He wasn’t that weird, a little cracked around the edges, sure, but not totally insane. He wasn’t too strange. Despite the fact that he wore a bandanna around the bottom half of his face all the time, and was covered in multiple tattoos of numbers, chess pieces, and all around Alice in Wonderland type things. Creepy.

She called him insane, but who was she to talk? Stupid Jester. At least he didn’t go around, stopping random people on the street to interrogate them about the salinity of a certain spot of the ocean just after a hurricane that was only so long lasting. Oh yeah, he was definitely the weirder one. And the name ‘Jester’ just made you wonder. If he was just cracked around the edges, she was shattered.

Poor Clay.

He supposed that nothing mattered, really. His thoughts often wandered to strange topics, usually the darker ones. He couldn’t help but come up with every possible scenario of his death or someone else’s when he walked down the street and saw various things. Fall down, crack his skull open and bleed to death. Get hit by that driver. That tree branch snaps. Building collapses. Get hit by lightning. It was just the way his mind worked for him—It wouldn’t cooperate no matter how hard he tried to get it to. He’d been labeled ‘genius,’ sure, but did that really mean anything when you couldn’t control your own thoughts? He didn’t think so.

He walked down the street at a slow pace, but his singular visible eye did not waver from his path ahead of him. Rain poured down on him, thunder cracking loudly. Hence the death-by-lightning paranoia. He ignored the inquisitive looks of the rare person still hanging around on the street in the storm, most in a hurry to get out of the rain. He knew he did not fit in. How many people had a chess board tattooed beneath their eye, anyway? Much less his white and black hair, the covering over his mouth and neck, the 001001010010 tattooed on his arms and face. The pawn on his arm, dripped with water. The curly question mark. The pictures of his existence.

He wasn’t really going anywhere, just wandering yet again. He was expected to be working on the computer at something, but if he didn’t have the drive, he didn’t have the drive. Simply put, nothing was going to happen until the drive came back. He was a phenomenal hacker--when he felt like it, that was. When he didn’t, there was no force in the world that could make him start typing.

He hoped not to run into Jester today—She was a good friend, yes, but sometimes over the top. He knew she hung around this end of town, under the trees, sometimes with Clay, sometimes without.

He was tired, he noticed passively. But he didn’t sleep. He just stayed plugged into that computer until the drive was gone, then wandered around or caused legality problems. He liked bending rules, liked breaking them even more. He hated authority; he was insubordinate, rebellious. He hated being told what to do. He’d had enough of that in his first few years of life.

He was a little cracked, he admitted to himself as he stopped and sat down on a standing planter, the cement cold but still mostly dry beneath the leaves of the tree above him. It was only sprinkling now, but he knew it would get worse soon. He had a premonition about things like that. Good at knowing when something bad was coming. Well, storms weren’t bad. Sometimes things that came with them were. Fires, power outages that caused problems. He didn’t care. Maybe that was one thing about him that spoke of insanity. Premonitions? Who had premonitions? He didn’t like killing...but he loved red. Red red red. Didn’t matter if it was blood as much. Maybe that explained the countless lines covering his body. Even he didn’t know if they were self-inflicted anymore. He zoned out half the time, didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. Just did.

He belonged in Wonderland, just like Jester put it. Late at night, his half-insomnia keeping him awake and prowling the streets, he’d run into the jazz-addict in her late hour. She’d be calm, quiet for the most part, and so very intelligent. So different from the Jester in the day time. Whilst he could only sometimes be unable to sleep, she never could. She’d been awake for three years, she’d said with a sad smile. Ever since that one night. Whatever that had been. He didn’t pry—It wasn’t his business. Just as she never questioned him about his childhood. He didn’t like those memories.

He absentmindedly drew question marks in the dirt in the planter, curling the ends, making them somehow creepy. He sighed lightly and glanced up at the sky. Dark, brightened for rare moments by flashes of lightning approaching quickly.

How he sometimes wished to simply get hit by the lightning.

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Meet Checkerboard, one of my long-time characters who I’ve never ever written about. Just a short drabble...Review if you feel like it.

-Jaws