The Epic of Julian

 Chapter 1 

I used to believe some people were born broken. That no matter how hard they tried, how many times they started over, they'd always end up right back where they began. Lost, drowning, stuck in a loop of their own destruction. 

For years, I thought I was one of those people.

Institutions, medications, alcohol. I tried them all. I searched for peace in places that only gave me more chaos.

And for a long time, I thought that was all life had for me. 

But I was wrong.

I'm Julian. Middle-aged, but I feel older. Years of madness will do that to a man. I wasn't always like this. Stable, clear headed, able to sit here and tell this story without the weight of the past crushing my chest.

No, I earned this peace. And I paid for it in full.

I've had three great loves in my life. The first two - Missy and Michelle - ended in heartbreak, betrayal, and the kind of lessons that only hurt when you survived them.

The third, Sarah, is different. She sees me for what I am and doesn't flinch.

But before I met her - before I found any of this - I had to walk through fire.

CHAPTER 2

I don't remember the first time I saw a hospital ceiling from a gurney, but I remember the last.

 I was 29, fresh out of another psych ward stay, detoxing from God knows what, when I realized I didn't want to die…. I just didn't know how to live.

So I tried everything - meds, therapy, church, meditation, drugs. I bounced from one solution to the next, convinced that this would be the thing to fix me. But nothing stuck. Every time I fell, I fell hard.

One of those falls landed me behind bars.

CHAPTER 3

It started with a favor. A guy I knew - let's call him Charlie - had a job that needed doing. “ Simple”, he said. “Walk into a liquor store late at night, wave a gun around, and walk out with a bag full of cash. No one gets hurt. In and out.”

I wasn't stupid. I knew there was little chance it was that easy. But I was broke, reckless, and didn't care if I lived or died. That's a dangerous combination.

So I said yes.

The clerk's hands shook when he opened the register. The sweat dripped down my back as I gripped the pistol Charlie had given me. I didnt think it was loaded - I didn't want to hurt anyone. Just scare them. But fear doesn't listen to reason. 

Somebody behind me moved too fast. Maybe they were reaching for their wallet, maybe they were trying to be a hero. I panicked. My finger twitched on the trigger, and for a split second, I thought I had shot someone. Luckily, I hadn't. But it was enough.

The cops were on us before we even made it back to the car. Charlie ran. But I wasn't as fast as I used to be. 

They caught me three blocks away, face down in the gutter.

CHAPTER 4

Jail is a funny place. It's not like the movies. No epic showdowns, no secret codes. Just a bunch of men waiting.

I did 9 months in County before my trial. That's where I met Spud.

Spud was a mountain of a man. Hands like bricks and a laugh that could shake the walls. We ended up in the same pod. Both of us immediately disliked by the other inmates. They thought I would cower and fold up, so they tried to jump me in the shower. But I fought back hard and Spud came to my defense and we were left alone and kind of respected after that.

The judge sentenced me to 3 years.

 I did my time. Kept my head down. Took my meds. Got out after completing a difficult program.

Then I did what I always did. I ran.

 But this time I ran into something. 

CHAPTER 5

The first few weeks after prison were a blur of cheap motels and long walks to nowhere. I stayed on my meds - most of the time. But the old habits still clung to me. I found myself in rowdy bars more nights than not, nursing liquor like it was the only friend I had left.

That's where I met Sarah.

She was tending bar at some hole in the wall place that smelled like cheap beer and bad decisions.

I wasn't looking for anything. Not love, not hope, not a reason to keep breathing. But when she slid a drink in front of me and said, “you look like a man with too many ghosts”, something inside me cracked.

She had this way of looking at me -  like she saw all my broken pieces and wasn't afraid of them.

 I didn't tell her everything. Just bits and pieces. That I had been locked up. That my mind didn't always work right. That I was trying - really trying- to be better.

She listened, didn't flinch, didn't lie to me.

 “You don't scare me Julian”……

“You got to decide if you're done being scared of yourself.”

CHAPTER 6

One night, Sarah and I sat on the back porch, watching the sunset. I had a beer in my hand - my first and only for the night. These days, I kept it under control.

 She glanced over at me, eyes sharp, waiting. “You got that look again.”

I smirked. “What look?”

“Like you're halfway here, halfway somewhere else.”

 I exhaled. “Ever tell you about the time I stole a car and hit the jackpot?”

She raised an eyebrow….. “Do tell.”

I told her the story - the black Nissan, the three grand, the 2 oz of weed. How I had thought it was my lucky break. How I spent it all in 2 weeks on liquor and pills. She listened, then asked, “do you ever miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“The chaos. the adrenaline. the feeling that anything could happen at any moment.”

I thought about it for a long time.

 Finally, I said, “I believe, for a long time, I didn't know how to exist any other way. How to live without it. Like if my life wasn't burning, then I wasn't really alive.”

She nodded, waiting. Many seconds passed………..

I swallowed. “But I don't miss it anymore.”

She reached for my hand, lacing her fingers through mine. “Good.”

CHAPTER 7

A few weeks later, I visited Spud. We sat in his rundown apartment, drinking Dr pepper, talking about the past. 

He asked, “do you ever think about how we made it out there when so many didn't?”

I nodded. “Every damn day.”

I thought about Missy and Michelle. The stolen cars. All the nights I drowned in poison.

And I thought about Sarah. The junkyard. The mornings when the world felt calm and quiet.

CHAPTER 8

For a while, life felt steady. I had Sarah, a job at the junkyard, and mornings that didn't start with shaking hands or regret. I told myself I was past it now. That the chaos was finally behind me.

But I learned this…..

Peace is a very fragile thing.

And when you spent most of your life chasing storms, stillness can feel unnatural.

 That's how it started - not with some great tragedy, but with boredom.

CHAPTER 9

It began with small things. I started skipping my morning meds now and then, telling myself I didn't need them as much anymore. I let the wrong numbers slip back into my phone - old names that always spelled trouble.

Then one night I didn't come home.

 I told Sarah I had stayed late at the junkyard, helping the boss clean up. In truth, I had been sitting in a car with Spud, eating pills and listening to old war stories we relived a hundred times before.

Pills were joined by liquor, then things got crazy.

 He passed out in his seat and I moved his body to the passenger seat. I was too messed up to drive but just too stubborn. I climbed into the driver's seat anyway.

The blue lights hit me less than 2 miles down the road.

Probation violation. No way out of it.

The judge shook his head when he saw me. He’d been lenient with me before. This time, he wasn't in the mood.

“You will serve 90 days”, he said. “followed by sober living for a year”. 

I didn't argue.

CHAPTER 10 

Jail wasn't as shocking the second time. I knew the rhythm now - when to keep quiet, when to stand tall, when to fade into the background.

But what really shook me wasn't the cell or the guards or the endless noise.

 It was the quiet that came after the lights went out.

That's when the memories crept in - Missy's angry words, Michelle's betrayal, my mother's tear streaked face on the other side of a plexiglass window.

And worse still - the whispers.

 I hadn't heard them in a long time, not since I got my medication right. But now they were back, like old friends dragging me back into the dark.

“You're worthless.”

 “You'll never change.”

 “She's better off without you.”

I clenched my teeth and pressed my palms against my ears, but the voices didn't care.

 I don't remember falling asleep.

 I only remember waking up, face pressed against the cold concrete floor, tears still wet on my cheeks.

CH APTER 11

When I got out, they sent me straight to the sober living house. It wasn't what I expected. I had pictured something like a sterile building filled up with counselors in pressed shirts handing out pamphlets.

Instead, it was a creaky old Victorian house on the edge of town, Paint peeling from the porch railings. Eight men live there. Guys like me who had run out of second chances.

There were strict rules - early curfews, weekly drug tests, lots of mandatory meetings. It felt like prison with better furniture.

But it really wasn't the house or the rules that got to me.

 It was the people!

CHAPTER 12

His name was Stan. He wasn't a counselor or a sponsor - just another guy living in the house. Late 40s, quiet, the kind of man who could disappear into a room without anyone noticing.

But Stan noticed things.

 He saw the tension in my shoulders when the voices starting buzzing in my head. He noticed when I got restless, pacing like a caged animal.

One evening, he cornered me in the kitchen.

“You're drowning in there”, he said, tapping his temple. “I can see it.” 

I didn't answer.

 “You're living in two places at once”, he said, sitting beside me.

I frowned. “What?”

“Your past and your future. You spend all your time there every day. I can see it.”

I didn't answer, but damn he wasn't wrong.

 He reached into his hoodie pocket and pulled out a beat-up paperback, setting it on the railing in front of me.

“This helped me.” 

I looked down at the cover. The title was faded, but I could make out part of it. Something about awareness.

“I don't need another self-help book,” I muttered.

Stan shrugged, “Maybe not. but if you're tired of your mind running you into the ground, it might be worth a look.”

I left the book on the railing and didn't touch it for days.

 But one night, when the whispers wouldn't shut up and my regrets played like an endless film reel in my head, I picked it up.

It wasn't what I expected.

 It didn't tell me to think positively or forget my past. It didn't promise that everything would be okay. 

Instead, it asked me a simple question:

 “Where are you right now?”

Not in my head. not in the past. not in the future.

 Right now.

For someone like me, that was a foreign concept. My whole life had been a war between memory and imagination. Regret and fear.

But this book talked about another way.

It talked about noticing - really noticing - what was in front of me. The way the air felt against my skin. The sound of the wind moving through the trees. The weight of my own breath.

The first time I tried it, I lasted 5 seconds before my mind dragged me back to my failures.

 But I just kept trying.

And slowly, something shifted.

 One night, I sat in the common room, staring at nothing. Stan walked in, sipping coffee from his chipped mug. “You've been reading?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Starting to get it?”

I exhaled. “I don't know. But for the first time in my life ... I think I might not have to be a prisoner in my own head.”

Stand smiled. “Then you're getting it.”

CHAPTER 13

I went into the woods that evening because I needed silence.

Not the kind of Silence that came with shutting my bedroom door or plugging my ears, but the real kind - the stillness of the earth when no one is watching

So, I put on my hoodie, stepped off the porch, and disappeared into the trees.

 The further I went, the more the sounds of the house faded - no voices, no dishes clanging, no hum of the television. Just the crunch of the dead Leaves beneath my boots and the occasional snap of a branch in the distance.

I breathed deeply. The air was thick with the damp, earthy scent of decaying wood and pine needles. Somewhere nearby, an owl hooted.

 I closed my eyes.

 Just breathe.

 In...... Out..... In…..

The weight in my chest loosened slightly.

 I was about to sit down. to lose myself in the moment.

Then it hit me....

A new smell....

Rot.

 I froze. 

It was faint at first, barely noticeable beneath the damp, mossy sent of the forest. But as I turned my head, the older grew stronger, curling into my nostrils like sour meat left too long in the sun. 

I swallowed hard.

Maybe an animal carcass. A deer. A raccoon. Something small. 

But then I saw it.

My heart kicked into my ribs as I took a step closer.

And then my brain caught up to my eyes.

I took another step, and suddenly, she was there. Dead. 

CHAPTER 14

A girl - no older than 16, sprawled out beneath the crooked arms of an oak tree. Her skin was the color of candle wax, her lips slightly parted as if she had been about to say something but never got the chance. And tangled dark hair spread across her face.

I stumbled backward, my boot catching on a root. I hit the ground hard, my palms scraping against the rough earth.

My pulse pounded in my ears.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.

I wanted to look away, but I couldn't. My gaze locked onto her throat - deep purple bruising around the delicate skin like a handprint frozen in time.

 My stomach lurched.

 I turned and vomited into the leaves, the acid burning my throat, my body rejecting the horror in front of me.

The world spun.

 I pressed a shaking hand against my mouth. The sounds of the forest had disappeared. No more wind. No more owl. Just silence. The real kind.

A terrible, endless kind.

For a moment, I wasn't sure if I was awake or trapped in a cruel dream. My mind pulling me into a nightmare I'd never escape from.

But the smell was real.

 And that meant something else was real too.

 Whoever had done this - whoever had taken this little girl's last breath - was out there.

 Watching.

 or worse..... Waiting.

CHAPTER 15

I stood frozen for what felt like forever. My breath came in shallow bursts, my mind racing, grasping for anything - to make this moment make sense.

I could leave. Right now.

No one knew I was here. No one had seen me come into the woods. If I just turned around and walked back to the house, I could pretend this never happened. 

I never saw her. I was never here.

But my probation.....

Jesus.

A dead girl. A murdered girl. And me - a guy fresh out of jail, barely holding on to my place in a sober living house. The second the cops got involved, I'd be right back in a cell. No one would care that I just happened to find her. No one would believe me. 

My pulse pounded in my skull, my gut twisted in ways that made me want to puke again.

But then……. 

Then I really looked at her.

Her face - pale, peaceful in a way that didn't belong to the living. It wasn't just some stranger's face. It wasn't just some nameless victim. 

I knew her.

A bolt of ice shot down my spine.

 I choked on my own breath, scrambling backward like I could outrun the truth sinking into my chest.

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Her name sat on the edge of my tongue, bitter and sharp, waiting to be spoken. 

But I couldn't say it.

If I said it, then this nightmare would be real. And I wasn't sure I could survive that. 

CHAPTER 16

Her name was Lacy. Lacy Reynolds.

 I knew her well enough to know that finding her like this - here - made no damn sense. 

Her family was bad news. Everyone in town knew it. The name caused people to lock their doors a little earlier at night. Drugs, theft, violence - it ran in their blood. Her mother had been strung out on meth for as long as I could remember. Her father? I wasn't sure he ever existed. 

And Lacy…..

She never stood a chance.

By 15 she was using heroin.

By 18, she was with that piece of shit - Tommy, I think his name was. A scumbag. Mean. Controlling. Always itching to get physical. 

I met her properly one night, outside of gas station, a little over a year ago.

She was barefoot. Shivering. Her lips split wide open.

 I had just stepped out of the store when I saw her, arms wrapped around herself, eyes starting around like a trapped animal.

She looked at me.

“Julian, what are you doing here?”

I shrugged. “Just grabbing a coffee.” Then I lowered my voice. “What about you.”

Looking away she replied. “Nothing.”

But her whole bruised up body told me a much different story.

I sighed. “Its Tommy isn’t it?”

She hesitated. Then nodded.

 I really looked at her, then I made a decision.

“Come on, I said. Let's get you out of here.”

She was hesitant, but finally got in my car. And I drove her straight to the bus station.

I walked up to the counter, pulled out every last crumpled dollar I had, and bought her a ticket to a destination on the other side of the damn country. 

She hugged me before she left.

“Thank you, she whispered. I won't come back, I swear.”

I watched her disappear through the doors. Now the last time I would see her alive. 

But now…….

Now she was lying dead in the woods behind my damn sober living house.

How?    Why?

She was supposed to be gone.

And yet - here she was. 

CHAPTER 17

A heat started in my chest, spreading like fire through my veins. Tommy. That bastard. Every nerve in my body screamed for action, for revenge. The image of Lacy's broken body burned into my mind, and I felt my breath coming in sharp gasps. 

I could picture Tommy now, either drunk or high, laughing about it. He destroyed this girl over and over  Until she had nothing left. Until she ended up like this. 

My mind raced, chaotic thoughts bouncing off each other. I hated that feeling then just like all the time before when anger got control of me. 

I forced myself to breathe. one, two, three……..

Then I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone. My fingers hovering over the screen, hesitating.

Calling the cops felt…..wrong. Almost like betrayal. Like weakness. But Lacy was gone. There wasn't anything I could do to fix that. Nothing I could do to change the way her story ended. 

But I could make sure she wasn't just another junkie death swept under the rug.

I swallowed hard and pressed the numbers.

“911, what's your emergency?”

“There's a body. A girl. In the woods behind Grace sober living house. Her name is Lacy Reynolds.”

CHAPTER 18

Two days passed. The cops took my statement. They didn't seem to suspect me, but I knew the way they looked at me - like I was another broken man caught in a web of addiction and violence. I kept my head down, stuck to my routine. Meetings, work, step by step. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was coming. 

That night, walking back from a late AA meeting, I heard footsteps behind me. Quick. Purposeful. Then - - pain exploded in the back of my head. 

I hit the ground hard. My vision blurred, stars popping behind my eyes. A boot slammed into my ribs. Then another. Voices snarled behind me and above me, but I couldn't make out the words. A fist crashed into my jaw, snapping my head sideways. 

Then……….Darkness.

A strange silence wrapped around me, warm and endless. I saw my body below, crumpled, lifeless. And then I felt something.... Vast. Infinite. A presence. A truth beyond words. 

I was not my past. I was not my pain. I was not even this body. I was pure, awake, boundless. 

And then…….

I gassed awake, choking on blood and reality.

Everything had changed. 

CHAPTER 19

I spent five days in the hospital. Broken ribs. A fractured cheekbone. A concussion. They never caught whoever did it.

But something had shifted. Not just in my body, but in my mind.

I remember staring at the ceiling the third night in that sterile room, everything dark except the slow, rhythmic blink of a monitor.

And in that stillness, I saw it clearly. I'd spent years dragging the past behind me like a corpse. And I let fear of the future chain me to moments that hadn't even happened yet. 

Lacy had been devoured by both. So had Missy. So had Michelle. And so almost had I.

But no more.

When I walked out of that hospital, the world looked different. Not brighter - just clearer. The trees outside swayed like they had something to say. The wind didn't bite - it whispered. 

I wasn't just another broken man anymore. I was a mirror. A fire. A voice in the dark that said, I've been there, and here's what's on the other side.

And that's how I found peace. Not in escape. Not in revenge. But in the strange, brutal grace of surviving long enough to finally wake up.

CHAPTER 20

The days that followed the attack passed in a blur of bandages, whispers, and a flickering overhead light in the hospital. I drifted in and out of sleep, each time waking to Sarah's gentle voice - or the hushed concern of a man who had become my guide - Stan.

The police had caught no one. “Random”, they said. “Wrong place, wrong time.” But I didn't believe in that anymore. Not after Lacy. Not after everything. 

I felt something stirring inside me. Not rage or grief. something bigger.

On the 15th day, I walked to the woods behind the sober house. I sat down right where I found Lacy. The trees whispered a different language now. One I almost understood... Almost. 

I began meditating there - every day, at dawn.

Not to escape, but to listen.

It was one morning during this ritual, that I felt it. The moment where time no longer mattered. Where memory quieted. Where the future meant nothing.

It came and went like the flutter of a bird's wings - but it was enough. Enough to realize that peace was not some myth reserved for monks or saints. It was always there, buried beneath my pain, waiting.

That same week, Sarah looked me right in my eyes and whispered, “you're not who you were.”

I stood there in silence for what seemed like forever, letting the stillness fill my heart. 

CHAPTER 21

Two months passed. I healed and grew stronger. My court ordered time at the sober house was nearing its end. Days were simple. AA meetings, books from Stan, long walks. I read “The Power of Now” three times before something deep clicked. The stillness was no longer a destination - it was my nature.

One evening, I received a letter.

It was anonymous. No return address. Just my name, scrawled in shaky handwriting.

Inside was a photo - grainy, black and white - of a young woman, face bruised and eyes wide. Lacy. 

On the back, in red ink: You don't know the whole story. Meet me. Midnight. At the place you found her. 

CHAPTER 22

That night, just before midnight, I stood beneath the same trees that had once nearly broke me.

The woods were silent. The wind was still.

I almost left.

But then, from behind a tree, a figure emerged. Hooded, slim, and nervous.

“Julian”, the figure said. The voice was female. Familiar.

 I cautiously stepped forward. “Who the hell are you?”

The figure pulled down her hood.

My knees nearly gave out.

It was Lacy.........ALIVE….

(TO BE CONTINUED).