When he was carted away from the playground in Clay’s neighborhood, Desperation was smiling. He was bloody and his body ached, but he was smiling. He had been bested by Clay, who had been forced to show the full extent of his mysterious powers when Desperation attacked him at the request of Jamar. Desperation is an extraordinary man himself, and the arrest was the first of his criminal career. When he arrived at the local jail where he was processed, the other inmates who knew him, stared at Desperation with their mouths open, utter disbelief to see him. Desperation Jackson doesn’t go to jail, no matter what heinous crime he commits, Desperation has proven to be above the law. No one quite understands why this is, they just know it to be true that there is no car fast enough, no gun deadly enough to stop Desperation Jackson from doing what he wants, from walking and living freely.
But he was arrested and he never said a word as he was handcuffed and loaded into the back of a police car, when he was booked and fingerprinted, when he was led to the big holding cell where he would wait for his sentencing trial. Desperation just smiled through the entire thing. Soon he was transferred to the Lee Correctional Institution in Bishopville, South Carolina. The inmates there, at what is described as the most dangerous prison in the state, knew Desperation Jackson, but most of them didn’t know him personally and they doubted the legend, that a black man could murder as horrifically as he was known to do and avoid police custody or death from a rival; a black serial killer is pretty much a unicorn.
His time at Lee was as violent as one would expect, though Desperation used the experience to further sharpen his skills at stealth hunting that he had learned from the former navy seal turned pastor who had raised him into his teenage years. It was the best time of Desperation’s life, after he had killed his own father in defense of his mother and he had demonstrated social difficulties in school and in his community. Desperation’s mother asked an old family friend for help. The pastor, Henry Powers, was like an uncle to Desperation’s mother and she believed that Desperation could benefit from his years of selfless service to others. The two had stayed close over the years and when she visited the mountains, she would always sit with him at his church to catch up on their lives. He was hesitant to help, but agreed on the condition that Desperation would live with him in the mountains away from his family.
Desperation hated it at first and he hardly talked to the old man who was built like a tank and had a deep voice that boomed when he shouted. He kept the young Desperation on a very strict schedule that had him up every morning at sunrise to chop wood, and then the two would hike for at least an hour and he would show Desperation how to track animals.
Henry taught Desperation to fight because he thought that he could impose a moral code on the boy’s violence that his mother said had gotten out of control, especially in school. It seemed to work when Henry was there to supervise, and Desperation had no violent outbursts at the school he attended in the mountains. The silver scar on Desperation’s cheek that emerged when he was angry, never saw the mountains. But when Henry was found brutally murdered in the woods under very mysterious circumstances, Desperation seemed to snap, and he disappeared without ever returning to his mother’s home, and by the time he resurfaced, he was the legend that he is today.
He killed about twenty prisoners while at Lee. Just four of the murders were identified as such and those were cleared when the men that Desperation intended to frame for the murders were punished as he’d hoped. Henry hadn’t taught him to kill people, but the hunting and stalking animals proved to have some overlap, and Desperation’s rage had never disappeared, Henry had just been the check on it.
Eventually, his fellow prisoners learned to stay out of Desperation’s way and they too marveled at the fact that he was in prison. How had he been caught in the real world if he managed to be so successful at clandestine murder while in the custody of law enforcement?
Desperation doesn’t have a confidant and he will never tell anyone this, but he felt that he deserved his first arrest after his failed confrontation with the young man he called sweetness, whose real name is Clay. He had been thoroughly bested and Desperation had given Clay his all, the full silver scar treatment, but Clay was just too much. There was something very special about that man, Desperation knew, and the only thing that he thought would be helpful in a future confrontation was to put his skills to the most extreme test that he could devise for himself. So he allowed himself to be locked up, and he agitated dangerous men, then stalked them within the confines of the prison, usually driving them mad before he forced a solitary encounter where he would gleefully end their lives. He planned to instigate a riot so that he could have a brawl on par with the one he had shared with Clay, but before he could, Desperation suffered a nasty fall in the shower and knocked himself unconscious. When he awoke, he was not in the prison, or he was in the prison, but the world he encountered when he opened his eyes made him feel that he had been transported. He didn’t know where he was, but there was a large spider lady and a blue deer who conversed with one another, and then approached him.
“I would coopt your efforts,” the black spider lady said to him. “The deer is skeptical, but I am sure that he is a racist. There is no game, we would like to see you succeed, so we will level the playing field a bit. Kill the spider soldier, the one called Clay, or kill his mate, or kill them both. But they cannot be together any longer.”
“What’s going on?” Desperation asked.
“Theophany, son,” the spider lady said with a grin. “As far as you know, you are being given a sacred mission from God.”
“Why now? You could have helped me before.”
“Well now you have experience with the soldier,” the woman chuckles. “And you’ve proven yourself more than a loser. If you can get back to him, know that you will have help this time. I will make you as strong as he is.”
When he woke up, Desperation was ready for a fight.
By the time police arrive at the club, Ivan, Clay and Vita are already gone. Clay had tried to fight Desperation, but one perfectly timed punch laid him out cold on the floor. Ivan had never seen Clay hit so hard, and he had never seen him unconscious. Vita pulled a gun that she had hidden somewhere in her skirt and she unloaded on Desperation, even though the bullets bounced right off of him. He tried to punch Vita, but she managed to defend herself and evade long enough for Ivan to recover. When he did, Ivan exploded in flames and he pushed all of the force that he could channel at Desperation and destroyed a wall of the club. He surrounded himself, Clay, and Vita in a green tinted bubble that transported them away.
They land at the home of Vita’s family because Ivan is afraid that Desperation will know to look for them at Clay’s house. Ivan insists that Vita go stay with Alia while he focuses on trying to revive Clay, who is not dead, but still out cold.
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