Where The Heroes Always Win

Jacob read her stories of kings, queens, princes and princesses, foreign lands, kingdoms, cobblestone paths, swords of steel, and fire breathing dragons. And even when Cassy began to look frightened, Jacob smiled at her and said, “Don’t worry, Cassy. In stories like these, the heroes win.” And she would relax, the tensity in her shoulders disappearing like smoke in the wind. She’d lay back in the bed, and let her brother finish the story. Sometimes she listened, and sometimes she just looked at him, and thanked whoever resided above those fluffy white clouds, that he was her brother. And Jake looked at her and felt the same way. He loved her, but he wished he were older. He wished he wasn’t flunking out of school, he wished living wasn’t so goddamn expensive, and he wished that they could hop in a car, or find a cobblestone path and disappear.

Things had never been good between their folks, but recently it had reached code red. Jake, as a younger version of himself, would lay in bed the way Cassidy was now laying in bed, and he’d pray that they’d stay together, and he could see in her eyes that she was thinking the same. Thinking that they should stay together because that’s what homes were. That’s what a nuclear family was. It was a mom and a dad, and a boy and a girl. It felt right, or at least, she thought it should feel right. She wanted it to feel right, and Jake wanted to tell her that it would never feel the way she wanted it to, and that their best bet was that the old man fell down drunk one night at the bar and smashed his skull open, or that someone he owed money to decided that he was never going to pay it back, and did the job that Jake wished he could do. If he was older, broader in the shoulders, thicker in the waist. If he knew a martial art, or he owned a gun, or he had an escape plan. But he had none, and so as the screaming echoed downstairs, Jake read her stories, until she fell asleep, and then he wrapped his arm around her and laid, listening to her soft snores, and playing out a fantasy in his own head.

At school, Jake doodled all day in his black notebook. Story ideas for Cassy. Places free of industrial smoke, and devoid of unemployment slips, and decks of cards, and hard liquor, and inflation. Places where people were set up to succeed, not dominos, but stone pillars. And when he came out of his trance and looked up to see University representatives talking about chances, talking about jobs, and money, and handing out plain black or white shirts with the school’s logo, he felt sick. And he raised his hand, as one of the representatives, a skinny, tall 20 year old with greasy black hair, and thick spectacles, and shirt that hung loosely around his waist, said,

“Yes, sir?”

And he smiled, but behind that smile was something darker, and behind those eyes, were cell bars. Jake could see right through it, and he asked,

“How can I afford it?”

“Well, there are scholarships,”

Jake shook his head no.

“Well there are government loans, of course.”

“Oh yeah, so I got to school for four, five years on loans, and then what?”

“Well, you hopefully get a job.”

“Okay, and how much debt will I owe? And will I ever be able to pay it off? And what kinds of jobs will be waiting for me? What will they pay?”

And the greasy representative, chuckled nervously and wiped his acne filled forehead, before Mr. Andrews, told him that was enough, and opened the floor for other questions. Questions about majors, and dorm rooms. And he realized that these people were living in a fantasy world of their own too, they just didn’t know it. At least he knew he was creating fantasies. And did that make him better? No, he thought. Not better, but different. Different.

That evening he heard the door burst open downstairs, and angry slurs coming from the mouth of his drunken father. He heard an empty bottle smash against the floor, and eventually he heard his mother screaming. Cassy heard it too, but she was 10, and Jake told her to close her eyes and tried his best to get her lost, get her lost in the world he’d created. Get her lost so deeply inside of it, that anything outside of the fantasy was the real fantasy, and where she was was reality.

And when dishes began to smash, and when their mothers uncontrollable sobs travelled up the stairs like a demon, Jake told Cassy that it was her imagination. That this was the world, and he improvised talking about a great heroine making her way through a swift and brutal storm, where things smashed, and people screamed, and he made sure to remind her that good won. In the end, it would win but there were challenges that the heroes needed to face first, and once they made it through the many obstacles thrown at them, they would find,

“What?” Cassy asked. “What will they find at the end?”

And Jake looked at her, and he rubbed her soft cheeks, and looked at the innocence in her eyes and her smile made his heart shatter, and it broke him in so many pieces, and he hoped that she couldn’t read his eyes because if she did, she’d know something, something she wasn’t supposed to know. Not yet. Please stay a kid a little longer, he pleaded with himself, please.

“I can’t ruin the surprise, Cass. That’s part of the adventure.”

And that evening, again he laid with her, and he whispered, we’ll get out of here, Cass. I promise you, we’ll get out of here.

Then downstairs a gunshot echoed like a thunderclap. Cassy and Jake bolted upright as heavy footsteps climbed the stairs.

“I’m scared, Jake”

“No,” he whispered, “you’re a brave warrior, Cass. You’re an archer. A sword wielder, and this is the dragon, Cass. Once we defeat the dragon, we’ll be free. We’ll be free.”

“Then you’ll tell me what happens at the end, Jake?”

Then the door burst open, and the dragon stood in the entrance.

“Remember, Cass. Heroes always win in these stories.”