The End

51 Virgin killer soul-mate

One tear escaped and trickled down Kris’ cheek.  Lauralei wiped it away, “It’s ok.  Really, it is.” 

Kris noticed a nickel-sized circle of blood on the cloud-white wool of Mary’s jacket lining and it looked exactly like a sheep to him, maybe one of the sheep from his dreams.  He felt sure that his feet were not, in fact, touching the ground.  And he thought that surely he should feel guilty as the red splotch spread as gracefully as music across her breast, and began to saturate the fleece.  But he did not.  His arm was extended straight out, the pistol aimed directly into Mary’s chest, where he had just deposited every last bullet in Lauralei’s clip.  Lauralei comforted Kris, stroking his face, “Don’t look over there, Kris, look at me.  Everything is ok.” She eased Kris’ arm down gently and took the gun back from his cool hand.  The white-as-snow fleece became a scarlet horror as it saturated.

As Mary’s lifeblood quickly drained out of the many holes perforating her body, she called Lauralei to her.  She took Lauralei’s hand in her own, kissed it, caressed it as a mother would.  She pressed Lauralei’s hand to her cheek, looked up at her with those happy, hippy eyes, and whispered her rites to the Girl, “It’s ok, baby.  It’s ok.  There’s still poetry in you yet.  I believe it.  Still poetry . . . ”  And then, of course, she died.

Lauralei would not believe what Kris had done.  “Why?!” she asked, “Why did you do that?  You’re the innocent one, Cookie?  Why?”

“We are all angels here,” he explained, “just . . .  angels with dirty wings.”

Lauralei’s horror and guilt very slowly gave way to something else: wonder.  And then the wonder melted into the shape of a key.  And then the key then unlocked something precious . . .  and then the Girl kissed Kris.  Lauralei kissed Kris as hard and deeply as she could, with a passion beyond eroticism, beyond animal attraction.  She kissed Kris from the very core of herself, she kissed him from that secret place, kissed him from that place locked away for half a lifetime.  It was a place that Lauralei had been afraid to look in to for such a very, very long time. And now that the seal had been compromised, a deluge burst forth, a monumental rush of rage and of terror, of trust and first-loves lost.  The very foundations of her every defense liquefacted, and all of her bulwarks slid to the depths in a terrible, ecstatic, catastrophic landslide of liberation.  And in the torrent was Lauralei’s Hello Kitty comforter, and backwards skates, and her first driver’s license, and all of the other trappings of girlhood that had been stolen from her!  And all of this – all of it – she poured into the empty heart of her virgin killer soul-mate.

She took Kris’ face in her hands, “Protection,” she said, “protection.”  Lauralei nuzzled her face into his chest like some naked, translucent pup burrowing into her mother’s pelt for security. 

“Protection,” was her whispered mantra.

“Protection,” a song in no need of a tune.

 “Protection,” repeated like a heartbeat.

 “Protection,” a one-word haiku. . .

-   - - - - -

A sweet pop ballad, crooned softly from the small, blue radio in the kitchen.

The Girl feels warm, secure; her veins run slow as if with chamomile and a familiar song plays to her from somewhere far away. 

Sanctuary.

The end

50 How to be a good shepherd in three easy steps

The door slowly opened.  The two beautiful red-heads paused their terrible session and turned their attention upon Kris as he entered.  He came in quietly and looked around the old house.  He remembered coming here a few times as a kid.  Kris picked up a picture the Old Man from a side table.  Old Man Kennedy intimidated him, but Kris thought highly of him.  “Always liked your Old Man, Maggie.”  He placed the picture back where he found it. “It really is uncanny, you know.  How much you two look alike, that is.  Uncanny.  Almost like looking into a mirror.”

Kris had shaved his head with Maggie’s disposable razor.  But the end result was not a high-and-tight masterpiece such as any self-respecting local barber would have prided himself on.  Kris’ hair was generally gone, but his skull still had great lawn-mower strokes of uneven stubble.  The blade had been dull to begin with, so his head was also scraped raw in places; patches of half-congealed blood glistened dully in the dim living room light.  His sutures were inflamed as well; one half of his face was a scab and dark circles ringed eyes which were windows to a darkened interior.  This once-beautiful soul was clearly worn threadbare.

Maggie had one arm fully outstretched with her sidearm pointed squarely at Mary’s third eye.  “You look like absolute hell, Kris.”  She attempted a joke, “If you were going for shabby-chic, you’re exactly half-way there, man.”  Maggie’s own fair Irish face was pink from crying and her hair wild from combat. 

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around,” Kris retorted darkly.  “So,” he nodded towards Mary, “Whatcha got there?”

“She’s Alpha, Kris.  She’s the one who killed those girls.”

Kris laughed.  He laughed not because he should have figured out that Mary was Alpha, but more because of the sheer absurdity of it all.  “Of course,” he said, “it had to be Mary.”  He was sure that the Universe would have not had it any other way.  There was nothing left to surprise him.

Mary accused Kris, “This is your fault, Kris.  If you would have called Maggie off, none of us would be in this room right now.  Why couldn’t you get rid of her so that we could get back to the way things were.  Everything was working so perfectly.  Innocent people got hurt and I blame you, Kris.  I blame you.  We are a family and we could have taken care of our own problems, if you just would have let it be.  We could have fixed everything.”

Maggie asked Kris, “So, did you ever find your Truth?”

“I finally figured out what Donnie’s crime scene was about.  The essence of it, you know, all that.  Punishment.  That’s what it was.  Punishment.”     And then Kris asked Maggie a most serious question, “You killed Donnie Gomez.  Right, Maggie?  You . . . You’re Omega.”

“No, Kris, “she choked through her tears, “Think about what you’re saying.  Omega raped and killed Anastasia Demopaulos.  Clearly that is something I couldn’t have done.  No Kris, I am not Omega, I am something completely different.  I am Justice.  That is what Donnie was about.  Not Punishment, Justice.  Donnie was Omega.  Donnie Gomez was the copycat.  And yes, I killed him.  I killed Donnie Gomez in that exact seat where Mary is seated right now.  Donnie followed me home, and I killed him.”

“What?!  You killed my Donnie?!” Mary wailed.  “No!  No, baby, no!  Maggie what have you done?  How could you do that?  You had no right, Maggie.  How can you be the judge? You had no right!”  Mary was hysterical.  “You had no right to do that!”

“He came in here uninvited, and I killed him in self-defense.  I just happened to be . . .  better prepared than most.”

Mary fumed, “Don’t you get it, Kris?  This is her little spider’s web!  She lures people in here and she has this placed rigged up with traps all over, and then she executes ‘em, baby.  That is not justice.  She executes them.”

Kris, with a look, asked if this was true.  Maggie, with a look, confirmed that it was.

 “How long?” Kris asked.

“Since I realized that the system doesn’t always work.  Since I realized that I was really good at it.  Maybe eight years.”

“Jimmy told me that you used to be a legend.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t need fame, Kris.  My job is to protect the people.  That’s it.  My purpose in life.”  Maggie was the only one in the room crying.

Kris felt like he had vertigo.  His perspective was all wrong, like he had someone else’s glasses on.  Distances seemed impossibly close and far away at the same time.  Something about a sword and a leather band kept knocking at the back door of his mind.  Something about an angel and truth.  Something about a roller rink.

Kris reached out for Maggie’s wrist.  She did not pull away, but offered herself with the shy hesitation of a new bride.  He took her wide leather watch off.  Exposed beneath, a gnarled purplish scar ran like a bad weld for an inch and a half along both faces of Maggie’s wrist.  He touched the wound and it embarrassed Maggie.  He touched the tattoo and said, “Protection?”

“How did you know that?”

“Three semesters of Hebrew.”

“Did you always know what it said?”

A thought was trying to take shape in Kris’ mind.  Something Maggie had said to him a while ago, something about a path to enlightenment:

“A good ass-kicking is the first step on the road to enlightenment, my friend.” 

But this could be said more poetically. He thought:

Step 1:  A good shepherd must be willing to suffer injury to protect his flock.

Kris noticed the red-red blood on Mary’s white-white fleece, and it made his equilibrium swoon.  “Are you going to kill her?” he asked.

“She is Alpha!  It’s not a matter of choice.  I have to kill her.”

“But she can’t,” Mary said, “because she knows that I am her and she is me.”

“Shut up, Mary.  This is not a freakin’ Beatles song,” Maggie reared back as if to pistol-whip her older twin, but she couldn’t do it.  “We are nothing alike.  I kill bad-guys.  You kill good-guys.  We’re nothing alike, Mary, and make no mistake, you will die.”

Step 2: A good shepherd must be willing to inflict injury to protect his flock.

Kris lunged for Maggie, lunged for the gun.  He tried to hit her, shove her back and grab the weapon out of her hand.  But Maggie did some counterattack that was so graceful and quick that Kris didn’t really even see it.  He felt the melee of punches and the butt of the gun crashing against the back of his neck, though.

Kris had a sort of déjà vu as he found himself in the exact same position that he had been in moments before, only now with an evil tingling radiating up from his third vertebrae into the base of his skull.

“Give me the gun, Maggie.”  Kris reached out with an open hand.

“I know this is hard for you to understand,” Maggie wept, “I know you must think this is the most savage thing you’ve ever seen, that things like this don’t happen.  But things like this do happen, Kris – all the time.  You just pull back the thinnest veneer of this world and “man’s inhumanity to man” is all around us.  Kick over any stone and you’ll see the vermin run from the daylight.  This is not your little bubble, Kris, with summer camps and chubby-bunny and feet-washing.  This is the real world, Kris!”

“I know.  And I know you.  I know your secret name.  I – know – you.”  Kris moved cautiously closer to her, as if towards a feral animal, “You are Lauralei.  Give me the gun, Lauralei.” 

Lauralei’s defenses reluctantly withered.  “I haven’t heard that name in half a lifetime.”  Against her own will she gave the gun to him.  She looked down at the ground as she held the weapon out, ashamed – ashamed that she was not strong enough to do the thing for which she was made – ashamed that she couldn’t shoot Mary, the Alpha.

Kris took the gun, took Lauralei in his arms, and kissed her.  She did not kiss back.  “Oh well,” he thought.  “I tried.”

 Blam! 

A gun blast. 

Lauralei’s body rocked from the concussion.  She looked in horror into Kris’ dead eyes.  “No,” she breathed. 

Blam! Another blast from the gun. 

Blood splashed both of their faces. 

“To hell with it,” Kris said, “might as well empty the clip now.”  Blam-blam-blam-blam-blam-click-clikclickclick. 

Blood pooled silently about their feet.

Lauralei collapsed into Kris’ arms.  “No no no no.”

Step 3:  A good shepherd must be willing to slay one of his own sheep to protect his flock.

Enlightenment

49 Truth will out

Old Man Kennedy is called home from work by Mrs. Kennedy.  Something bad has happened, something very, very bad.  The Girl doesn’t go to school that day, or the next day, or the next.  She doesn’t return calls to Alyssa or Cookie or Harrison.

Two weeks later, the Kennedy family suddenly transfers to another city.

The Girl grows up there, in this other city, as normally as she can.  The Girl doesn’t allow herself to miss her friends or anything about Kensington.  Especially Cookie.

The Girl grows up, graduates, and moves on from high school straight to Police Academy.  She does very well, even though her mom passes away the fall of her Junior Year.  The Girl becomes a detective, and she is extremely good.  She has the brains and the balls for this line of work.  She is a prodigy in fact. Her trick is that she teaches herself to know how they think.  She has at her disposal the T.A.P.S. National security database, and, of course, her gut.

The Girl is the pride of the City.  Other towns even call her in to consult.  The Girl catches lots of Bad Guys, but, unfortunately, a lot of Bad Guys go free. 

One day, by chance, the Girl finds herself alone with a Bad Guy.  The Bad Guy – foolishly – assaults the Girl.  The Girl assaults him back.  . .  and in the process kills him very, very dead.  No files are charged.  The Girl begins to learn something about Justice.

Old Man Kennedy passes away and the Girl moves back to her hometown.  Everything has changed.  The people and places she loved have all but disappeared.

The Girl retires from catching Bad Guys, at least the really Bad Ones, the Creeps.  The Girl figures out how to figure out what the Bad Guys want – because they are so very easy.  9 times out of 10, just pretend you have a penis.  This makes getting in to a Creep’s head embarrassingly easy.  They just aren’t complex creatures, she finds, at least 9 times out of 10.

The Girl becomes what they want:  a tart from the East Side, a defenseless co-ed, a single girl with more money than discretion.  Let them come to her, the Girl figures, let them do all the hard work – and they always do.

And so the Girl becomes a flirty tramp in Catholic school-girl drag.  And so Donnie Gomez follows her home, through the arts district, and lets himself in to Old Man Kennedy’s house, in hopes of having his base, Neanderthal way with her.  And so the Girl subdues him and beats him severely and professionally without leaving any marks.  And so the Girl takes the Creep to the chapel at Sacred Heart and executes him with a makeshift gallows. 

But The Girl knows that she has only found the more stupid and less original of the two killers. 

What the true Alpha wants escapes the Girl.  She can’t seem to get into Alpha’s head, but she doesn’t know why.  Alpha is that 1 in 10.

But the Girl is fortunate in that she has a very good friend who appears inexplicably out of her past and, unbeknownst to him, helps to construct the design by which the killer, Alpha, will be ensnared.

What the Girl does not realize, however, is that the truth of the killer’s identity will break her heart. 

48 The burning man

“I told you,” says the Scarecrow Man, “this can go easy, or this can go hard, but it’s got to get done.  It’s just, it’s got to, you see?”

The Girl is holding the handle of the knife, sobbing now.  Blood is beginning to stream across the yellow plastic laminated table and onto the hallowed planks of the Palisades roller rink.  Scarecrow accompanies Toto in serenading the Girl,

It's gonna take a lot to take me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do . . .

Scarecrow Man walks a few paces away – he’s not concerned about the Girl escaping – and lights up another smoke.  Scarecrow doesn’t see as the Girl wrenches the knife from the laminate table, wrenches it from between her radius and ulna.  With his back to her, the Girl is able to rush at Scarecrow Man; she gets just a split second drop on him.  She stabs him in the small of his back, just beneath Scarecrow’s right shoulder blade.  Toto is rudely interrupted as Palisades fills momentarily with the sound of his pain.  He spins about on the Girl instantly, but she is armed now.  She is able to get off three more quick lunges before he gets a hold of her.  The stabs are sloppy, but do some damage nonetheless.  The gangly man wrestles the blade away from the Girl and punches her in the face.  The Girl falls flat-backed onto the rink floor, and the killer makes for her.  “What have you done to me, you stupid child?!”  Scarecrow Man is furious now.  He means to exact his revenge upon her with a cruel slowness.  But it is not to happen.  It becomes apparent to both victim and assailant that Scarecrow Man’s wounds are in fact quite serious.  Blood streams out his pants leg into an alarmingly broad and solid puddle.  He takes a step or two towards the girl, but winces terribly.  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he says.  A rabbit-fear takes shape in his eyes.  He forgets about the Girl and starts to make for the exit.  But it is too far: an unfortunate irony.  A few bloody steps and the Scarecrow falls to his knees.  He crawls, slowly, towards the doors. 

The Girl rises slowly to her feet, holding her slashed forearm, and approaches the wounded man. Tears of blood weep from between her clenched fingers.  “What are you doing?!” the killer yells at her.  “Call 911!  Call an ambulance, you stupid little girl!”   The Girl steps on his wrist and pries the knife back yet again.

“The Girl is gone,” she tells the man calmly.  “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  But that was a long time ago, Scarecrow Man.   Now is the time to put childish things behind me.  Lauralei is gone now.  Sorry.” 

Scarecrow Man’s face is crimson with fury.  “Call an ambulance you stu . . .” Maggie plunges the ornate knife into Scarecrow Man’s Adams’ Apple.  His back arches convulsively; He is dead within moments.

Maggie walks unhurriedly to the Snack Bar and rifles noisily around, clanging metal cabinet doors and utensils about in her search.  She returns shortly to the man’s dead body, carrying a canister of some sort of fuel that she has found in the kitchen.  She douses the body in the flammable liquid and, with a frozen corndog in her mouth, strikes a match from a small book and tosses it on the Scarecrow.  There is a wicked whoosh as Scarecrow Man, AKA the Kensington Caller, immediately ignites and a furious stack of flame sucks up all the oxygen in the Palisades roller-temple.

Maggie, not Lauralei, cracks an ice-hard piece of corndog off and munches it idly as she strolls in slow motion toward the ticket booth and freedom beyond. Scarecrow Man’s pyre rises and claws angrily for the Disco Ball above.

Hall & Oates lovingly serenade Maggie out the door.  Private eyes – clap clap – are watching you – clap clap – they’re watching you’re ev’ry move . . .  

47 It is time

Kris’ phone chimed:  another message from Alphamail, a single image of Maggie walking up the front porch of her dad’s place.

“It is time.”

46 Nathaniel Hawthorne

Maggie had been ready to deliver a terrible justice upon Alpha, but now, the one person in the world whom she had thought pure-of-heart, looked back at her from the seat of a killer.  Her reddish-blond hair looked just like her blondish-red hair.  Maggie loved Mary.

“Why?” Maggie asked.  Tears began to roll down Maggie’s freckled cheeks in fat tracks, like wax from your very last candle. 

Maggie pulled her coat open, exposing the white-white fleece within.  She searched Mary for another weapon and found only a syringe – in one of the coat pockets, a white baptismal gown.  “Why would you try to kill me?  I loved you?  And why . . . those girls?”  Maggie cried through gritted teeth, her heart a cocktail of rage and sorrow. 

 “I never wanted to kill you, Maggie.  But you just kept pushing and pushing.  And innocent people were getting hurt because of you.  You were dangerous to everyone at Sacred Heart.”

“I was dangerous to Sacred Heart?!  Innocent people were getting hurt because of me?!  Do you even grasp the lunacy of what you are saying, or are you too far gone already?”

“But don’t you see?  What I did – it wasn’t something I did to them, it was something I did for them.”

Maggie railed at her mentor, “You killed good people!”

“Well, then you better kill me, sweetie.”

Maggie jammed her gun into Mary’s forehead.  Blood still streamed down Mary’s face from their earlier combat; it trickled down on to the white fluffy collar of her jacket. Mary growled in frustrated rage; she couldn’t pull the trigger.

“Why Alpha?  Why the A?” she demanded.

“Oh Maggie,” Mary sighed, “I already told you, so long ago:  Nathanael Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.  A, for Adultery.  A, for Abortion.  A, the cleansing light of Absolution, the divine gift of secrets brought in to the light.  A – the brand of punishment that brings Sanctification.  Each of those women, each of them, they had a poison within them that needed to be drawn out, drawn out like the Serpent’s very own venom.  They were weak, defenseless little children, babes, that couldn’t overcome the sickness within them.  I cleansed Kathy’s womb; Susan couldn’t control her own lusts; I washed her in the purifying waters of Saint Christopher’s.  And Tiffany couldn’t resist the hunger of her blood, always crying out for more-more -more heroine and speed.  Never enough. – They were never going to get better, Maggie.  Nothing could help them, not the Program, not Sacred Heart or Paul or a Higher Power.  You see, don’t you?  They couldn’t be fixed.”  Mary licked some blood away from her lip.  “Maggie . . . you can’t save ‘em all.”

45 You can’t save them all

Kris did not remember his dream when he awoke, but could still feel the emotional collision of it.  A sort of psychic residue persisted, an unsettling, contradictory confluence of empowerment and obliteration.

He had knocked over Maggie’s little box of treasures.  Precious trinkets and photos lay scattered chaotically across the floor.  It was a perfect analog, Kris thought, to his own brain at the moment.  Clippings and images and soundbites littered the workspace in his mind.  The phrase “Je ne sais quoi?” remained on a continual playback, still looping from just before Kris had fallen asleep.  The vestiges of his dream haunted about the backstage of his thoughts; Where had he been?  Someplace familiar.  Yet another part of his brain was, unbeknownst to him, still fixating on that missing AA token.  And there was something about a leather band was that very important.

And then an altogether terrible realization began to creep slowly over his consciousness, as slowly as the shadows that crawl across a church cloister.  When was the last time he had seen Maggie take a drink?  Why had she been dressed in that slutty Catholic schoolgirl getup that night at Art Slam?  What was she doing on that side of town all by herself?  “Madness is their native tongue.”  What did that mean?

Something snapped.

Something tectonic began to shift within Kris.  If Kris had ever read Mary Pendleton’s favorite author, he might have recognized his internal transformation as that “his inner man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. In truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the impulses now communicated to the unfortunate and startled minister.”

The snap was, in fact, a mousetrap, which Abraham Lincoln sped off to investigate. 

Kris followed the sound to its source in the bathroom.  Abraham Lincoln was seated still, staring at something with a laser beam focus.  Behind the pedestal of the sink, a mouse scrambled frantically and futilely to free its broken hind leg from the brass wire of an Avery brand HouseTrap.  It ran wildly in place until it could do so no longer, and collapsed into shallow, quick panting, its tiny heart racing like a hummingbird.  Abraham watched the creature, his pupils as big as black pearls.  Kris, on the other hand, looked upon the creature with dead eyes.  He lifted one of his heavy black Doc Martin boots and brought it to rest delicately upon the mouse.  He then proceeded to slowly press the inch-thick sole down upon the creature until the mouse’s shrill squeals ceased, crushing critter and trap into one.  “You can’t save ‘em all,” Kris said. 

Kris caught site of himself in the mirror and did a quick assessment:  his stitches looked puffy from inattention; he a real night’s sleep, his face looked a little swollen from his newly acquired drinking habit, and he could stand a shave.  But the thing that bothered him was none of these; what really bummed Kris out was the state of his hair.  “Look at you,” he said to his reflection, “Ya nappy little, pea-headed Buckwheat.  You’re slippin’, Kris, slippin’, man.”  Kris rummaged through the medicine cabinet and discovered a half-dull, disposable pink ladies’ razor.  He closed the door to the cabinet and said to himself, “Now let’s see about getting you that cut.”

It had been an altogether terrible realization.

44 The first misfit toy

Mary Pendleton is giddy, nervous.   She is giddy because she feels like Christmas, nervous because she feels like a school-girl sneaking out for her first kiss.  The only light in the area is from the sharp, white interior of the ambulance drop-off, which, in contrast to the Emergency Room on the opposite side of the building, is quite placid.  It is dark and drizzly, but a little chill and precipitation can’t possibly dampen Mary’s glee this evening. 

The counselor makes her way out of the halide haze of the hospital parking lot, past the perimeter of Old Presbyterian, to the dark Memorial Rose Gardens beyond.  A short wrought iron fence encompasses the gardens, more decorative than functional.  And as Mary enters the labyrinth of flora, she notices a single broken picket with a decorative Fleur-de-lis cap  lying on the ground.  She picks it up in order to give it to a groundskeeper in the morning.  This place is going to be special to her after all.

The maze is disorienting, but the smell of the flowers in almost overwhelming with promise.  Mary finds her way to the center, which is uninhabited except for one lone girl, seated in the silver- blue darkness of a gibbous moon.  Mary indulges in a pause, lets the aroma and moment wash over her; this square, hemmed in as it is and washed in beautiful silence is a cathedral on the dark side of another world.   Life may not pass this way again.

“Where the hell have you been?” the Woman barks.  Mary comes to and rushes up to her to wrap the Woman’s head in an embrace.  The kisses the Woman’s forehead and presses her face into her own chest as if she was every bit as precious as the reincarnated Buddha-child.  The Woman shrugs Mary off, “Cigarette?” she asks.  “Oh no,” Mary says, “I quit some time ago.”

“No, Mary,” the Woman fumes, “Not for you – for me.  Do you have a cigarette, for me?”

“Oh, of course, of course.”  Mary gleefully searches her big bag for a smoke.  She always keeps candy and gum for her kids, and smokes and condoms for her bigger kids.  Mary lights the Woman up and pets her dark hair.  Mary can’t help fawning over her.  “I am so happy,” she whispers to the Woman.  The Woman is not looking at Mary.  “I am not going to nag, but, I really want you to stop smoking after tonight, ok?  And you should come stay with me for a while, just until.  You know?  It will be good for you.”

The Woman holds herself tightly, her arms and legs crossed.  The cherry of her Marlboro glows hot when she inhales – the only warm color on an otherwise blue-grey night.

“What do you want with me, anyway, Mary?” the Woman asks, “I mean, what is it with you?  What do you want with any of us?”

“What do you mean?  I want to help, you know that.  It’s what I do?”

“Yeah, but why?  Do you just want my baby, is that it?  I mean, what’s your angle?”

“I just want what’s best for everybody.  I want to take care of you, and the baby.  And whoever else I can help.  You know this.  You need to get your trust issues under control, babe.  Why are you acting like this?”  Mary reaches out to the Woman, tries to console her.  The Woman pushes Mary’s hands away.  She stands up.  Mary speaks to the Woman in a calm, reassuring voice, “Just come over, you’ll see.  Everything is all fixed up.  I’ve got the baby’s room all painted.  And Paul gave me a crib that he got from his sister.  And there’s a room for you, too, sweetie.  I’ve taken care of everything.  It’s all fixed up.”  Mary stands as well.

The Woman takes one last drag and snuffs the butt out in the pea-sized gravel.  She looks at Mary for the first time this evening, “Listen, Mary, I had an abortion; I aborted the baby, ok?”

Mary blanches in disbelief, “You did what?”

“I just can’t deal with all of this right now.  This is not the right time; everything is all wrong.”

“But, you had no right.  You had no right at all.  That was my baby; I was going to take care of you and the baby.”  Tears of grief begin to stream down Mary’s face as she understood the reality or the Woman’s statement.

“No, Mary, it was my baby.  That’s where you get confused.”

“But I was going to save her, save you.”  Hints of hysteria peek through Mary’s words.

“You want to be the great Mother Mary, fix us all, save us all.  But you’re not living in the real world, you know. You’re idealism is just . . . outdated, cliché.  You need to realize that some of us just can’t be fixed; we’re the Island Of Misfit Toys, plain and simple.  So just stop it – stop trying to fix everyone; strop trying to fix me, I don’t want it.” The Woman looks Mary in the eye, “Listen, you can’t save us all.”

Mary shrieks in madness and grief.  No one hears.  “No! You had no right!  You had no right to do that!”  Mary wails, she cries, she falls apart.  And then Mary’s hand does a thing that should have surprised her: Mary’s hand plunges the rusted picket through the abdomen of the Woman, through her uterus, through her womb, the place of her offense. 

The Woman cries in pain, broadcasting her fate to none but rose petals, who tremble delicately in the cool night air.  Mary lowers her to the ground and the gravel runs black with blood, dark as crude in the spare midnight moonlight.  “You had no right,” Mary whispers.  The Woman looks at Mary first with horror, then with puzzlement, and, at last, when the inevitability of her situation becomes real to her, with relief.  She moves through all five stages of grief in the course of a minute.  This World has not treated the Woman kindly, and death, she finds, is a solace.  Mary weeps tirelessly over the Woman, kisses her forehead and holds her hand in escort to the next world.  “My soul for yours, my soul for yours.”  Mary kisses the Woman’s face again and again.

Mary, under the full spell of her madness, stands and turns her face to Heaven.  Her tears mingle with the soft rain.  Her tears are of sorrow to be sure, but they are also of rapture, of communion.  A mother’s duty is limited only by how much flesh she has to give.  But in this moment, has discovered the key to transcending her own limitations of sacrifice:  Mary has relinquished not only her flesh, but her soul.  She has drawn out that incurable poison that cruelly enslaved her little one.  She has discovered how to fix the un-fixable.  Any punishment to fall upon her now will be counted only as an Ecstasy.  She has become like her Overseer.

Mary dips two fingers into the soaked gravel and makes a diagonal mark across the Woman’s breast.  She does this once again, and then bridges the stripes with a horizontal bar, forming a large letter A, the badge of her sin:  A for abortion.

With unceasing tears, for the rest of the night, Mary goes about the tireless sacrament of adorning Kathy Leokadia’s body with every single rose petal in labyrinth’s heart.  Only thorny stripped-bare stems and a funerary of flowers welcome the morning light.

The pink dawn falls lovely upon Mary’s face as she makes her way out of the warren.   She has much work to do.  There are others in need of the Cure. 

43 . . . and it was Good.

Kris found himself in a dark place.

And there with him was the Sound –  clearer and more present than he had ever heard before. 

He was in a maze of dank halls; he felt that he was below a building, below the place that he needed to be.

What was that?  He heard something move very nearby.  He looked to see and caught the most fleeting glimpse something or someone disappearing around a corner.  What was it?  “Hello?” he called.  The something fled and he went after it.

Kris was in the bowels of Sacred Heart.  And whatever it was that was ahead of him was making the Sound.  He was so close now!  Finally!

He turned a bend only to find himself in another disorienting hallway.  The thing making the sound appeared to be a man, dragging something behind him. “Wait!” he called to the Man, but the Man slipped around another corner.  Kris began to run, but each time he turned a corner, the Man would disappear just before he could reach him.  Kris was running in a full sprint now, yelling for the Man to stop.  Each hallway was identical to the one before, each one a déjà vu of being nowhere, of running and running and getting nowhere.

And then Kris turned a corner and found himself in a different hallway altogether: doors lined each side of the entire length, and each door had a red letter of the alphabet painted on it.  One of the doors swung shut and Kris heard it latch behind.  He ran to it and found that it was the door with a large red A.  Kris’ heart raced in the darkness; he knew intuitively that something important awaited him on the other side.

He turned the knob cautiously and opened the ratty door.  When he did, he was assaulted with a blinding light that pained his eyes.  Through the glare, Kris could detect a stairway stretching up ahead of him.  “Hello?” Kris called to persons unknown.  He made his way slowly up.

Kris was still blinking as he came out at the top, exiting into some exceptionally large, open space.  This place was familiar to Kris, but he couldn’t place it.  Bright rays of light fell in through clerestory windows, describing sharp columns in the placid air.  Dust specks scrolled secret geometries within the shafts.  To Kris, the great volume, still and illuminated as it was, took on an ecclesiastical air.  This was a very holy place. 

From some place in the cavernous sanctuary, a great rustle was heard.  Kris looked and saw that which his subconscious had been searching for all these months.

Kris was still blinking from the light.  And the source of the noise, the Man, was apparently dressed all in white; the Man’s clothes dazzled Kris’ eyes.  It pained Kris to look directly at him.  The Man had his back to Kris, and the thing behind him, was something tall and white, touching the ground, and extending over the Man’s head.  In fact, Kris noticed, it was not one thing, but two.  Slowly, the Man and his parcels came into view.

This was the Source, the Source of the Sound, which had been haunting, beckoning to Kris since he first stepped foot on to Sacred Heart’s campus.

Facing Kris was a pair of two massive wings, like the wings of a crane, but dingy and worn, like something found in the forgotten storage room of a taxidermist.  Their crest was possibly 10 feet high.  The bottom plumage scraped the ground, and was filthy from what looked like years of abuse.  The delicate follicles of the feathers were pulled into greasy strands at their tips, rather of the white-white gossamer that they should have been.  Refuse was caught between the layers of feathers.

And then Kris realized that the wings were of course attached to a Man: an angel! 

The angel turned about to face Kris, and although he did this cautiously, the movement terrified Kris nonetheless.  The angel unfurled his wings slowly and nearly touched the two side walls along the room’s narrower dimension; arcane glyphs glowed on the undersides of the wings where they fell into the shafts of light.  The angel beat his wings mightily one time.   Fragments of debris and a waft of unhealthy dust flung about the sanctuary.  The gust knocked Kris off of his feet.  And then the angel calmly recoiled his wings.

The dust whispered further secrets to the light.

The man was enormous, maybe seven feet tall or more, and built like an Olympian.  His face was clearly once handsome beyond compare, but now was rendered as ugly as a veteran boxer’s battered visage.  His nose was as crooked as a slow river and various scars spoke a history of battles.  The basic symmetry of the angel’s face had been lost some time ago.

The great seraph was dressed in a linen blouse and pants, with a very wide leather belt, and wore no shoes.  The fabric, to Kris, was cut from exactly the same cloth as the baptismal gown that so beautifully adorned the body of Tiffany Trammel, that first day he came back to Kensington.  The stitching on the angel’s garments were the same color as the beige fabric, which made the almost unnoticeable, but Kris could see upon closer inspection that the handiwork was in fact exquisite beyond any craftsmanship of this world.  Intricately stitched  Mandela patterns, a language native to that Sacred Country, described celestial symbols and motifs upon the angel’s every cuff and hem – each symbol impregnated with code beyond human comprehension - each thread the very eternal narrative of one of the angel’s mortal charges. 

But the garments were all now clearly faded from their original splendor.  The creature’s pants were spoiled to the shins with a clay-rust-red stain, from either mud or blood or, very likely, both.  The crevices of his feet were encrusted with a black-brown detritus.

The overall of the seraph effect would be to imagine the richest, most noble and beautiful prince that Morocco had ever known, exiled from his gilt-spired palace and sentenced to survive unaided for a decades’ penance in gutters and wilderness of his own kingdom.

With a soul full of doubt and terror and determination, Kris asked, “Who are you?”

The angel answered kindly in his terrible voice, “Why do you ask question to which you already know the answer?”

“Of course,” Kris conceded.  “But . . . what happened to you?”

The angel, Truth, smiled tiredly, and somewhat embarrassed, at his wings.  “What happened to my wings, you mean?  Hmm. I am sure you know the old story of the man, Icarus.  He fashioned wings of wax and feathers.  And when he flew too close to the sun, his wings were ruined and he fell to Earth.”  The angel flexed his wings slowly, “I guess it is the same with me.  Except that I – I flew too close to the Earth, and this was the ruin of my wings.”

The angel looked sad at the state of his wings.  “There is not an angel in all Creation that doesn’t bear the stains of this world.”

 “Why do it?” Kris rose to his feet.  He was indignant.  This creature, this angel, had clearly been a being of such incomprehensible beauty.  People aren’t worth it, he thought.  “Why come here?  Why leave Perfection only to foul yourself for broken, perverse little insects?”

The angel chuckled a single weary laugh, “We can’t help ourselves: we are in love with your kind.  To us,” Truth opened his arms and wings wide, “you are chief of all the cosmos, the very embodiment of magic.”  Truth’s hand moved into a sunbeam and a prism of white-hot light shattered about the room, burning ancient Hebrew letters into whatever surface they happened to fall upon.  He pointed to one of the words and translated.  “Love.  When you have a child someday, you will begin to understand.”  Then the angel asked Kris, “And who are you?”

“I am Kris Whitlowe.”

“Your name, I already know, Kris Whitlowe.  What I am asking is, who are you?”

“I . . .” Kris was answering to himself as much as he was the angel, “I am a shepherd.”

The angel nodded his great head and reflected upon the answer, “Hmm.  Yes.  I can see that.”  The angel rustled his mighty and dilapidated wings once more and looked about the skating rink.  “Then you will need this.”  Truth slowly unsheathed a grand sword from a sheath at his waist.  The blade had been tucked beneath a wing, and Kris had not noticed it before.  There was something about the slow metal-on-metal sound that electrified Kris.

The angel held the sword aloft, twisting it to and fro as he examined it.  The blade of the sword flashed brilliantly whenever light fell upon its flat surface, but the groove along its length, as well as the grip, were caked will tendrils of black-red blood.  The angel admired the old weapon, its make, its history, the gift that it had been to him.  It was an old friend of sorts.  How many battles must they have seen together?  One last momentary indulgence of memory, and Truth resolutely swung the blade about and presented the handle to Kris.

Kris shrank from the terrible, swift sword.  He was embarrassed at the angel’s sacrifice.  But more than that, Truth was pushing him down a path that he had never chosen.  He leaned upon MLK, which was at the heart of him: “. .  .through violence you may murder a murderer but you can't murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar but you can't establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can't murder hate. Darkness cannot put out darkness. Only light can do that."

“So what then?” the angel inquired.

“I will not take the path of the sword.  Violence to kill violence is Madness”.

“Hm.  Yes.  This is true.  But, Shepherd,” Truth posited, “Madness is their native language.  And therefore, only in Madness will you find the ends that you are looking for.  In Madness is your Salvation, Kris.  I am sorry, but there is not another way.”  The great, battered creature lifted the sword high and speared it forcefully in to the wooden floor between Kris’ feet.  The blade rang with the deep timbre of a temple bell.  Its point, Kris saw, was stabbed into a smoldering Hebrew rune.  Truth translated the word, “Protection.”

Kris reached out his hand and touched the butt of the great blade.  And it was good.  He wrapped his hands around the hilt and was surprised to find that he could lift it.  And it was good.  Kris discovered that the blade was full of Power.  And it was good. 

Kamal had been right. 

The blade in his hands hummed with living primeval force.  It held prophecies of the past and memories of the future.  The Blade had been there in the Garden, cloaked in righteous flame.  The Blade had been there at Jericho, unleashed upon her inhabitants.  The Blade had stood silent sentry for millennia beside blind Lady Justice.  The Power would protect Kris’ flock.   

The hum in Kris hands became a buzz, and then an electricity which ran up to his elbows.  The writings on the walls and floor began to crack into shards light.  The electricity running through the Shepherd became atomic, then nuclear, then cosmic, and then eternal.  And then he felt that the Power of the sword might tear his very being asunder.  He screamed as the world began to disintegrate around him. 

There are two kinds of Nothingness, Kris realized.  There is the Nothing at one end of the Line of Time:  The Nothing Before Everything – The Void.  It is profound absence, an emptiness beyond understanding: utter cold, utter darkness.  The other Nothingness, that at the far end of Time, after history will have completed her work, is that which will come at the very end:  Obliteration.  It is the being filled with the Everything that ever was or will be, every particle of matter, every hot displacement of energy, in the entire expanse of the universe, consolidated into one singular point, melted so compact and heavy as to be without dimension – utter heat, utter light.  And in this infinitesimally small point is contained every memory, every desire and every pain, of every living being; every silvery proton and every slowly spinning celestial cluster that ever existed; the collective experience of an entire cosmos, in his hand:  Truth.

His vision became a tightening cone of migraine-white light.  Before it completely closed in upon him, the last thing Kris saw was the angel’s face.  Through a haze of violent light and dissolving reality, Kris could just make out the Truth, watching on calmly.  He made eye-contact with Kris and then pointed to his leather belt.  The last thing Kris saw was Truth’s leather band. 

And then everything simply went away.

42 For want of leg-warmers and a side arm

Wake me up, before you go-go,

Don’t leave me hangin’ on like a yo-yo . . .

Maggie groped desperately for the knife, but the Figure yanked her back by the throat, pulling her through the doorway and into the Living Room.  She could feel that her air was running out and scrambled for another plan.  Her eyes darted around the room.  Yes!  Yes, that will do nicely.

Maggie fell to the floor and the Figure was forced to go with her.  She quickly laid back on top of the Figure, who tightened the cord about her neck.  She could feel the hot blood press against her eyeballs.  Maggie rolled over the Figure and crashed into a side table.  A lamp fell down onto both of them, but the Figure held on tightly.  Maggie’s vision was getting black about the periphery; she had to hurry.  Through the tunnel-vision, Maggie reached through the table legs and groped around beneath the couch.  Ah yes.  There was a sound of Velcro tearing loose and Maggie’s fist came out clutching a 12” long by inch-and-a-half diameter black tube.  She flicked the tube expertly and a long rod telescoped out.  The officer swung over her shoulder and beat the face of her assailant behind her without restraint, without remorse.  The Figure bellowed, the sounds muffled by a thick white ski mask and relinquished the cord. 

Maggie jumped to her feet and arched her weapon high, like a golf driver.  The Figure reacted quickly as well, however, and kicked Maggie in the gut with a heavy boot, sending her reeling across the coffee table.  Maggie thought she might vomit from the blow; she couldn’t get her breath back.  The Figure stood and squared off against Maggie for the next round.  From within the denim jacket, the Figure removed a large pocket-knife and unfolded it with an unsettlingly loud “click”.

“Ok,” Maggie huffed, “Ok, just . . . just hold on.”  She held up a single finger.  “One second.”  She walked to the door and politely shut it.  Still with the index finger up, she went to the Living Room stereo and powered it up.  She found that great 80’s station that she had been grooving to, and cranked it up:  Maniac from Flashdance.   Maggie’s eyes lit up, “I love this song! – Ok, now we can really get down to it, without disturbing the neighbors.  One wants to be a good neighbor, after all.”  From behind the stereo she pulled a standard issue police baton and swirled it around by its handle.  “Oops!  Where did that come from?”  And then she sang. 

Just a still town girl on a Saturday night, lookin' for the fight of her life.
In the real-time world no one sees her at all, they all say she's . . . cra-a-azy

In one move Maggie smashed a wooden bowl with the police baton, sending it hurtling at the Figure, and then launched herself through the air directly behind it.  The Figure swatted at the bowl and Maggie brought a baton down upon each collar bone.  Explosion of broken pain.  She snapped upright, spun about and fluidly elbowed the Figure in the cheek and nose.

Maggie was in her element now.  Like a hawk that drifts effortlessly on mountain drafts, or a mare in full stride, this is what Maggie was made to do, and in her way, she made this dance of violence a thing of brutal loveliness.

Maggie snatched the white cord up before rolling across the back of the couch and disappearing.  When she came back up once again, she was grinning, “Oh, maybe I can use this.  Thanks – might come in handy, who knows?  Or . . . maybe this.”  From somewhere, Maggie found a small knife of her own, black-hilted, modest, professional looking.  She rolled up her sleeves, showing her tattoos and wide leather watch.

Then she whipped her assailant in the face with the cord and somersaulted over the couch to a squatting position on the floor.  She jammed her blade through those silent work boots and rolled quickly away.  The Figure hollered in agony.  Maggie, for her part, danced a Flashdance, prancing feverishly on her toes.  “I sure wish I had some leg warmers right now,” she noted, and began to sing along once again:

It can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes the fire
On a wire between will and what will be
She's a maniac, maniac on the floor

The Figure, now armed with two blades, stood and advanced upon the ”victim”. “Oh no!” Maggie feigned, “I am unarmed, what should I do?”  The Figure stabbed at the red-head; but Maggie dodged the thrusts easily, did a pirouette, and kicked the Figure solidly in the chest.  One of the knives careened across the hardwood floor as the Figure stumbled backwards into a heavy wooden chair with beautifully upholstered cushions.  She clacked a pair of handcuffs upon the arm of the chair and the arm of the masked Figure before administering one last good punch to the face for good measure.  “I’ll take that,” she said as she slammed the Figure’s wrist against the other wooden chair arm, knocking the knife free.  A crimson stain began to spread across the white mask.

Maggie tied the Figure’s free hand to the chair with the electrical cord, and took a break.  Michael Sembello sang about hunger staying the night.  Maggie turned the music down some.  “So,” she began cheerily, “It took you long enough.  I have been waiting and waiting for you.  Listen, you never really had a chance.  I have more weapons hidden around this house than Mexican drug-lord.  Not to mention loads of professional training and more personal issues than Reader’s Digest.  So you shouldn’t feel bad.”  Maggie casually reached under the table and pulled out a respectable looking sidearm.  “I have to admit, you – you were a slippery one.  I couldn’t get you figured out, couldn’t figure out what turned you on.  I honestly didn’t think I had you, so, I gotta say, I am thrilled – thrilled – that you finally decided to show up.”  The Figure moaned quietly. 

Maggie approached her prisoner and climbed up on to the Figure’s knees, squatting over her prey like a gargoyle.  The Figure groaned beneath her weight. She pressed the gun against the Figure’s forehead, “Now, let’s get down to it, shall we.”

Maggie Kennedy pulled the blood-stained mask from the Figure’s head and fell backwards from her perch in sheer horror.  “No.  No! No-no-no!” she cried.  Tears filled her eyes; tears filled the killer’s eyes.  It was as if Maggie was looking in to a mirror.

41 Return to Morpheus

Kris, for the moment, was safe in the sanctuary of Maggie’s pad.  He had Abraham Lincoln curled up on a cushion to his left, and a stash of Maggie’s historical documents on a cushion to his right.  Kris had resurrected Sadie, his Breedlove Master Class CM acoustic, and was taunting Abe with impromptu songs. 

“Oh Abraham, you’re a Calico,

I bet you’d like to go to Montego,

But you can’t, no you can’t, cuz you  ain’t got no,

Leg in the front, you got three, not fo’

Legs that is . . .

Oh Abraham.”

Abraham looked at Kris with the serenity of the Buddha, barely cracking his eyes open.  His look seemed to say, “Oh Kris.  Poor, poor, fat-brained, Kris.”

“Oh yeah?” Kris countered, “Well even if you did have four legs, you don’t have opposable thumbs, anyway!  So there.  Not to mention pockets.  There is no way you could get to Montego.”

“Has Kamal taught you nothing, Christopher?” Abe silently retorted.  “It doesn’t concern me that I have only three legs, can’t you see?  It is only you fat-brains who care about such things, who allow entire days to be ruined, worrying over which barista didn’t put in the right amount of cream.  There is no other creature on the planet who cares about having the right kind of heels, or haircut, or having too big a butt, or – sigh – the same number of legs that you were born with.”

“Well I can play guitar!  And write checks.  And play Mine Sweeper!”

Abe twitched and invisible fly away from his ear.  “And now I will show you the most excellent way.”  Abraham Lincoln craned a hind leg far out over the back of his head and began licking the furry underside of his thigh in long strokes.  He relished the motion like an Amish furniture maker, as concerned with the activity itself as much as the product of the handiwork. 

Kris put his guitar down on the floor beside himself raised a glass to Abraham, “You win, Mr. Lincoln.  Please send my regards to Mary Todd.  Kris took a sip of Gran Marnier and pulled Maggie’s leather-covered trunk towards him.

He carefully removed a treasured album from the box.  On the inside cover was the name “Lauralei”, written in the cutesy, barbelled font of a tweener-girl: stick letters with fat dots capping the ends of each stroke.  This was an album of newspaper clippings from Lauralei’s life.  The first was her birth announcement, a small, grey clipping with a one-inch square photo and tiny lettering.  The next was about a Junior Miss Irish Kensington pageant that she had won, and then an article about Lauralei’s prize-winning 4H hog.  Kris was impressed at how often this girl appeared in print.  The articles continued in this way, until the timeline of childhood accomplishments was inexplicably interrupted by a clutch of articles about a local serial killer.  The killer had been called the Kensington Caller, and had preyed upon teenage girls, for that oldest and most primal of reasons.  There were seven articles on the caller, and then, as out of place as they had been, another article landed in the album about the burning down of the Palisades.  

Kris traced the grainy photo of the skating rink’s burnt-out husk with his finger.  The yellowed image on the page still lived in vivid color and immediacy in Kris’ mind.  He had loved that old place with a true and undying affection.  Even now he could retrace every inch of it in his memories: a scavenger map of first kisses and New Wave hairdo’s.  He remembered clearly standing on the curb across the street next to Alberto’s taco stand, looking at this exact scene, as fire men watered down the blackened and smoldering ribs of the charred building.  He felt like a dear friend was on a small boat, drifting slowly and forever away from him, just out of reach, irretrievable with an ever-broadening gap between.   He remembered that the night before the fire was the last time he saw Maggie until those months ago when he returned to Kensington.  It filled him with that same achy-nostalgic feeling that he had that day on the curb.  That was the last clipping in the album.

“Why do I do this to myself, Abraham?” Kris asked his feline companion.  The cat addressed him with his sleepy, blissful smile, as if to say that he had no idea why humans made everything so unnecessarily complicated.  “We’ve been over this, grasshopper.”  Kris replaced the book into the box and pulled out another.  It had pictures of Maggie’s dad.  Kris had always liked Mr. Kennedy, and enjoyed seeing the old man again.  But these photos didn’t resonate with him in the same way.  It was curious, though, that the back cover had several Alcoholics Anonymous tokens adhered to it.  Kris tried to recall if Old Man Kennedy had been a drinker or not, but couldn’t decide one way or the other.  One of the tokens was missing.

Kris put the book away and called it a night.

As Kris slowly crossed over into Morpheus’ domain, his thoughts drifted back to the case of Donnie Gomez.  He had never been able to get settled with the crime scene.  Why didn’t it feel like the others?  It wasn’t Omega, Kris felt confident of that.  But something was different about Donnie’s death.  Surely it was Alpha, but why the restraints?  Had Donnie been killed in the chapel, or killed elsewhere and brought to the church?  Was the scene about “sanctification”, or something else?  He repeated to himself, until he was out, “Je ne sais quoi?  Je ne sais quoi?  Je ne sais quoi?”   

40 Finally

Maggie was somewhat weightless as she and the cool breeze drifted together down Andrew Jackson Ave’.  She had just had one of those cathartic conversations with Mary and felt as if she had spent a weekend cleaning out the attic of her soul, pitching out old baggage, abandoned hobbies and photos of ex-loves.  She was emotionally exhausted and liberated at the same time, the way we all feel after a good Spring Cleaning.

A few blocks away Maggie watched a pair of lovers giggle and whisper naughty secrets into each other’s ears outside of Favorite Things.  This brought a smile to her face as she rounded the block to her old man’s house.  Cicadas buzzed their cacophonous electric synchronicity, a delightful but deafening din.

Old Man Kennedy’s place was a fantastic bungalow with a deep porch supported by four robust columns.  The term ‘Craftsman’ was not wasted on the house’s moniker: stone and wood were expertly composed throughout its design, not in an overly ornate manner, but rather with a sense of being well-appointed.  Maggie caressed the stained handrails as she ascended the few steps to the porch and thought that this old house embodied the sturdy spirit of her father.  She was vaguely reminded of the passage that says that “some people have entertained angels without knowing it,” and felt that she would be proud to have audience with an angel in this place, a very Amish notion.

One block closer towards town, the shabby-chic glitter of the Arts District twinkled in the night.  One block further away from town, neglect and poverty squatted like a feral animal in the pitch black.  In that darkness, a small square of light stole the image of Maggie Kennedy making her way to her father’s front door.  A hand masked in a teal surgical glove tapped an address onto the small screen: kris@justicia.net.  Send.

Distant music wafted across the bungalow porch as Maggie unlocked the door; Art Slam was in full swing down in BeBo.   She flipped on an old lamp and, as it was a pleasant night, left the front door open.  The beautiful detective unwound herself from her work digs, rolled up her sleeves and contemplated what would be for dinner.  She discovered that she had one whole onion and some pork, and that was as good a place as any to start.  As she went about slicing the onion, she turned the small, blue radio in the kitchen on to help fill up the lonely house, and so in this way, she did not hear the screen door creak slowly open.

A figure in a woolen denim coat crept up behind her on boots which made no sound. 

Maggie loved this song; she was bopping away to George Michael as the Figure reached over her head and throttled her with a white extension cord.  Maggie had just enough breath in her to utter a single word . . .

“Finally.”

39 Meeting the Minotaur

Kris hurt like hell, but he still had a job to do.  He opened the door slowly to the stairwell and had to convince himself that lightning didn’t strike in the same place twice.  “Ok,” he reassured himself, “let’s go.”

Kris found Donnie’s office unlocked and let himself in.  The lighting was terrible, but the room was nearly immaculate, and smelled strong of Pine-Sol.  Someone had placed a wide sheet of plywood on the heavy desk and was constructing a model train town.  It looked to be almost completed, and Kris couldn’t help but stare at the miniature people and shops and cars for a spell.  An empty animal cage was against one wall, and a door with a strap hinge and pad lock on another.  Other than this, the room was pretty much empty.  Kris rifled through the drawers of the desk for some sort of clue, but all it yielded was some train magazines and model-making tools:  three different types of glue, an X-acto blade, a bunch of tiny oak trees and auto mechanics.

“Nothin’,” Kris lamented to himself.  “Hmm.  Okay, well, what’s behind door number 3?”  He saw that a painted board had dozens of keys hanging from it.  He checked them all, but they were clearly not keys for a padlock.  “No problem.  We’ve been here before, haven’t we?”  Another quick search of the desk yielded up a short, skinny screwdriver, and Kris knew exactly what to do with it.  Despite its slenderness, when Kris threaded the shank through the loop of the lock, it popped open quite easily.

Kris opened the door slowly.  The light from Donnie’s office opened like a fan from left to right, revealing as it did what could only be thought of as an altar. 

Against the wall opposite the door where Kris stood, a tall, plaster Madonna stared back at him in absent benevolence.  She was painted in vivid crimson and azure; rays of gold radiated from the crown of her head.  She stood upon a heavy industrial cable spool, 4 feet in diameter, which made her taller than Kris.  The wooden makeshift tabletop was covered with wax from votives in various stages of degeneration.  From her vantage, the Virgin Mother looked down kindly upon the young beaten man, one arm open in a Zen-like invitation to absolute peace, the other effortlessly pointing to her own blood-red and sacred heart. 

There was a square of carpet set neatly before the altar; it was perpendicular to all of the walls, and centered upon Mary.  Other than this, and the altar itself, the room was completely bare.

Kris noticed that there was a second door.  It was locked simply from his side.  He opened it and saw that it led back out into the main hallway.  The brighter light from the hall came in through the newly opened door and revealed a most curious feature which Kris had not been able to see before: somebody had cut a photo out and placed it over the statue’s face, like a child’s Halloween costume.  And the photo was of Mary Pendleton.

Kris started just a bit at the familiar but also strange face.  He found a light switch and flicked it on; the statue’s reds and blues jumped into true Technicolor.  Kris extended his left hand and inched slowly, fearfully towards the Mary-Mary, as if it would spring to life at any moment and bark at him, “Let it be!” 

Kris touched the mask, peeked underneath.  Someone said, “Yeah, he really loved her.”

Kris’ heart jumped through his chest.  Paul Gomez was leaning against the frame of the door between the office and the secret chapel, rubbing his great salt-and-pepper moustache thoughtfully.  He had on jeans, a white tank-top undershirt, and a wool and denim jacket.  The coat must have been brand new: when Paul opened it a bit, Kris saw that it was stark white next to the dinginess of Paul’s worn “wife beater”.  The pristine quality of the wool brought to the back Kris’ mind the sheep that it must have come from.

“Paul?!” Kris stammered, “I was, I was looking for you in your office.  But you weren’t there . . .”

Paul motioned for him to calm down, “I know, I know.  Don’t sweat it, hermano.  I get it.  No big deal.”  He looked back to the Mother Mary, “Donnie loved her, you know?  She was like a mother to him.  She was his mother.”  Paul shook his head as if to say, What a waste.

Kris’ phone vibrated.  “Paul, I need to ask you something.” 

Paul’s eyes grew moist.  “He was really a good boy, you know?  Nobody ever got that.  But really and truly, deep down he was.  He wasn’t a retard, Kris.  Know what I mean?  People say cruel things.”  Paul bowed his head and made the sign of the cross.  “Do you believe, Kris?  In the blessed Virgin?  Do you believe?”

Kris pulled some documents from his satchel that he had printed earlier from the newspaper archival site.  He thrust them at Paul, Exhibit A:  “Paul, why did you rape these girls?”

“Say what?!” Paul snapped.

“Jail.  You went to jail for raping these girls.”

Paul took the stack from Kris.  A look of acknowledgement came over Paul as he reviewed the evidence.  “Ay Chingao, Kris!  What are you doing, esse?  You’re steppin’ into deep stuff here – things you don’t understand.”  He handed the papers back to Kris who put them back in his satchel.  Kris pulled his phone out from his bag finally.  He had an email.

Paul rubbed at something on the vinyl floor until it came free and then bent down and swept in to his cupped hand.  “I didn’t hurt those girls, friend.  But yes, I did go to jail.”  Paul walked over and dropped whatever it was that he had scrubbed off the floor into a trash can.  “Guess we might as well talk straight about it. . .   Donnie attacked those girls, Kris.  Stupid pendejo.  He just couldn’t control himself, you know?  He wasn’t bad, Kris.  He just didn’t have any self-control.  Like all of us, right?  I know that’s hard for folks to understand.  He was no different than the alcoholics, or the tweekers. His appetites were just different than the rest of the folks around here is all. But he wasn’t bad.”

“Wait a minute.  Are you telling me that you went to prison for Donnie?”  Kris noticed that Paul had a massive tattoo of a wolf beneath the yellowed undershirt that sprawled across the width of his brown chest.

“He couldn’t have handled prison.  He would have died in there.  I plead ‘no contest’, they had no evidence against me, I played nice inside:  I was out in 60 months.”  Paul clapped his hands to say – no big deal.  “Donnie would have been dead.   But, you know what?  It was the best thing that ever happened to me.  No lie.  It got me sober, guerro, cleaned me up inside, too.  Got me back on the Good Path, you know?  That’s why I lead the recovery program now.  All the good stuff I learned inside.  I had to hit my rock bottom.”

“But what about Donnie?”

“Donnie was a beautiful, proud Aztec warrior!  Descended from a noble people – with the blood of a thousand strong fathers and mothers in his veins.”

“But Paul, he was a rapist!”

“Mary looked over him for me while I was in, she was his mother.  She was his angel.  She kept him on the narrow path, see.”

Kris rubbed his face with both hands, exasperated, “I think my head is going to explode.”  

The two men stood in silence as Kris tried to absorb the messy family history of Sacred Heart.  “So in fact, you’re telling me that you’re a saint?”

Paul smiled, but his eyes were sad, “I’m no saint, hermano.  Maybe an angel . . . with dirty wings.  How’s that?  But no saint.”

He reached in a pocket and pulled out a lighter, with which he lit as many candles could be lit.  He made the sign of the cross and besought the blessing of the figure before him, “Hail Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of death.”

Kris sighed, exhausted, and finally checked his phone.  A second message came through from kris1969@bigbrother.net.  He opened this mail first.  Bigbrother had tracked down the address of origination for alphamail.  It was 1900 San Nueces.  Or to put it another way, the email had originated at Sacred Heart.

Kris froze inside, and wondered now why he had chosen to confront Paul this way.  In that moment Kris figured something out that, in hindsight he thought, really should have been obvious.

“Why is it,” Kris asked himself, “that great insights only happen for me at moments of great crisis?”  Kris realized that Alpha had to know that Maggie was the detective on his trail – and very few people Maggie’s identity. Paul, of course, was one of those few.  “Why could this have not occurred to me earlier?”

Paul took his coat off and hung it on a doorknob.  His arms were littered with gang tattoos; scarcely a square inch of Paul’s brown skin was not covered in ink.  His shoulders and arms were a map of his life, a palimpsest of former allegiances.  Kris found that Paul had a large gun in his right hand.  Paul dug around the folds of his jacket and pulled out a bolt of white fabric.  He sighed.  “Well,” he said, “I guess you should put this on now, little brother.”  He tossed the thing to Kris who unfurled it.  It was a baptismal gown.

 “What is this, Paul?”

“Everything was fine, before you got here.  You and Red Riding Hood.  You took my heart, man, my heart.  We could have taken care of our own, just like we’ve always done.  But you messed everything up, brother.”  Paul rubbed his macho moustache again, pondering.  “I like you, Kris.  But, I don’t know.  This just ain’t going to work.  I’ve always cleaned up Donnie’s messes since he was a kid,” Kris smelled the Pine-Sol and candles, “and even after he’s dead, I guess I’m still cleaning up after him.”  Paul pointed the gun at Kris, “Just put it on now.  Time to clean up, vato!” 

Kris was on the precipice of a great chasm, falling in slow motion over its edge, the abyss yawning open before him.

On nothing but instinct, Kris in one motion flung the gown in Paul’s face, flicked the light switch off and slapped Paul’s gun-hand away before crouching to the ground whisking backwards out the hall door.  Paul’s gun fired, shooting the Virgin Mother’s forearm completely off.  Mary-Mary tottered slowly like a bowling pin, and then fell forward upon the host of candles.  Hot wax splattered onto the floor and Mary Pendleton’s face slowly charred onto the Virgin’s porcelain features.

Kris ran with all his might.  Paul dashed from the room and unloaded his gun down the hallway after the mulatto.  Divine Providence, or the Master Plan, or Blind Luck protected Kris from getting hit.  He turned the corner hard and found himself bolting down a hallway lined with doors marked with large, red letters.  Paul called to him, “You don’t know what it means to protect someone you love! Everything was fine before you came!  You don’t know what it means,” the recovery specialist screamed, “to protect someone you love!”

Kris ran up a set of stairs, and was blinded by the dazzling light of the sun, sent scattering in fractured rays off of a stories’-tall tile mosaic of a good shepherd.

38 Let it be ...

Kris came to on a gurney in the first floor hallway of Sacred Heart’s admin’ building.  “Can you hear me, sir?”  An EMT that looked like an old biker in his off-hours was wafting a smelling salt under Kris’ nostrils.  “Sir, what is your birthday?”  he asked in his stout voice.

“Auwww, man!”  Kris sat up, cradling his pounding head and ears.  Consciousness came slowly and without good news.  Each additional degree of alertness was only an additional awareness of pain and bad fortune.  If it was true what Maggie said, that a good ass-kicking is the first step on the path to enlightenment, then Kris should be a sensei very soon.

“Sir, can you tell me your birthday?” 

Kris looked about himself.  Besides Easyrider here, another EMT, Ricky Martin maybe, was packing up a tackle box of medical trinkets.  A small clutch of priests and church staff looked on with varying degrees of relief and concern.

Kris told the EMT his birthday, and answered a few other questions to his satisfaction.  “Alright,” the gentle giant said, “You seem ok.  I guess you must be tougher than you look, anyway, if you beat down Rhett Herron.”  Easyrider nodded in the direction of the large window wall.  Outside the windows, outside the courtyard gates, were parked two ambulances and more cop cars than Kris could tell.  Recovering addicts looked on with gossipy fascination; a few answered questions to law enforcement officers.

“What are you talking about?  That guy destroyed me.  What do they teach you guys down there at ambulance drivers’ school nowadays anyway?”

The EMT had a long white moustache that went down to his chin and became almost side-chops.  He wore a couple of earrings in each lobe.  “Not today, man.  A while back.  Rhett told me some guy kicked his leg off and stabbed him with a screwdriver.  Turn out that guy is you.”  He smiled at Kris as he put tape on one of his hands.  “Said he was going to kill you.”  The burly EMT laughed heartily.

“You know Rhett?”

“Yeah, he’s one of ours – or he was one of ours, anyway – Ambulance Jockey.    But don’t you about Rhett Herron, friend, I think ol’ Rhett might be going away for a while.  You should be safe and sound.”  The EMT helped Kris up from the gurney.  “Apparently he was running from the cops when he ran in to you.”

“Are you kidding me?”

The EMT chuckled again, “Guess you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, bud.  Yeah, apparently he went nuts and beat up his girlfriend . . . bad. ‘Roid-Rage, man.  Completely jacked.  No surprises there.  And between you and me, he’s been lifting a bunch of stuff from work: syringes and gloves and junk.  Low-level barbiturates.  Things like that.”  The EMT dabbed a Q-tip on Kris’ cheek.  “You’re pretty beat up, bro.  But it doesn’t look like anything serious.   We can release you into the care of Miss Pendleton here, but I am going to advise you to get X-rayed as soon as possible.”  Easyrider helped Kris to his feet and gave him a hard, jocular slap on the back.  This motion succeeded in effectively pinpointing, via a concert of stabbing pains, the precise location each one of Kris’ internal injuries.  “Be safe, brother!” the EMT said as he wheeled the empty gurney away.

Mary came up to him and hugged him, which hurt as well.  “We have to stop meeting like this,” she said as she rubbed his left shoulder.

“You know, you’re not the first person to say that to me today.”

“Kris, what are you doing here, anyway?”

“Where’s my bag?”  Kris looked around the hall, found his satchel.  He looked inside and was relieved to see that his Mac was undamaged.  Kris leaned in close to Mary.  She of course, being Mary, reduced the personal space even further.  “Mary, I have been getting emails from Alpha.  He says he’s going to kill Maggie.” 

“Oh Kris.”  Mary’s hands went to her face, and then her forehead: a reflexive gesture of worry.  “Kris, this is all . . . it’s just . . .” The counselor literally wrung her hands. 

“Mary, I’m sorry, but there’s more.  Did you know that Paul went to jail,” he whispered to Mary, “for rape?”

Mary turned her back to Kris and stamped away.  He had never seen her do anything like that before, had never seen her pull away from someone.  “Why can’t you . . . Kris – yes – I know about Paul.”

“What?!”

“Of course I know about Paul.  I know everything about Paul.  I know everything about everyone at Sacred Heart.  We are a family, and Paul has been a part of the Sacred Heart family his entire life.  His mother and father, and about a dozen aunts and uncles – all part of Sacred Heart.”

Kris couldn’t figure out for sure if he was mad or not.  “Why didn’t you tell us, Mary?”

“Paul has got nothing to do with this Alpha situation, Kris!  You need to let it be!”  There it is, a part of Kris thought, I knew I heard Paul McCartney.  “He is part of our family, the same way Donnie was part of our family!  And you and Maggie managed to get Donnie killed! Why can’t you two just let sleeping dogs lie?  We could have worked it out, like families do.  Just let it be!”

“Mary, I don’t think it works like that.  There is such a thing as justice, you know?”

Mary began to tear up, lose her composure.  “Paul doesn’t have anything to do with Alpha.” She threw up her hands, “Oh man, I can’t deal with this.  I just . . .” Mary walked off, running her hands through her mane of red hair.  She yelled back down the echo-chamber of a hallway, “Let it be, Kris!”

37 Turn the other cheek

Kris went to look for Paul at his office, but for the first time since Kris had started coming to Sacred Heart, the Group Sharing Room was locked up tight.  Somebody with a soft pack of Marlboro Menthol Light 100’s informed Kris that Paul had taken to hanging out in Donnie’s old office.

Kris found his way into the Administrative Building, past Mary Pendleton’s office and into a stairwell.  He was making his way down the stairs, lost in a mental calculus, when an exit door flung violently open and a sweaty and red-faced Rhett Herron bolted in.  One of his trunk-like arms was wrapped tightly about the neck of an unconscious girl.  Her hair covered her face, and Kris couldn’t make out who it was.  Part of her bangs was matted to her forehead with half-congealed blood.  Rhett slammed the door shut behind him and looked up at Kris.  “I have been looking a whole month of Sundays for you, sir.  I tell you what, we’ve got to stop meeting like this.”  Rhett cast the girl off into one corner like so much dirty laundry.  Kris noticed then that Rhett’s arm was bandaged from having been run-through with Kris’ screwdriver at their last encounter.

Rhett smiled a terrible thing at Kris and simply reached out and snatched him by the shirt.  He whipped the would-be detective 180 degrees, pinning him face first against the cool brick wall.  Kris scrambled like an animal caught in a trap, but Rhett had gotten the jump on him; there would be no getting away this time.  His previous escape, Kris decided, had absolutely been a lucky fluke.  Rhett leaned all of his weight upon Kris and punched him hard in the kidneys, punched him hard in the side of the head.  Kris’ ears rang hot with pain.  He tried to fight back, but he was quite simply bested.  He was convinced that this was the day that Rhett would end his life, and was surprised to find that his thoughts turned to Abraham Lincoln.  He pushed and flailed and took punishing blow after punishing blow.  And then the door flew open once again and an entire company of armored Police officers rushed the well and sacked Rhett.  Kris was dragged to the ground along with his assailant and his face was rubbed raw against the concrete wall all the way down.

“Yep,” Kris thought to himself, “I am going to pass out.”  His vision became a tightening cone of darkness.  Before it completely closed in upon him, the last thing Kris saw was Mary Pendleton’s face, leaning over his own, apparently uttering words of comfort to him.  These were unfortunately drowned out by the ringing in his head.  But he was absolutely sure that he heard Paul McCartney somewhere, singing about wistful words of wisdom.