Jesse Teller

Have you ever known you were in the right place at the right time? That everything in your life had brought you to this one event? That no one could have done what you were doing right then?

Guardian knows how that feels. When your life comes to a head and all of it matters, all of your pain and all of your joy. When every nightmare and every dream had a point, had a reason, and you can see it. You can see that no one could have done this job as well as you. Well, when Guardian called the cops on Grasp, he knew that. He felt it in his bones.

This was a no brainer. You always defend children, all the time, every time. That should never be in question. Guardian suddenly understood all the pain he had been through. He understood all the fights he had been in. Every lesson his mother had given him. Every story that had been told to him by every teacher. All of it came into crystal clear focus. Defending children is always the right thing to do.

No battles lost.

Guardian never lost a battle in that fight. He, to this day, has never lost a battle in that fight. It comes up every now and then. Every now and then, the topic will rise from the fog of the past, and every time he meets it with violence, emotional and mental. Every time the issue of Grasp and his victims is brought up, no one gets away with anything.

They can’t make a comment and walk away clean when they are in front of Guardian. Every time, he rises to the occasion. And no one knows how to bear him. No one has ever beaten him in any conversation about it. He has always won.

He wins every argument because he was born to, trained to. He was made to fight that fight. He always knows what to say and he says it to everyone as soon as they begin to defend Grasp.

But why did he lose?

At my grandmother’s wake, a few cousins came into town with their six-year-old daughter and stayed with Grasp. I had told them not to. I had told them exactly what he had done and what he was. And they still stayed with him. He left the wake early and as he was walking away, turned to the parent, and even though I was standing right there, he still asked if he could take the little girl back to his house so the parents could stay longer.

Still his urges were so strong that he could not help but separate a little girl from her parents. I saw the look on his face when he said it. I saw the hope, the fear, and the shame of what he was asking to do.

I turned to him and in that moment I wanted to kill him. I wanted to wipe him off of the world. Because I saw the lust in his eyes and I know what he wanted to do to that girl.

Her parents said they would keep her, that she was fine where she was, but he had tried. That was not a coincidence. That was a planned attack, and he had been planning that moment since they agreed to bring their daughter to his house.

So he is still active.

Well people like him never go dormant. But he is still hunting. And he is getting more and more sly. He is growing bolder. He is getting better. And no one can stop him.

Guardian tried to. Guardian threw everything he had into that fight. And he lost.

And then, after losing that fight and Grasp getting away with all of it, Guardian promptly lost everything else.

He lost his home, his education, his family, the kids he had fought for. He lost the ability to feed himself, his car, and the only person who had ever loved him with no motive.

Bekah had been the only one to show him unconditional love. Her love was not trying to shape him into anything, was not trying to control him, was not trying to take anything from him. Bekah’s love for him was nothing but healthy and safe, and she provided him a back to set his to. She had been the only thing that really stood by him and he had lost her.

What Guardian had been left with was a friend who wanted to save him and a predator of a girlfriend who wanted to take his will and his power and his body. What Guardian was left with was nothing.

He fought the fight of his life to protect and save children and he lost everything.

After years of fighting and suffering, he got Bekah back. He built a life, a career and really, love, but that was after years of pain and heartbreak.

We call him the Broken Knight.

We all call him that because he has a section inside himself that will never be okay. We call him the Broken Knight because he will never get a chance to fight that battle again.

And it was the only one that mattered.

Guardian is the Broken Knight and he was fighting God’s fight. I think everyone who has come this far with me, who has fought their way through Teardrop Road, Normal Street and has read this far in The Keep knows that Guardian was right for that call and that fight. That was God’s work.

And we lost.

How can Guardian make peace with that? How can he be okay with the Lord when Grasp is still hunting? When none of it mattered and Guardian is shamed and disgraced? When he has been demonized by the ones who used to call him family and he has become the bad guy? When the children he defended cannot even look at him for the pain it causes them, and he is not wanted around them?

How can he make peace with that God? The one who let that happen?

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This chapter is from Reality of the Unreal Mind, Vol. 3: The Keep.

Vol. 1: Teardrop Road is available now on Amazon.