scrytch: luminous

by Darren Bauler

jakob was born luminous. even in the starched-blues and the lamps of the delivery room there was a faint glow about him, a shine all in the room chalked up to exhaustion from a 31 hr. delivery. when they returned to look on the child the next day, however, they noticed the glow remained. one of the nurses took him into a closet and held him up, naked, and confirmed suspicions. the doctors wanted to run tests, but due to his being healthy in all other aspects, his mother took him home later that day.

the modern conception of the halo as a ring of light surrounding the head is an idea begun by artists in the 12th century as the idea of three-dimensional representational art grew out of its status as gimic and became the preferred mode for religious artists. previous to this time, the halo was represented by a sphere of light surrounding the head and hands, occasionally the entire body, as in most pictures of the crucifixion. jakob's mother was religious enough to make the connection, and had no doubt that her child was sent from the Lord himself. Jakob's father did not buy into this; not because he wasn't a God-fearing man himself, but because a new father finds it difficult to have the possession of a new child taken from him and given to the Lord, who currently has more than He knows what to do with anyway.

as most children who are different, Jakob was banished from elementary-school social circles, many of the children having been told by their parents that jakob was evil and a creation of the Satan. jakob, an average child in his studies, took solace in drawing stories his mother told him, his favorites being "now we are six", "21 balloons", and select bible stories, his favorite being, of course, Job. Jakob often cast himself in these mock-heroic roles, which Jakob's mom found creative and nice until she found images of her son eating his own flesh and being made to stand before the King of Terrors. Jakob was promptly sent into school therapy, which was all his mother, now divorced, could afford. the therapist told Jakob's mother what she already knew; his social conditioning was stunted due to his luminescence and thus Jakob had retreated to an unhealthy degree into a fantasy world. Jakob's silence and uninterest in others continued his distancing to the point where the only interaction he had with others was the occasional shoving of Jakob into a locker or closet and charging other children to look at the glowing boy, which only the youngest children ever participated in, the novelty being long since dead.

at the age of eleven, Jakob began his translation of the Bible into vernacular English. He had begun reading from this text in the middle of class, whichhis teachers tried to overlookor occasionally indulge in an attempt to be kind. soon the rest of the class took cue from this and would erupt in childhood hijinx after Jakob began reading, and Jakob was sent along the beaurocratic rails which eventually led to his expulsion. word spread from town to town of a glowing boy who was thrown out of school for reading the bible, which had human-interest written all over it, and occasional news crews would show up outside Jakob's trailer, where he would read from Psalms -- "you took me and you threw me into a great big pit at the bottom of another big pit and you can't hear me anymore, God" -- in his Power Rangers underoos through the windowscreen in back, standing on his bed to be able to see the small crowd. soon the town even tired of this, and the local ministry began stating that the Jakobian Bible (as the translation was known to a select number of sociologists and modern folklorists) was "Anti-Christ, that it goes against everything Christians stand frim for". Jakob regularly awoke to the sounds of rocks and empty bottles being thrown against the trailer and spent most of his time reading and cleaning up after his mother's drunks. eventually even Jakob's mother began to believe he had come from the Satan and threw him from the trailer, tearing up his pictures and storiesand screaming to never return. Jakob attempted hitch-hiking out of town, but the unearthly glow made paserby nervous, as well as his young age coming off as incriminating. Hungry and tired, Jakob made his home from an abandoned as station, feeding on stale candy bars from a machine he bashed open with a bar from a jack, where he amused himself by playing mechanic and drawing his pictures on the wall in oil and dust.

one morning, a car pulled up to the station. Jakob walked to the car, his back to the sun so that his luminescence was unvisible, and told the man in the car the station was closed. "i know," the man said. "it is you, jakob, i've come to see. i want to give you a new home, a real home, where people want to hear your stories."

jakob was wary, but by the time the man was done talking, Jakob agreed to follow him essentially to the ends of the earth. this is how Jakob became the first attraction in The World's Most Depressing Circus, and to this day is one of it's most consistent crowd-drawers.