ORIGINS, Owens

“Don’t cry, Timmy. We’ll figure something out.” Ten year old Tundra Owens put his arm around his best friend Timmy and tried to console him. Timmy was wailing like a little bitch. 

“He’s so mean, Tundra! There’s nothing we can do! If we tell a grown up, he’ll beat us up. We can’t beat him up cuz he’s too big. It’s not fair!” 

Tundra could feel the blood boiling in his veins but he kept his cool. “Don’t worry, Timmy. Butch will get what he deserves.” 

Butch was a high school dropout that hung around the elementary school. He was already over six feet tall and two hundred fifty pounds at only sixteen years old. He took lunch money from the younger students as they walked to school in the mornings and threatened them with violence if they tattled on him. Butch was mean and rotten to the core. 

Today was the last straw. 

Tundra had decided, someway, somehow, Butch was going to get his payback. “Timmy, by this time tomorrow, I promise you that he’ll never take anyone’s money ever again.”

At a very young age, Tundra Owens knew that he was different from other kids or grown ups. He could hear the wires hum within the walls whenever the lights were turned on. When he was in a bank or other important buildings, he could intrinsically feel the lenses focus and move inside security cameras. When a key entered any door lock, he could hear the internal locking mechanisms click when no one else seemed to notice. Padlocks were easy to open, walls were always easy to climb, he could see clearly in the dark, and he was always able to slip in and out of places without ever being noticed by anyone, including guard dogs. 

As his best friend cried violently in his arms that morning, Tundra’s brain changed. He was no longer a mischievous goofy ten year old with strange and unique abilities. He was now a protector of the innocent. 

Later that evening as the sun went down, Tundra was wearing all black clothes and hiding in the shadows outside of a crack house. As silently as a ghost, Tundra opened the back door without sound. He slipped into the house and explored the rooms in the perfect darkness. He could hear people arguing upstairs. As if by instinct, the ten year seemed to step over the steps that would be creaky as he slipped up the stairs. He soundlessly slipped into the room and hid behind a small reclining chair. Four gang bangers were arguing heatedly around a large table covered in money, drugs and hand held weapons. 

“Main street to the Powell heights is my turf!” 

“Ah hell no, we got the Powell heights! You get Peeka street to the Romanian district!” 

As the drug dealers argued, Tundra flipped a light switch and the room went dark. The thugs all pulled out hand guns and started yelling at each other in the darkness. It only took ten seconds for a drug dealer to make his way back to the light switch to turn the lights back on. In that time, a hand gun along with half of the money and drugs had disappeared from the table. The thugs accusingly waved their guns threateningly at each other as a ten year old thief snuck down the stairs and slipped out the back door soundlessly. 

The next morning, Tundra called the police from a payphone and gave an anonymous tip to the dispatcher. He then walked to Timmy’s house and met his best friend to walk to school together. Two blocks away from their school, Butch appeared from behind some bushes. 

“Hey turds, give me your lunch money or I’ll smash your faces in.” 

Tundra smiled widely and said, “you need a hug!” He ran up to the bully and wrapped his arm around him. The bully was completely surprised and lurched backwards, protesting the hug, but Tundra had already planted drugs and cash in Butch’s pockets without the bully knowing what had happened. 

As a police patrol car turned the corner, Butch punched Tundra in the face. The ten year old went down hard as the police jumped out of the car. “Freeze!” they said as they ran to the scene. Butch put his hands on his hips and tried to play it cool. 

“Officers,” cried Tundra from the ground, “this mean boy is trying to make us take his drugs to our school!” 

Butch’s eyes got huge as he said, “what in the hell did you just say?” to the crying ten year old boy. The cops grabbed Butch and threw him on the ground. 

“Trying to peddle drugs to kids, eh? That’ll get you twenty years in prison, buddy.” As Butch protested, the cops found the crack cocaine in his pockets along with several hundred dollars in cash. “You’re under arrest. You have the right to stay silent.” 

Tundra Owens pretended to be sad on the ground, but he made eye contact with Timmy and gave him a quick wink. Then he turned around weepily and said, “officers, he has a gun in his sock too! He said he’d shoot our families if we didn’t take his drugs!” 

Butch was in handcuffs on the ground and yelled like a chained dog as the cop pulled the planted hand gun in his sock. “How did that get there?!? That’s not my gun!?! FUCKY!!!” 

Later that day, Timmy and Tundra had lunch together at the school cafeteria. “How did you know that Butch was a drug dealer, and how did you know he had a gun?” asked Timmy. 

Tundra shrugged and said, “Butch was a bad guy on a bad path. Maybe this will turn him around.” In his heart, Tundra knew it was now his lifelong destiny now to use his abilities to punish bad people. 

In the distance, a sixteen year old bully sat in a jail cell and cried like a bitch, only to serve twenty years hard prison time, whereafter he came out a rehabilitated new man who eventually worked with troubled youth and helped people instead of hurting them.