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quantumrpg · 6 years

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NAME: Jake Ryleigh AGE: 33 SPECIES: Werewolf OCCUPATION: Tattoo Artist YEAR OF DEPARTURE: late 2011 RESIDENT FOR… six years FACECLAIM: Bob Morley

t i m e i s a n i l l u s i o n, b u t n o t o u r s t o r i e s…

TW: Drug Abuse, Alcoholism, Death, Domestic Abuse, Assault, Racism

When people hear Ely, Minnesota not much comes to mind. Born and raised in small town, USA, population less than 4,000, Jake grew up surrounded by what he fondly refers to as the lower working class. For every family resting comfortably in the working class, there were those that barely managed to scrape by. Small towns aren’t exactly booming with opportunity. Especially, for two high school graduates.

Jake was born to two teenage parents. His mother belonged to a religious, white, middle class family. His father was an immigrant working alongside his brother for a contractor in town with nothing to his name save for work ethic. Needless to say, his grandparents were not pleased with the elopement so Jake has few memories of them from before the age of seven. They were there for no birthdays and holidays; they weren’t even at the hospital when his little sister was born. It wasn’t until his father passed away, victim of a heart attack caused by an undiagnosed health condition, that they surfaced. Jake was seven at the time and from there things quickly swan dived.

His mother struggled to find work without job experience and the small family drowned under the funeral expenses. Although she had to bite her pride, Jake’s mother agreed to live with his grandparents. This arrangement was supposed to last until she got the family on their feet, but his mother took the first out she could find. It came in the form of a toxic relationship, which scars went beyond her to Jake. His sister was too young to remember everything, and that was the only good part of that time period.

By the time Jake was nine years old, his mother managed to get enough footing that they moved into a modest neighborhood. He wound up making his first real friend after the move with a boy that lived close by. His name was Lee Randazzo and the two became an inseparable pair. So much so that they decided to start a band at the age of fourteen. Things were fine enough. He was no stranger to childhood bullying. Kids didn’t understand why his clothes didn’t fit right and why he never had much until they were older, but by then it hadn’t mattered because his mother remarried. Two incomes instead of one made things easier, and Jake already learned that the best way to get by was to laugh first. Even if it was at himself, and having Lee around made it better.

At the age of fourteen, Lee and Jake decided to start a band on a whim. Lee, as discovered by their choir teacher, could actually sing. Jake liked the bass that Lee’s dad kept in the basement. They met Ken, their first drummer, after school. He was a jazz band kid, but he wanted more, and they needed a drummer. Keith came a few months later; then, Jeremy a year later. Lee found them and that was how they built the band. Over the next three years, each of them got a little better at being a band. They started playing locally after school despite their parent’s complaints, and they practiced in Lee’s basement whenever they had the time.

By the time senior year rolled around, Lee, Jake, Jeremy, and Keith were ready to commit to the band 100 percent. Ken was not. Ken wanted college, so he left, and they came to a fork in a road. Luckily for them, Aaron found them and unlike Ken he wanted the band just as much as they did. With Aaron on board, they were able to find the right and venues and Oliver Fink, agent for Hollywood Records, found them.

At nineteen, Jake and the rest of the band moved from Detroit to sunny LA. They all fit it with ease. They were on top of the world, and it stayed that way for five years. Five years and four records was a lot. If they weren’t in the studio they were on stage. Jake loved it. He loved traveling and meeting new people, one of his first serious relationships happened during this time with a girl named Kat. He was living a life he never expected, chasing after a dream and living comfortably alongside his friends.

Lee started to crumble and his drinking and self medicating hit its peak during their second tour. Jake and Aaron begged for Lee to go to rehab. They insisted that putting the band on hold would be worth it if he could get clean. The band wouldn’t keep afloat if they kept cancelling shows and missing rehearsals. Lee insisted he was fine, and for a few months thing seemed that way.

In 2009, their fourth album was in production when Lee went out for the night. Jake planned on going with him to a mutual friends house, but when he got stuck in traffic Lee told him to meet him there. He was only a hour and a half late when he got to their friends house and saw the ambulances surrounding it. Dead on scene, is what the paramedics said. Accidental overdose was the official report on the autopsy. According to their friend, Lee was already at their house when Jake called. There was nothing he could have done, but Jake wasn’t so sure.

In the months after Lee’s death, Jake and the rest of the band tried to get back on their feet. They looked for a new main vocalist, but nothing ever worked. By the time their fourth album released, they knew it would be the last. The band went their separate ways within a month of the album’s release, and Jake? Jake was beginning to crumble under the same demons that took his best friend, and he could see the dead end from a mile away. He made the decision to move from LA to New York on a whim. It was a last ditch attempt to save himself before he was completely lost.

Within his first few months of living in New York, Jake ran into Kat again and the two started dating after a few months of hooking up. Things were going well. As someone that was always more artistically inclined and a fan of tattoos, Jake decided to leave the music scene in lieu of becoming a tattoo artist. His first year as an apprentice was a challenge, but rewarding. He and Kat were supportive of one another’s goals and happy, but things started to go south during the fall of 2011. They started to fight more, and Jake struggled to find the reason why. It wasn’t until he came home one night and saw Kat using in their bathroom that he put two and two together.

If things were different, if there was no Lee, and if Jake hadn’t found himself in a similar place, he would have stayed in the apartment that night and talked things out. Unfortunately, things weren’t like that for Jake and he walked out. He intended to to go to his best friend’s house and return in the morning. Jake was halfway to Silas’s house when his friend convinced him to turn around and go home. Jake made a call to Kat that night to apologize and to say he was coming home. That never happened, though. Instead, he slipped into the liminal space.

What he found was another family in his apartment and no sign of anyone he knew. He had nothing except for what was on his person. While he could look at his friends and family online, it was a one way mirror and no one could see or hear him. Jake began to crumble on his own. This time, there was nowhere and no one to run to in order to save himself. He quickly crumbled to his demons and was fully prepared to let them eat away what was left of himself.

Despite his best intentions, Jake wound up meeting people during his first year in the liminal space. One of them was a girl named Ophelia. Ophelia was fun at first. A nice distraction from the loneliness and anger he felt at not being able to return home. Ophelia was not content with being nothing more than a fling, and she disliked watching Jake spiral so she took matters into her own hands. She bit him. She gave him no choice but to live.

Alone and afraid, Jake spent the first few weeks after being bitten avoiding her at every corner. He met a dormant werewolf and her boyfriend during this time and the two managed to keep him together long enough for the first full moon after Ophelia’s attack. It wasn’t until days before the first shift that Jake realized that he didn’t have much of a choice: he was going to have to live a sober life. It was either that or waste all of his money trying to fight against a body that needed more of everything to feel high.

It’s been six years since he slipped and at times Jake feels the same as he did during the first week. He feels alone and aimless in a place that is real, but not by the standards he used to understand. On other days, he feels almost human. He has a job, and a place to sleep. He’s more in control of himself and his werewolfism with every year, and he has even found himself coping with music and work. There a few people he would consider friends, too. It’s not the same, but it’s fine. Yet, that’s the problem. It’s fine. Every now and then, he revisits his friends and family online. It’s a bittersweet comfort to see that they have moved on, and on some days he’s better at moving on, too.

t e l l m e, a r e w e a p r o d u c t o f w h o w e u s e d t o b e?

Jake’s a complicated mishmash of a person. On one hand he appears to be a very laidback person in the sense that people can rarely make him mad. Annoyed? Sure. But Jake’s the type to be annoying right back and he does it with the biggest grin. Most people find this infuriating. Jake doesn’t really care. He’s the type of person that goes over like a fart in church for some people. He’s too loud, too talkative, and for some people, too unfocused, for them to take seriously. Despite this being a core of Jake’s personality, it has always functioned as a barrier of sorts. As a kid, it was all armor against anyone trying to pick on him. As an adult, it’s a ruse that makes people feel close to him without actually being close to him. It’s hard to notice that a person is actually distant when they always seem at ease and happy with company. Underneath the ruse, Jake swirls with turbulent emotions and regrets. He’s been hollowed out with loneliness and self hatred. He has always put blame on himself for the things that have happened in his life, and slipping into the liminal space was no different. In order to keep himself afloat underneath the weight of his self loathing he tends to run away. Whether it be by changing his own setting or through humor, Jake’s usual response to his own negative emotions is to distance himself. He’ll go from being lighthearted to numb and blank when he’s alone in his room if he’s reminded of the past. In spite of this, Jake is stubborn and intensely loyal when it comes to other people. It is both a blessing and a curse as he tends to make lasting friends with those he becomes close to, but fails to let go easily, even if it is at his own expense.

#bob morley #werewolf #taken #jake ryleigh

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