John Wolfstone-The Book

A painful realization

Suddenly, both Justian and Tawna clutched at their stomachs, in excruciating pain.

Their legs gave out and they collapsed on the floor.

The skin beneath their furs began to pale.

“I-I-I f-f-feel c-c-cold f-f-for s-s-some re-re-reason,” said Justain.

Then he began to shake, as Tawna nodded, trying to keep her breakfast down.

“What’s going on?” Julia wondered.

Then she realized that their symptoms were similar to how John had acted the other night.

“Could they be going through what he had?” she wondered, as she raced to John’s office.

She pounded on the door shouting, “John! Something’s wrong with Tawna and Justian! They seem to be sick like you were the other night!”

She then heard a low chuckle. “I expected something like that would occur,” John said, as he opened the door.

“What’s going on?” Julia asked.

“They realize the painful, and horrible, truth,” John said, as he got a couple of buckets and damp washcloths. “They now realize that every person that they had ever eaten, or somehow harmed, was just like them. That they were people like them, people who had had their futures ahead of them, and more. They are feeling the guilt of taking those people’s lives for satisfying their own desires. Of course, I had not expected them to experience the sickness this soon, maybe later in the week, like say Wednesday, but not after only, basically, a few hours with you.”

With that, John went to take care of his ailing students.

A few hours later, Tawna groaned, as she opened her eyes, after the strange illness had passed.

“What happened?” she asked, looking at John, who was sitting on a stool between her and Justian.

“It’s something I have been calling Realization,” he said, as he took a warm washcloth from Tawna’s head and replaced it with a cool one. “Basically, it happens when one learns the real truth about something, something very important. The mind goes to war with itself, causing the rest of the body to temporarily weaken. While it is not life threatening, it is life changing. Now, here is a very important question: What truth did you and Justian just learn? Also, how will this affect you for the rest of your life?”

“I don’t know,” Tawna said, looking away from John.

“Are you sure?” John asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Maybe I should bring Julia in; she is worried about you and Justian.”

“No, please, don’t let her see me like this,” Tawna said, breathing heavily.

“Why? Why don’t you want her to see you? It’s not like she can get sick from what’s affecting you.” John said.

At this, Tawna said, with fear and terror in her voice, “I can see them. I can see every human I have ever eaten. I can see their looks of fear and terror as I swallow them whole and alive. I can hear them screaming in pain as they die, begging for me to let them go. I can feel them struggling, trying to get out of me.”

At this point, Tawna began to cry.

“Is that what you went through the other night, Mr. Wolfstone?” she asked.

“No, as I said, I’ve never seen humans as prey. I don’t see, hear, or feel those that I’ve eaten for defensive purposes. However, I do feel the guilt, especially for the one I ate part of, as part of an actual meal,” John said, as he place a hand on Tawna’s cheek.

“However, the sooner you realize, and accept, the truth, the better you should feel,” John said, as he turned to check on Justian, who was himself just stirring from his illness induced catnap.

Some time later, after John has had his talk with Justian, Justian and Tawna were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, looking away from each other. The ghosts of their pasts seemed to haunt them.

“Why did we try eating those two guys?” Justian asked; with a slight growl in his voice. “If we hadn’t tried to, you and I would not be feeling this pain right now.”

“I don’t know Justian,” said Tawna. “But I know I’m not afraid of Mr. Wolfstone anymore. Before this, I thought that if I got into trouble, he would beat me half to death.”

“I’d rather be beaten to death than feel this pain.” Justian said, with anger in his voice.

“Yah, but maybe, this is his way of showing people the truth behind all of those speeches he tells in class," Tawna said. "Maybe, this is how he learned things about the world, because of the pain he felt. It almost feels like I can understand how he thinks about things, like how similar different people really are.”

“Yah well keep that to your own self," Justian said, not even turning his head to look at her. "I can’t even look at that human without seeing the faces of those who were my prey, and very tasty meals. It’s not right. A predator shouldn’t feel pity for its prey.”

“Ugh," Tawna groaned, as she thought about how stuborn boys could be. "I’m going to talk to John. He may know something for this.”

With that, Tawna got up and went to John’s office, leaving Justian to sulk on the couch. A little while later, Justian heard the springs in the couch creaking.

“Did John give you some painkillers?” he asked, turning his head.

However, the person that had sat down next to him was John himself.

John just looked at him and said, “Let’s go for a walk, just you and me. Julia’s asleep in her room and Tawna is currently working on some of her other homework. Besides, some fresh air will do you a world of good.”

A while later, John and Justian were walking through a field.

“There is something about walking that helps me to relax after a hard day,” John said. “I don’t know if it’s the sun, the birds chirping, or the brook babbling over there, but it helps me to calm down after a stressful day. What helps calm you down?”

“If you had asked me this morning, I would have said eating live humans," Justian said, as he followed his teacher. "But now, I don’t know what to think.”

“I know. It’s not easy having your entire world turned upside-down," John said, as he looked at his student, with a sympathetic face. "I remember when I first tasted human flesh; I thought it was the most delicious thing I had ever eaten. However, when I learned that it was the same thing that my brothers and sisters were, I felt like I had killed that person. After that, I practically vowed to do everything I could do to help those weaker than I was. I became the problematic student that teachers would focus their attention on, so that they wouldn’t go after those with poorer grades or were tardy more than three times. I would hit teachers who tried to ‘discipline’ the other students. After the third time, I was warned that I would be expelled if I hit a fourth teacher, so I figured a way around it, if I claimed the student as my ‘pet’, the teacher couldn’t touch them. So, when I knew that the teacher was gunning for someone, I would pull that classmate to the side and talk to him or her and warn them, at the very least. I would also ask that they start hanging around me and doing things for me. Then, when the teacher tried to have them ‘failed’ I would immediately stake my claim on my classmate. Needless to say, my parents were shocked when I brought home my first ‘pet’. When I told them my reasons, they figured I was just doing a lesser form of what they had been doing for years, giving deserving children a second chance for life. Of course, after that, I had to clear it with my parents first, and I would first get the kid used to hanging around my family, so that things wouldn’t be that much different for them, when I had to make my claim.”

Then Justin sighed and asked “How does one get used to this pain, the one I am feeling right now?”

He then looked at John, who looked back at him, sighed, and said, “The short answer kid is this, you can’t. The pain will be with you for the rest of your life, no matter how deep you try to hide it, it will be there. However, there are ways to deal with it. The first step is to admit that you are in pain, which you have. Next, you must admit, to your self at least, the things that caused the pain, especially if it was your own actions that caused it. Then you talk to others about it, preferable those who have gone through the same, or a similar, pain as you. You follow those simple steps, and you won’t feel the pain so much, but you will still have it.”

Soon John stopped at the top of a hill and sat down on a stump.

“Sit down Justian,” he said. “Enjoy the view.”

As he sat down, Justian saw a look in John’s eyes that he hadn’t seen very often, a look of content.

“It isn’t often I’m truly happy,” John said. “Most of the time I have to put on a bit of an act, acting like some cold heartless son of a bastard, who would sooner kill you than give you the time of day. However, that just isn’t me. In fact, I hate to act that way, I want to just be myself around you and the other students. I don’t like it when people look at me in fear for their lives. Unfortunately, many people out there are people that only think and believe one thing and that is that weaker people are meant to be either their slaves, or pets, or their meals. As for me, the only way I’d eat a human, who wasn’t trying to kill one of my friends, was if I was dying from starvation, and only if there was absolutely no other foods. In fact, if I had to choose between eating the flesh of a human, and a worm ridden apple, I’d rather eat the worm ridden apple. I would eat a piece of cow steak that resembled burnt leather, rather than the finest, most juicy, most tender, filet of human breast. That is because, to me, a sentient being is a person, and, for me, should only be eaten if there is absolutely no other choice. However, if you want to go out and eat a human, I won’t try to stop you. But, remember this, what if it was the other way around, what if you were the human and that human was you, would you want to be that person’s meal, or would you want to live?”

With that, John turned his head, so he could watch butterflies gathering nectar.

Justian began to do some thinking. While John hadn’t told him he shouldn’t eat humans, he had been told to think about it.

He was also afraid. Every monster, starting around the age of five, learned how to hunt and eat humans. He was currently fifteen, and in the ninth grade. Even if he had only eaten one human a month, that was, at least, one hundred twenty people he had killed over the course of his lifetime, and many others ate more than that, per month even.

Suddenly, Justian felt like puking again.

“Looks like my words have finally, and fully, sunk into you Justian,” John said, turning his head back to look at him. “You’re afraid because of what you have done. You are worried about it, and how it will affect you. Well let me say this, the sooner you tell someone what you have done, the better you will feel.”

With that, Justian started talking, telling John about every single human he had ever eaten, the person’s age, how he had eaten them, where, why, everything.

When Justian was done, he grabbed onto John and started crying.

“I killed them,” he said.

John placed his arms around him and said, “I know. But it is not your fault.”

“Yes it is," Justian said, still sobbing. "I can’t deny the fact that I ate all those people.”

“I know young one," John said, as he held onto the boy. "I know. But the fault doesn’t truly lay with just you, it lies with society. If you had grown up in a world where everyone treated each other, large or small, human, werewolf, or otherwise, the same way, and no one was on anyone’s meal menus, you and I would not have this pain we are feeling right now. Instead, we would probably be talking about your grades, any fights you’ve been having, and so on. However, now that you know this pain, you can use it.”

“How do I do that?” Justian asked, looking up at John.

“By making sure others will never have a chance to experience it," John said, as he gave the boy a gentle smile. "At first, you start small, with the young ones. Like say, you have a cousin, that is at that age, were he or she could start eating humans. Your aunt brings the child over, for you to babysit, and brings a human of similar age for your cousin to eat for lunch. However, instead of letting your cousin eat the human, you have them play some sort of game together, and when lunchtime comes around, feed your cousin some other type of meat, like beef for instance, and have the human eat something as well. When your aunt shows up, and asks why your cousin didn’t eat the human, you honestly tell her that they just got to playing with each other so much that your cousin just couldn’t eat the human, so you feed him something else. Also, if your parents wonder why you aren’t eating humans, or rescue those who are your classmates, or something, tell them it’s one of the rules for those taking my class. If they have a problem with that, they can take it up with me. Of course, given my school reputation, and the fact that I’ve won every fight I’ve ever been in, they may just swallow their pride and go along with it.”

“Why wouldn’t they, or the school for that matter, want to challenge you then?" Justian asked. "They could do it through law you know.”

“They could," John said. "But it would be an expensive legal battle for any one to sue me in a civil case. Even if they somehow managed to win, they would be so far into debt; they might as well have lost. A pyritic victory is what that would be. They would have won the battle, only to lose the war. After that, I’d end up owning them.”

With that, John chuckled, and smiled broadly. “Can you even imagine how I would even run an entire school?" he asked. "I have one being built on my property and I still don’t know how I’ll run the entire thing.”

“You’re seriously building a school and you don’t know what you’ll do with it.” Justian said, his eyes wide with amazement.

With that, John slapped his knee and started laughing.

“You got that right,” he said. “I wanted to put a touch on my parents’ dream, and have a spot for the children of those that rent out my houses to learn, so that they wouldn’t have to go so far to get to school, and it would be a safe one for them to go to as well, no matter their species. Admittedly, it would be difficult for those of the water to attend it, but that is true for most schools built on the land. Of course, if a family was interested in renting out a space here, I would have accommodations built for them.”

Then he said, “Well, we best get back to the house. I am expecting some potential clients to show up after all.”

With that, John and Justian stood up and started walking back, John with a smile on his face and Justian feeling as if a weight was lifted off of his shoulders, though he still felt some pain in his soul.