Between Malice and Redemption

A short about a fellow who kills another fellow and winds up spending eternity with yet another fellow.

                      ONE

 

 

My name is Thomas Garret.  I killed a man once.  It feels like that happened a life time ago, but then I suppose it was. 

What was his name?  Steve?  Steven?  Shephard?  I know it began with an S.  Samuel maybe.  Don’t even ask me what his last name was.  I do remember what he looked like though.  That much is sort of hard to forget.  He was about 5’8” and sickly thin.  I’m talking the kind of thin that makes you gag.  Hell, the only thing that kept his pants from falling off was his hip bones.  But I digress.  5’8” and skinny.  He had longish blonde hair, I’m sure of it; it was just always greasy and looked like he slept on a pillow made of potting soil.  He had an even longer face, I mean ridiculously long.  Kind of like those statues on that island.  What was that island?  It doesn’t matter; you know the ones I’m talking about.  His face looked like those.  Hollow cheeks, pock marks, crooked nose, the whole nine, you know what I mean?  If I hadn’t known what he was capable of, or what he had done, I would’ve simply felt sorry for the guy.

I guess maybe you’re pondering why I killed him?  Well, I’ll tell you why.  Because he was lower than dirt.  Complete garbage, really.  The kind of guy that makes you wonder why children are starving but this trash is doing A-Okay.  Drug pusher, thief, con artist, you name any perverse or contemptible action that the law specifically states you shouldn’t do, he’d most likely done it. 

“Even if he was a generally rotten person, it doesn’t mean he deserved to be killed,” you may be saying to yourselves.  But I disagree, and so will you.

Child.  Killing.  Rapist.

Yeah, that’s what I said.  Girls or boys, it didn’t matter to him.  From ages as young as five to twelve.

Still think he didn’t deserve it?  No, I didn’t figure you would. 

I know, I know.  There are still a few of you who just want to be confrontational and start spouting something about civil liberties and justice and blah, blah, blah.  Ten bucks says you wouldn’t feel that way if it were your kid, so shut it.  This is my story and I’m telling it, if you want your opinion heard go pick up a sign on a stick and rally somewhere.

Anyways, I killed him.  December 15^th, 19…… 1970 something, I can’t remember now.  I walked right up to him on a snow covered street in Baltimore and put a bullet in his face.  Not one regret and I would do it again if I had the chance. 

Still wondering what made me do it?  Aside from the obvious that is.  His last victim was, unfortunately for him, my nine year old niece Mina.

He took her from a department store on a Saturday, plain sight, tons of people around.  My sister-in-law Jackie didn’t realize she was gone until the b*****d was half way back to his car.  She looked down and saw no Mina and flipped out.  She yelled at the top of her lungs for her daughter for a solid thirty minutes until her voice gave out.  She dialed 911 five times in a row before the fifth operator that picked up had to tell her to stop calling. 

The police searched the surrounding areas, sent men diving into winter waters looking for a body, and released dogs in wooded areas to sniff for any possible trail.  They even brought in Steve.  Steven?  Seth?  Anyways, they even brought him in for questioning.  A witness put him near the department store the day it happened and the guy already had a rap sheet five states long.  And of course, “sex offender” was on that sheet.  Ultimately, they had to let him go, though, not enough evidence they said.  Silently, we all knew it was him, even the police. 

For four months they searched until the case, without anyone actually saying it, slipped into a sort of cold status.

The emotional damage it caused our family was tremendous.  Mina was the only grandchild of both sets of grandparents, my only niece, my brother Don and his wife’s only child.  She was precious is what she was.  Don was broken, and Jackie, her psychiatrist made a fortune off of her.  And to top it off, we never had a body to bury.  We never really got to say goodbye.  Never got to say how sorry we were for failing her.

     

TWO

 

At the time, I was twenty six, that much I remember.  I was living a pretty swell life in Manhattan doing some contracting work here and there for different companies.  I had no girlfriend, fiancée’, or wife, I liked the single life.  Now don’t misunderstand me, I loved women, a lot, but I had my morals.  I’d work hard during the week and party harder on the weekends.  Life was good.

As it were, I had a pretty large sum of cash saved up from my time in the contracting business, so during the aftermath of Mina’s disappearance I took some time off.  I made some calls to a few friends I had met while walking beams and was given a couple of numbers to some highly recommended private investigators.

Long story short, a couple of thousand dollars later; they had tracked the guy down for me.  A few hundred dollars more and they forgot my name or having ever met me.

 Another friend had got me in touch with a man who “knew how to get things”.  For five hundred dollars, he supplied me with a 1911 Colt .45, no serial number of course.  After all was said and done, I traveled back to Baltimore, found the guy, did my business and made no attempts to cover up what I had done.  Looking back on it, I guess I kind of wanted people to know it was me.

After I killed him, I drove to my brother’s house.  I never knocked on the door or made any effort to tell him personally what I had happened.  I just left a small note in their little mail box hanging next to the door.

Check mate.

That was all it said, well that and my signature.  I knew that he would know what I meant once the news of the man’s death was out.  I can’t remember why I thought that phrase fit the situation, but I know it made sense to me at the time.  It sounds really stupid now that I think about it. 

I never intentionally dodged the police, I never ran.  I did go back to Manhattan, but that’s just because I wanted to sleep in my own bed.  Not surprisingly the police took their sweet time trying to find me, turns out that no one really got worked up by a murdered degenerate.  When they showed up at the hospital to question me, I saw in their eyes an agreement with my actions.  A justification I guess you could say.

Oh man, I bet you’re confused.  “Wait a minute.  Hospital?  How did you wind up in the hospital?”  That’s what you’re wondering right.  I guess I should’ve told you, but I am a sucker for out of the blue twists.

The thing is, around my twenty fifth birthday I scheduled a visit with a doctor.  I had been having some pretty serious aches and pains in various places of my body for a while, and I figured it was high time to get checked out.  After a few visits and a multitude of tests, I was diagnosed with cancer of the colon variety.  Advanced too, beyond the point of a successful treatment.  I even opted out of chemotherapy.  There’s was no real need for it; the doctor only gave me six months.  I think I may have squeezed a few extra months out of it though.

I had enough time left to find him, kill him, and do so without fear of ever seeing the inside of a cell.  Sure enough, not long after I went back to Manhattan, I woke up one morning unable to get out of bed, soaked in sweat and in immense pain.  I had enough strength to reach a phone and dial the emergency room.  Within minutes I was picked up and taken to the hospital. 

Two weeks later (I think) the police finally showed up.  They told me about the man whose name I forget and how he had been killed.  They told me about my taking time off of work and how the time frames matched with the killing.  They told me about the money I had taken out of the bank and how they thought that was how I had both found the man and bought the gun that was used to kill him (which I had thrown out the window on the ride back to Manhattan).  And finally they told me that two uniformed officers would be staying with me at all times to ensure I wouldn’t try to run.  Like I could if I wanted to.

Two days after the police came to see me I fell asleep.  And never woke up.

 

 

THREE

 

 

                At first I was confused.  I realized I had died, hell I’d been preparing myself for it for a year, but the true implications of that took a while to sink in.  On top of the confusion I had a mountain of guilt for not telling my family about my diagnosis.  I don’t know why I didn’t tell them.  I still think about even now.

 I was so preoccupied with all that was going on in my thoughts; I even missed my own funeral.  I know it’s cliché but it’s true, so shut up.

                So like I said, I was twenty six when I died.  I’ve been here ever since, and ever since I arrived my memories started vanishing.               

I can’t remember things like my favorite food or color; I can’t remember my hair color, eye color, height, weight, and so forth and so on.  Look, there are no mirrors in Heaven, so give me a break. 

Slowly but surely I forget things.  It’s not because being dead makes you forget, but here in Heaven, everything stops.  Time stands still.  Things neither grow nor die.  Everything is just, well, eternal.  And after you spend years in a place where memory doesn’t serve a true purpose, some of the other things you remember from your time on earth dissipate a bit.  Heaven is an interesting place, to say the least.

                At least I assume this is Heaven.  There are some gigantic pearly looking gates behind me and what appears to be a city inside those gates.  It’s super bright though, so I can’t really say for sure that it’s a city, that’s just my take on it. 

The gates, city, and city walls sit on top of a pretty large hill.  At the bottom of the hill there are open fields and a river that stretches far out of sight in either direction.  There’s a forest behind the field on the opposite side of the river and if you look hard enough, you can see apparitions of some sort come out of the tree line every now and then and do odd little dances.  The sky is as blue as you’d imagine, but it has some kind of weird oil painting quality to it that constantly shifts.  A cloud’s appearance will change dramatically right before your eyes.

                Every so often, I’ll see someone else walking around the city walls or making a journey down the long hill to the river to have a look around.  They always look impatient, or as though they’re hatching a plot to get inside the gates.  Then, there are of course, the ones who are allowed in.

                Other than those few passersby, there’s only one person here.  He greeted me shortly after I found the gates to the city.  He introduced himself as Peter. 

                Peter is about 6’0” and has a deep olive colored skin.  He has shoulder length hair that’s as black as the night and a neatly trimmed beard.  The dark shades of both his skin and hair make his eyes really pop out at you with their crystalline blue color.  He speaks with a very sharp southern drawl and carries himself with a sort of majesty, not snooty or conceited as you might think.  Every time I see him, he’s always dressed in the finest three piece suits and his shoes never lose their shine.  His shirt is always a light shade of green and the tie is either white or black.  He is a man of habit.

                When I asked him what he was doing here he told me that he was in charge of allowing entrance through the gates.

                “Oh!  That Peter!  You’re Saint Peter?” I blurted when he told me.  Oddly, he never actually answered my question.

                I got used to seeing him walk around the perimeter of the walls, apparently checking for anyone who may be brazen enough to try and break into the city.  Shortly after making his rounds he always comes over to where I’m sitting and takes a seat on the ground beside me.  Sometimes we talk for hours. 

                I haven’t moved from this spot for as long as I’ve been here.  I just sit here on this hill and stare out at the fields or watch the sky shift.  Sometimes I watch the apparitions dance and try to imagine what sort of song they may be dancing to, but I’ve mostly forgotten what music sounds like.  No, I haven’t moved, and I don’t plan to until Ol’ Pete tells me it’s okay for me to go inside the gates.

                It was thirty six years after I’d sat down on the hill that Peter came strolling up to me after checking the walls.  He greeted me much the same as he always does.

                “Well, good mornin’ friend,” he said.  His voice and vocal cadence always reminds me of a man I met from Savannah, Georgia once.  Funny that I remember that encounter, but I can’t remember my parent’s names.

                “Morning, Pete.  Done with your rounds?”

                “Yeah, everything seems ship shape, partnuh.”

                “Say, Pete, how do you know it’s morning?”

                “Oh, it’s always mornin’ heuh, Thomas.  This is a place of perpetual awakenin’.”

                I guess that made sense in an eternal sort of way.

 We sat there in silence for a moment before I started again.

                “Pete, I got some questions about this place and I was hoping you could answer them for me.”

                Peter arched an eyebrow and gave a smirk.  “Well fiah away, captain.  I’ll do my best to answer.” 

                “Well first of all, assuming you’re the Saint Peter, I was curious as to how you ended up with such a thick southern accent?  And second, assuming you’re the Saint Peter, how did a man from your era end up wearing such fine suits?”

                Peter immediately burst into laughter so hard that he clenched his stomach and shed a tear.

                “A very observant man you are indeed, Thomas,” he said between gasps for air.  “Bein’ that this place is eternal and very constant in nature, sometimes one must vary that which he or she views on a daily basis.  Else one might begin to lose their sanity.  I was heuh long before you arrived, partnuh, and as the times have changed on the earthly plane I’ve tried to keep my appearance on this celestial plane modern.  This suit looks far more dashin’ than some old robe, wouldn’t you say?  As for the accent, I just like the way it sounds,” he said with a nod.

                “So based on what you’re saying, could I too change my view of things?  Could I change what I’m wearing right now?

                “It’s not as easy as you make it sound, Thomas, but yes.  With enough desiuh and will powuh you could accomplish just about anythin’ you set your mind to.”

                I sat in silence for a moment mulling over what he had told me.  It did sound feasible, considering that this is a different plane of existence.   If the sky can shift and specters can dance and a man who lived thousands of years ago can dress in suits and talk with a southern accent, I should be able to do whatever I wanted.  But I put that thought to the side for later.  I still had other questions to ask.

                “Since you haven’t invited me inside the gates yet, could I will myself inside the city?  Assuming it is a city of course.”

                Peter’s smile immediately dropped into an expression of seasoned remorse and he found it difficult to maintain eye contact with me.  After a moment, he turned his head to the side and breathed a heavy sigh.

                “No, Thomas, I’m afraid you can’t do that.”

                Perplexed by his sudden change of mood, I asked him why.

                “Because you’re not on the list of those allowed in my friend.  I’d have tuh march in theuh after you and give you the boot.  And that would be a most unfortunate task for me.”

 

 

                                   FOUR

 

                “What do you mean I’m not allowed in?”

                “Now, Thomas, just calm down partnuh.”

                “I will not calm down, partnuh; you just told me that I’m not allowed in Heaven.  I’ve been sitting here for God knows how long waiting for you to invite me in and now you’re telling me I can’t.  Isn’t that something you should’ve told me right away?  Isn’t that information of the “tells someone immediately” variety?”

                “You seemed content waiting for judgment sittin’ heuh on the hill.  And to tell you the truth, the reaction you’re havin’ right now is the main reason I didn’t tell you.”

                “I wouldn’t have reacted this way had you told me the day I met you.”

                “Oh, Thomas you woulda been just as appalled then as you are now.”

                Appalled was a good word.  Appalled and heartbroken. 

                I guess Pete decided this was a good time to take his leave and go back to his wall check.  I stayed sitting here on the hill with my mouth hung open pondering a reason why I wasn’t allowed in.

                I don’t know how much time had elapsed before Pete came and sat down beside me again.  In that time though, I guess the initial shock of it all had passed and I felt a bit guilty for berating him like I did.

                “I’m sorry about earlier, Pete.”

                “Think nothin’ of it my friend.  I’m sorry for not tellin’ you soonuh.”

                “No worries.  If I have to wait for judgment it wouldn’t really matter when I found out anyway.”

                He gave me a concurring nod and then we sat in silence until I could bear it no more.

                “Why can’t I go in?”

                “Thomas, you killed a man.  In cold blood mind you.  That’s one of the top ten on the “To Don’t” list.”

                “Yeah, I killed him.  Just like he raped and killed my niece and no telling how many other kids.”

                “Judgment is not yours to deal out.”

                “Well I dealt it generously.”

                “Did you seek contrition for that act, Thomas?”

                “Most certainly not, Pete.”

                “And theuh lay the reason behind your bannin’.”

                “Well that seems more than unfair.  God killed a lot of people in back in the day, unless the Bible is lying.”  How I remembered anything about the Bible and what it said but can’t remember things about myself is beyond my reasoning.   But reasoning, like many other things in Heaven, is about as useful as a sixth toe.

                “He didn’t kill them personally.  He commanded it to be done, Thomas.  There’s a difference.”

                “What’s the difference?”  I was beginning to raise my voice again.

                Pete sat there for a moment before he replied, formulating the best possible answer.

                “Look, I don’t know what the difference is.  It’s His rule; He made it, and theuhfore He can enforce it howevuh He pleases.  I would suggest that you ask him yourself, but He’s in theuh and you’re out heuh and you can’t go in theuh because I can’t let you.  If you can accept that, then it basically comes down to a question of how you want to spend your time waitin’ for judgment.”

                “When is judgment coming?

                “I don’t know that eithuh, Thomas”

                “Will I be condemned when that time comes?
                “I don’t know that eithuh, Thomas.”

                At that point I was becoming more agitated at his lack of knowledge than my situation.  I tried my best to collect myself and think of some questions that he could possibly answer.

                “How long have I been here?”

                Pete’s face relaxed a bit as he realized I was out of questions that he had to dodge.  He sat there staring at the tree line against the far fields.  His eyes danced in perfect rhythm with the apparitions.

                “You died in 1974, Thomas.  You’ve been sittin’ in that exact spot for thirty six yeuhs.”

                The weight of that statement didn’t hit me as hard as I thought it would.  Though, thirty six years is a long time.

                “I’m sorry again,” I said after a heavy sigh “I guess emotions are one of the things you get to keep after you die.”

                “I apologize too, Thomas.  I wish I could provide you with the ansuh’s you seek, but for the most part, I’m just as in the dahk as you are.  Theuh are some things, some skills, I acquiuh’d as I went along.  I can keep track of time passin’, small things such as that.  Other than those small things, howevuh, my sole purpose is to keep a constant vigil to ensure no one gets in who isn’t s’posed to.”

                “I’ve seen a lot of people walking around the walls, trying to get in I guess, and I’ve seen people actually go inside.  I’ve seen some people dancing with those….. things in the field and some swimming in the river.  Why haven’t I seen anyone I know?  Are they all still alive?”

                “This place is a strange and awesome place, Thomas.  Theuh are things that happen that I simply cannot explain.  I do know that a lot of the souls that arrive heuh don’t want to share what they’re seein’ so they keep to themselves, block themselves out of othuh people’s sight.”

                Pete gave me a moment to process what he’d told me.  He must’ve read my mind though, or at least knew me well enough to know what I would ask next.

                “You’re parents are already inside, Thomas.  Your fathuh in 1992 and your mothuh shortly after in 1996.”

                I nodded my head, I guess I already knew.

                “Are they okay?”

                “Oh, Thomas, they’re doin’ just fine.”

                “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could see them, is it?”

                “You already know the ansuh to that question, my friend.”

 

 

                      FIVE

 

 

                It wasn’t long after my conversation with Pete that I started to see if I could will changes in my surroundings.  I started out small with my clothes.  I had been wearing the same hospital gown since I arrived here thirty six years ago.  After asking Pete for some advice on this issue, I finally gave up on trying to pick a new outfit and settled for an incredibly comfortable pair of flannel pajama bottoms, a matching robe, and some bedroom shoes.

                Some time after my willed pajamas, I made a leather recliner materialize in the spot I had sat for so long.  Following the recliner came a cup of coffee that’s as eternal as this place, a tobacco pipe that never goes out, and a skyline that sometimes turns from dusk to dawn, still in its oil painting quality of course.

                Sometimes I make the dancing apparitions appear to be members of my family or friends, and sometimes just for a laugh I’ll turn them into whales or some other sea creature that has no other-worldly business being on land.

                I still see people entering the gate; I still see some trying to find a way in.  I don’t know if they ever see me, but I wish they could.  I wish they would sit down with me and talk or just keep me company.  I wish I could tell them that Pete runs a pretty tight ship and they stand no chance of sneaking inside, but it’s probably best to let them figure it out on their own.

                As for Pete, he never deviates from the routine of checking the walls and sitting with me.  He even willed a recliner of his own right next to mine and a glass of extra sweet tea to go with it.  Though I never asked, I assume he chose sweet tea to compliment his accent.

                We still talk for hours, sometimes he even tries to help me remember my life on earth, but we soon gave up on that fruitless endeavor.

                “The past is the past, Thomas.  Besides, the dancing whales are much more entertaining.”

                And so we sat, sipping our drinks and watching the setting and rising sun or the whales.

                “Could you explain the purpose of the whales to me, Thomas?”

                It was my turn to burst into laughter.              

Author's Note

I tried just to have fun with this one. You should have fun setting it on fire.