buy the weed from a guy named Clarke,a big guy that Jill feared immensely. Everybody called him Giant because that’s what he was, a giant.

He was almost seven feet tall, weighing over three hundred pounds, with fists the size of Jill’s head. He could be as violent as a cornered badger and would happily use those fists to rearrange someone’s face if they didn’t pay their bill on time.

Jill couldn’t understand why her brother looked up to this monster and wanted to be like him. She remembered Jack telling her that he wanted to be the one that everybody called the giant and looked up to. That someday he would climb that, metaphorical, beanstalk and become that giant.

Everything started to change the week that Jack had come back from the harbour with a special surprise for their parents. He had a small plastic bag with some tiny black balls inside. He called the little balls magic beans, before showing their parents how to smoke them. Mixing them with something, he heated them up on a spoon before putting them in a, funny looking, pipe and lighting it for their parents to smoke. After smoking it her parents seemed to fade away and be replaced by a different version of who they were.

It wasn’t long, maybe a few weeks, before life changed for Jill. Her parents became incapable of taking care of anything, including their children, and would become angry at Jill at the drop of a hat. At ten years old it became her job to take care of her family. She would have to cook and clean and even beg for money if her parents didn’t have enough to get their fix. She felt like a prisoner in her own home.

Over the next year and a half, things just kept getting worse. Her parents cared about nothing other than those magic beans and started selling things to pay for them. They always seemed to be feeling sick and sometimes wouldn’t bathe for weeks.

Jack stopped going to school and would spend all his time down at the harbour, running errands and beating people up for the giant. He was becoming what he said he wanted to be, he was becoming the giant and Jill hated him.

Jack always wanted more– more money, more fun or most of all more power. The more power he got the more he wanted and he didn’t care who got hurt in his quest for it, least of all his sister.

This became clear to Jill on her twelfth birthday. That was the day that Jill’s mind split in two as her innocence was stolen.

Jack had arrived at the house, with the giant, a couple of hours before Jill. They had gone to the house to get her parents to test a new mixture they had devised. Mixing a powerful drug called Fentanyl with the magic beans; they gave it to her parents to smoke.

Walking up the driveway to the house she could hear loud music and see Jack and the giant inside the garage leering at her. The look in the giant’s eyes overwhelmed her with fear as she rushed passed them, into the house to check on her parents. She was met with a scene she would never forget. Her parents were on the couch, side by side, eyes wide open with drool on their lips. She rushed to them but stopped when she got close as it was obvious that they were no longer here. They weren’t breathing and their skin was turning an awful colour of grey–the colour of death.

Jill, panicking, rushed to the garage to get Jack to help but he just laughed and said not to worry, their just stoned and would be fine. She screamed at him and the giant, calling them assholes and useless pieces of shit. Jack grabbed her and told her to calm down before smiling and pushing her onto the giants lap. She tried to get up but the monster put his hand on her face and told her everything would be okay, he was going to help her become a woman. Terrified she bit down on the giant’s hand, as hard as she could, before jumping to her feet.

That’s when her brother, Jack, punched her hard in the face, knocking her to the floor. Everything started to fade to black as her mind escaped to a happy place where she was much younger and bouncing on her father’s knee, laughing with joy.

The last thing she remembered before waking up on the concrete floor, with her dress torn and blood between her legs, was Jack holding her shoulders down as the giant climbed onto her body.

****

Her mind left that day and it would be many years before it returned.

She had been found the next day, beaten beyond recognition and left for dead, by a mailman on his morning rounds. For the next six months she lay in a coma, in hospital, before achieving a vegetable state and being transferred to a care home. She was a twelve year old, young girl, on that day; it would be six years before she started to show signs of recovery and another two years before she left that care home as a fully grown woman, bent on vengeance.

She’d spent the last two years trying to find any information she could on Jack and the giant. The first thing she found out was that Clarke, the giant, had been murdered in his sleep several years before. It took her some time to find anything on her brother and was running out of ideas until one day; she sat in a coffee shop and heard the people next to her talking about a company called, “The Giant.” She quickly went online and researched the company.

She found an article posted by a local news station. It talked about how the company was an importer and was being accused of importing dangerous drugs hidden inside toys from Asia.

There was a link to a video, included in the article, titled, “CEO laughs at accusations.”

She clicked on the link and there he was, her brother Jack! She laughed as she read that his name was Jack Giant and that he had a wife and two children.

Staring at the screen, she smiled as she said, “You have taken everything from me, Jack. Now I will take everything from you.”

Jill knew exactly who to call for help in destroying Jack. She would call the only person in the world that she had shared her story with. She would call a fellow patient from the home, who had also been raped and left for dead and, like Jill, lived for vengeance.

Clara was the most beautiful woman Jill had ever seen and exuded a sexuality that was irresistible. It was something that Jill had experienced firsthand and new that Jack would be powerless to resist. He would see Clara as a challenge to his power that he would need to conquer.

Clara, gladly agreed to the plan and spent the next two months pulling Jack into her web as Jill spent that time feeding anonymous information to Jack’s wife. That information included photos and videos of Jack and Clara. It was almost too easy and within the two months, the news media announced that they had photos of the head of “The Giant,” with a new woman that were supplied by his wife. His wife went on record to say that she was filing for divorce and seeking full custody of the children.

Jack didn’t fight it as he had other problems. His distribution warehouse had burnt down and while the fire was being investigated, the police had found over five hundred pounds of illicit drugs on the premises. Security video, from the warehouse, showed someone starting the fire and as that person seemed to be Jack himself, his insurance company refused to pay out.

Jack was arrested and charged with arson and the importation of illicit drugs for sale.

***

Jack sat in the prisoners box, looking destroyed, as the jury returned from deliberation.

The jury had been out less than four hours before returning with a verdict and the fear in Jack’s eyes was evident as he looked around the courtroom, as if he was searching for help.

His eyes opened wide, in confusion, as they locked onto Jill’s eyes. He knew at that moment what she had done. She knew everything about him, even the way he walked and moved. He thought about the clothes that he was sure were missing from his closet. They were the same clothes that were worn by the person in the video that had started the fire.

She smiled.

He stared at her with hatred in his eyes.

Turning to the judge, he tried to speak, before being ordered to silence.

The judge turned to the jury and asked for their verdict before the foreman stood up and said, “Guilty!”

The judge told Jack to stand before announcing his sentence.

He said, “Jack Giant, because of the heinous nature of your crimes and the devastation that your drugs have caused in this country and the countless deaths that this scourge on our society has caused. I sentence you to life in prison with no chance of parole for twenty five years.”

****

Three months later Jack received a letter in jail that had no return address.

He opened the letter and pulled out the paper inside.

It said, “You have taken everything from me. Now I have taken everything from you, Jack.”

There was a PS at the bottom of the paper that read,

“The moral of the story Jack is that undying greed for more will take away what you already have in your life.

J.

*****