Meet Me at Nightfall

Benjamin Parker Stark was born on July 22nd, 1982 to Peter and Maria Stark. Peter was a business man, working for many fortune 500 companies before landing an important position at British Petroleum, otherwise known as BP. He was an ambitious man, but he was also greedy. He went to great, unnecessary lengths to get promotions, until he finally reached the top of the executive chain. He became C.E.O. of BP the year Benjamin turned 9.

Though his parents always referred to him by his birth name, Benjamin preferred to be called "Jax", after seeing the abbreviated name of Jacksonville International Airport when he was four. As a child, Jax was very bright and studious. He loved to travel and see new places. More so than anything, Jax loved to go to the beach. He loved the sand, the salty smell of the air... But his favorite part of the beach was the wildlife, the birds, the crabs, and the sea turtles.

Late one night, thirteen year old Jax took a flashlight from the kitchen counter in the Stark's vacation home and went out exploring the beach. He knew it was sea turtle season, and he hoped that he would see a mother turtle slowly drag herself out of the ocean, dig a hole, and lay her eggs. But the odds were very much against him. It was becoming more and more of a rarity to see a sea turtle lay her eggs.

Jax set out from the back door of the condo, making sure to take the boardwalk over the sand dunes. The white tops of the waves rolling in glistened in the moonlight. A ghost crab scurried out in front of Jax, spooking him for a second, and then he continued on his way. The beach was empty except for a family with plastic nets attempting to catch ghost crabs, which was an amusing sight, since the whole family was practically falling over each other.

He stepped out onto the sand and took a deep breath. Salty, ocean air filled his lungs, and he smiled. He walked close to the water and noticed a peculiar sight... Something that wasn't water was making it's way onto the beach. He shined his flashlight on it, and pulled away quickly when he noticed that it was a sea turtle.

The sea turtle seemed unfazed by the flashlight and continued to slowly climb up the beach. Jax stepped out of the way of the turtle, and walked back a few feet, being careful not to scare her.

He watched for the next three hours as the turtle dragged her large bulk up the beach to the dunes, where she started digging a next with her hind legs. Soon, she backed into the hole, and released the eggs from her bottom. Jax noticed something strange when admiring the turtle. She seemed to be crying. Then Jax remembered something he had read about sea turtles a few years before: they cry to get rid of excess salt from their bodies.

After laying her eggs, the turtle sat in the hole for a few minutes, before pulling herself out with a jolt. She kicked the dirt back into the hole, covering it up. As the sun rose, Jax watched as the mother turtle made her way slowly back to the ocean, where she soon disappeared.

Jax didn't know it, but he had witnessed a miracle. That section of beach had become increasingly popular recently, and a turtle hadn't nested there in over 10 years. The lights and sounds that people have created were alarming the turtles and scaring them away.

Jax was there when the eggs hatched about 3 weeks later. He sat there for 12 hours, watching the little turtles dig themselves up, and scurry towards the ocean. He saw many large birds overlooking the turtles, but when one came near the group, Jax would chase it away. After it had seemed like all of the turtles were gone, Jax peered inside the hole again. There was another baby turtle who was drying desperately to get out, but this one was different than the others. It had a hot pink spot on it's shell, and was a bit smaller than the others.

Jax contemplated whether or not to help the turtle out of the hole and into the water. The turtle couldn't even make it out of the hole... How was it supposed to live in the water? Jax sat for a matter of minutes, watching the turtle, and trying to decide what to do.

He came to a decision. He decided that he would pick the turtle up, and run him to the waterline.

Jax stood and prepared himself. He was going to do this quickly, so the turtle didn't get used to his touch, or die from shock. His hand hovered over the little guy for a second. As quickly as he could, he grabbed the turtle's small body and ran like a lighting bolt to the water. He got down on his knees and placed the turtle in the sand gently.

The turtle scurried into the water, and after a minute or so, Jax lost his visual contact of it.

Jax's childhood was filled with nature endeavors like this. But when he hit his teen years, they became less innocent.

When he was 16, Jax had driven to a pier that overlooked the ocean. The sun was setting slowly, turning the sky a vast array of bright, mysterious colors. There was a group of kids about his age standing at the end of the pier, drinking canned beer from a red plastic cooler.

He watched the group for a while, and noted that with each sip of beer, they got louder, and more obnoxious. "Hey dude, check out THAT thing!" one of the boys exclaimed.

Jax narrowed his glance to the water and saw a wounded manatee. "Poor thing." he thought.

He dug for his cell phone in his pocket to call a rescue team, but he dropped the idea when he saw what happened next.

The teenagers began yelling and throwing empty beer cans at the poor creature. With every piece of aluminum that pounded the manatee, Jax grew angrier, and angrier. So angry that he lost every ounce of self control he had, and ran at the teens. He jumped on the biggest, loudest of the males, who started screaming profanities, and incomprehensible phrases at Jax.

The girls of the group (there were two), were screaming bloody murder, and trying to hit Jax, but failed to do so, because they were totally shitfaced. The other male jumped on top of Jax, telling him to "Get his sorry punk ass off of his friend". Jax let go of the first boy, and punched the other in the nose as hard as he could. He fell to the ground and Jax grinned at him.

The other boy was huffing and glaring at Jax. He looked like a bull that was about to charge. Taking notice of this, Jax jumped out of the way when the big guy ran at him. Instead of plowing into Jax, like he intended to, he ran into the wooded railing on the pier, and split it like a toothpick. The guy fell into the water with a huge splash and Jax laughed silently.

The other guy was holding his bloody nose in his hands, and the girls were trying to console him. Jax decided that he'd let these losers know what was on his mind.

"Didn't your parents tell you not to litter? Did they ever teach you some fucking respect? That's a living thing, you idiots! How would you feel if you were hurt, and five dipshits were throwing beer cans at you?!"

They looked at him for a second and then looked away.

"You're fucking crazy, man!" the guy with the bloody nose said.

"Shut up!" Jax spat at him.

And with that, Jax hopped back into his car and took off down the interstate.

When he was 22, Jax was visiting a zoo in Tampa while vacationing with a friend. Jax liked the concept of a zoo, but he hated it all the same. Every zoo he had ever been to angered him. But this zoo was the worst of all. He walked through the aisles and aisles of cages and artificial habitats until he got to the gopher tortoise.

The tortoise was named Bertha, and had seen better days. She lived in a circular pen covered in grass with a small, dirty pond in the middle of it. She was standing near the edge of the pen when Jax saw her. Jax heard loud, chirping human voices from behind him. He turned around to see a large group of elementary school kids, each wearing the same, hideous, orange shirt.

The children ran up to the edge of the pen, where only a two and a half foot tall net separated them and Bertha. He watched in horror as the kids spat at her, came as close as possible and yelled at her. He saw them throw gum wrappers and pieces of debris at Bertha, making his blood boil.

Jax had been to anger management as a result of a past incident involving and uncovering an underground illegal animal trade. He smuggled animals out of the cramped cages, but then got caught by the people who ran the operation. He proceeded to break one of the men's noses and to break another one's fingers. He would have gotten away, but the cops had been alerted of Jax's attack, and were at the scene to arrest him, as well as the animal smugglers.

As he watched the children torture Bertha, he practiced a technique he had learned in anger management to try to calm down. He counted to ten about 5 different times, but all of that had gone to waste when one kid decided to take things too far.

The kid looped his feet in the net, stuck a drinking straw into his outstretched hand, and poked Bertha in the eye. Bertha howled a strange grumbling noise and started to bleed. Jax had had it with the children. He couldn't just stand there and let the animal bleed to death.

He jumped into the pen and grabbed Bertha's large bulk, and bolted out of a maintenance door out the side of the pen. He ran around the building to his car, and set Bertha in the backseat.

"Hey! Come back here! STOP!" He heard a group of men yell behind him.

He started the car and sped away, driving to one of his favorite places: the animal rescue clinic that he and a few colleges ran.

He parked the car, grabbed the large tortoise out of the backseat, and sprinted into the clinic.

"Jax! What the hell? What happened?" his friend Michelle came running out of an examination room in her lab coat.

"I rescued this old girl from the zoo. Some kid poked her in the eye with a straw."

Michelle's expression darkened. She instructed Jax to take Bertha into examination room D while she went and got Dr. Price.

Michelle returned with Dr. Price and sat next to Jax as he began his diagnosis. He cleaned around Bertha's eye, but soon determined that there was no way to save it. It had been damaged too much. Jax watched as the doctor cauterized the blood sockets in her eye, and put a bandage over it.

"We cannot let this get infected, Jax." Dr. Price said.

Jax nodded as he picked Bertha up again, and took her into a recovery room.

The room was large, but there were only a few animals in it. Jax set Bertha into a pen in the corner, and fought back the urge to cry. He knew there was no way that she could be released into the wild. The panflit at the zoo said that she had been in captivity for the majority of her life. That means she has more than likely lost her natural instinct to find food, and to defend herself.

Sure enough, they ended up taking Bertha to a rehabilitation center. It was, as Jax put it "Where they take the animals who they've lost hope for."

Jax continued to pull stunts like such, and even more elaborate ones. Being the son of one of the richest people on the planet, he had the connections and money to do almost anything.

Jax was socially awkward and didn't have a girlfriend until he turned 20. Her name was Cherie, and she worked at the clinic for a very long time. Jax was convinced that he was in love with her, but the truth is, he fell in "love" with any woman that showed him the least bit of attention, and didn't think he was a psychopath.

As far as Jax was concerned, there was no greater treasure than the female neck. He loved the warmth, the contours of it, and he often nuzzled his face into them, when a woman would let him. To Jax, the greatest, most marvelous neck in the world belonged to Michelle. He had fancied Michelle for a long time, but the feelings soon passed when she moved to Canada.

Jax had spent twenty eight years of his life committing various acts of eco-terrorism. He had saved dogs, trees, butterflies, plants, reptiles, furry animals, and amphibians alike. He had also caused a lot of trouble for people of his father's profession. He often messed with construction sites and things of the like.

But Jax hadn't ever felt anger like he did when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded.