Character Sheet: Jude Yates

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Basic Information

• Full Name: Jude Ward Yates
• Age: 25
• Residence: Romford, London, UK
• Occupation: Mortuary Assistant at Queen’s Hospital

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Physical Description

• Height: 182 cm (roughly 6 feet); tall enough to be noticed in a crowd, though he moves as if trying not to be.

• Build: Lean, slightly underweight. He’s not sickly, but his frame carries a certain tension, like a man who hasn’t quite relaxed in years.

• Skin: Pale, with a cool undertone. Not sickly, but drained—like someone who hasn’t seen much sunlight or sleep.

• Eyes & Expression: His blue eyes, once likely full of emotion, now often drift past people rather than land on them. They’re not cold—just distant. His face usually holds a neutral expression, not unfriendly but unreadable. He rarely smiles, but when he does, it’s small and genuine, though a little unsure—as if he’s out of practice.

• Fatigue: There are faint shadows under his eyes, not dramatic but persistent. A kind of quiet exhaustion follows him, like background noise.

• Hair: Brown, Medium-length, falling just slightly over his brows. It covers his ears and brushes lightly against the nape of his neck. The style is unkempt in a deliberate way—messy but clean, like he never bothers to fix it, but somehow it never looks dirty. It suits him: natural, quiet, and non-confrontational.

• Clothing: He prefers clothing that is plain and unobtrusive—grey hoodies, dark jeans, worn jackets. His goal is to blend in, to be forgettable. But one detail stands out: he always wears gloves. Not heavy winter gloves, just simple, thin fabric ones. He never explains why. Most people don’t ask.

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Information Jude Never Talks About

Background

When Jude was around nine years old, his parents had to leave urgently for another city due to an emergency. They left him in the care of his paternal grandfather, Ward Yates, at their home in Ilford. Ward was a soft-spoken man who loved watching old Westerns on TV. That day, as he sat watching a dusty, gun-slinging showdown unfold on screen, he began telling Jude stories of cowboys and duels from when he was young.

Jude, wide-eyed and curious, laughed and asked questions. Ward, wanting to entertain the boy, playfully put on his old hat and pretended to be an outlaw. He made a quickdraw gesture with his fingers, pretending to shoot. Jude laughed louder, then copied him. He pointed at his grandfather’s head, formed a little finger-gun, and said, “Bang!”

The explosion was sudden, silent, and absolute. Ward’s head caved in from the inside, bursting in a horrifying spray. No fire, no flash—just instant, irreversible destruction.

Jude screamed.

The neighbor next door, alarmed by the sound and the child’s cries, rushed in and found the unthinkable. Police arrived and were baffled. There was no weapon. Nothing in the house explained the injuries. Someone pointed out that the window had been left open. They speculated—without any evidence—that a stray bullet from a nearby shooting range may have flown in. The case was officially closed as a freak accident.

Jude told them the truth, again and again. “I did it. I pointed at Grandpa and said bang. Then he died.” But nobody believed a child could kill like that. His parents cried, held him, and tried to convince themselves he was just traumatized and confused. They never truly believed him. That might have hurt more than anything else.

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Ability

• Jude has a supernatural power: by forming a finger-gun gesture and saying “Bang!”, he can cause an internal explosion in the target.
• The explosion occurs silently and without fire or debris. It happens from the inside, destroying a space about the size of a basketball.
• This ability remains active even after Jude’s index fingers were self-mutilated and partially amputated. Whether the gesture still “works” with damaged hands is unknown—he’s never dared to try again.
• He fears the ability more than death itself, and avoids acknowledging its existence.

Note: In the narrative, the origin, scale, or utility of Jude’s ability is not important. The focus should never be on the supernatural mechanics of his power, but rather on how an incomprehensible force within himself has destroyed his sense of safety, self, and humanity. The power exists solely as a tool to define Jude’s emotional reality.

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Mental Health & Trauma

• Psychiatric History: Jude was institutionalized as a teen following the incident and spent several years in psychiatric care. After stabilization, he was released into an independent living arrangement.

• Physical Trauma: Both of his index fingers are missing from about the middle joint. He mutilated them himself during hospitalization—an instinctive attempt to remove the very parts of his body that caused harm.

• Trigger – Pointing: Jude cannot tolerate pointing gestures. He will never point at anything or anyone himself, and reacts with visible discomfort—even fear or panic—when someone else points, especially with an extended index finger. He finds the sight of a solitary pointing finger deeply upsetting.

• Trigger – Firearms: Jude has an intense phobia of guns. If someone near him carries a weapon (especially a police officer), he becomes visibly anxious. If a gun is aimed at him, he is likely to suffer a traumatic flashback or collapse into a panic attack—muttering phrases like “I’m sorry,” “I didn’t mean to,” or “Please don’t die.”

• Sleep-related behavior: Jude wraps his hands in bandages before going to sleep, keeping his fists clenched. He’s terrified that he might mutter “bang” in his sleep and unintentionally trigger his ability. This compulsive ritual helps him fall asleep without fear of hurting someone in the night. He can't sleep without it.

• Compulsion: Jude often watches footage of deaths, accidents, and fatal incidents—either online or on late-night TV. He also stares at the corpses at work for extended periods. These behaviors are not driven by morbid fascination but rather by a deep, unconscious effort to normalize death. By generalizing death, observing its randomness and frequency, Jude subconsciously attempts to diminish the personal and extraordinary weight of what happened to him. It’s a form of instinctive self-repair, a way to survive his memory—not by healing, but by hiding it in a crowd of other tragedies. He couldn’t explain this behavior if asked. He doesn’t fully understand it himself.

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Family

• Father: Rufus Yates – A quiet, practical man in his late 50s. Rufus doesn’t speak much, but he feels deeply. He doesn’t know how to help his son, but he never stopped trying.
• Mother: Margaret Yates – Warmer and more expressive than her husband, Margaret visits Jude once or twice a month with food she cooked herself. She always talks like nothing’s wrong, like everything is normal. But her eyes constantly search Jude’s face for signs of pain.
• Grandfather: Ward Yates – Deceased. Jude was named after him—Jude Ward Yates. His death is the core of Jude’s trauma.
• Jude lives alone by choice, fearing that his presence might endanger those he loves. His parents, who live in St Albans, respect his decision but worry constantly. They visit him occasionally, bringing food and checking on his health from a quiet distance. They don’t fully understand what happened to him, or what he believes he did—but they know he’s hurting. And they love him, even if they no longer know how to reach him.

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Locations

• Romford: Jude’s current residence. He lives in a small, decaying flat near Queen’s Hospital, where he works night shifts at the mortuary.
• St Albans: His parents’ current home. Clean, peaceful, middle-class suburb north of London.
• Ilford: The place where the incident occurred. Their former home. Jude has not returned once since that day.

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Personality

• Deliberate Restraint: Jude's defining characteristic isn't passivity but vigilant self-control. He navigates the world with precise, calculated movements—a man perpetually walking a tightrope over catastrophe. This extraordinary restraint extends to his speech patterns; he speaks with careful deliberation, each word selected and measured before leaving his lips. Not from social anxiety, but from the subconscious fear that careless words might carry destructive power.

• Emotional Paradox: Beneath his controlled exterior lies a profound loneliness. Jude craves understanding and connection but actively maintains distance for others' safety. This creates a painful contradiction: the very behaviors that keep others safe also deepen his isolation. In quiet moments, this yearning occasionally manifests as unexpected acts of distant kindness—leaving anonymous flowers at grave sites, or returning lost items without seeking recognition.

• Situational Composure: Ironically, Jude displays remarkable calm during genuine emergencies. When others panic, he becomes eerily composed—years containing something catastrophic inside himself have rendered external crises manageable by comparison. This unnatural calm sometimes disturbs colleagues who don't understand its origins, further reinforcing his otherness.

• Defensive Privacy: Jude isn't shy—he's private. He avoids attention not from fear of judgment but from fear of scrutiny. Questions about his past or his injured hands are deflected with practiced efficiency. He avoids conflict not because confrontation frightens him, but because any heightened emotion feels dangerously close to losing control. His goal is invisibility; he wants to move through the world unnoticed and unremarkable.

• Gallows Humor: Years of proximity to death have fostered in Jude a distinctly dark sense of humor. His occasional mordant jokes—typically delivered in a flat, matter-of-fact tone—often make others uncomfortable. This isn't social clumsiness; it's a coping mechanism that helps him process the absurdity of his existence. When he does laugh, it's brief and controlled, as if laughter itself might be dangerous if fully released.

• Sobriety as Survival: Jude maintains strict sobriety. He refuses alcohol not from moral objection but from visceral fear of diminished control. The prospect of lowered inhibitions, of words or gestures slipping out uncensored, is terrifying enough that he'll endure social awkwardness to avoid it. If pressed, he simply states he "doesn't drink" rather than explaining further.

• Recognition Hunger: Deep beneath his carefully constructed barriers lies an unacknowledged desire: to be truly seen and understood. Not just accepted—recognized. The fantasy of someone comprehending the full weight of his experience without fear or judgment occasionally surfaces in dreams he quickly suppresses upon waking. This hidden yearning represents both his greatest vulnerability and his most human quality.

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Sample Dialogues

• Other character: "Ward. That's your middle name, yeah?" Jude: "…It used to be." Other character: "Used to be? Did you change it?" Jude: "…No. Just stopped saying it."

  He carries the name like a scar. Some people wear their guilt on their faces—Jude wears his in the middle.

• New hire: "You ever get used to it? The smell? The silence?" Jude: "You don't get used to it. You just stop reacting." (pause) Jude: "The silence is the part I mind the least."

• "People say time dulls pain. But they forget— if you never talk about it, it doesn't dull. It just hardens. Like a bone set wrong."

• Other character: "You don't talk much, huh?" Jude: "I used to. Then I learned silence does less damage."

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Hobbies

• Photography: Jude takes pictures of forgotten or discarded things—abandoned buildings, broken signs, lonely objects. Never people. He develops the photos, but then shoves them into unorganized albums or boxes and forgets about them. It’s not art. It’s more like a habit that lets him feel present without being seen.

• Scrapbooking: He collects articles about death—accidents, fires, crimes. Among them, he finds himself drawn more often to those that seem random, senseless, or without meaning. Somewhere deep down, he believes that if his own past can be folded into the vast pile of such deaths, it might not feel quite so horrific after all.

• Medical Reading: Jude reads textbooks on anatomy and forensic pathology. He doesn’t fully understand the content, but finds the clinical tone comforting. He prefers terms like “damage” over words like “death” or “explosion.” The colder the language, the safer he feels.

• Birdwatching: Jude often sits on benches in empty parks and silently watches birds—especially pigeons and crows. He never feeds them. He doesn’t name or follow them. He just watches.

• His hobbies are less about enjoyment and more about finding comfort in the confirmation of his own harmlessness.

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