Anthology Complex (24 page)

Now I'm remembering a dream I had several years ago where I am talking
to Satan in what looks to be Hell. I think he was giving me the tour. I asked
Satan if he knew God as a child, and he says yes, he did, that they were
practically born on the same day at the same time in the same place. He goes on
to tell me about how good and evil are one in the same. That nothing is purely
good, and nothing is purely evil. That every thing is purely perception. That
we were designed to feel we needed to distinguish the two.

Sometime later he's telling me a story from his childhood, one that
included God. He's telling me about how they had just received responsibility
on a new project, and they had come to their first big decision. Child Satan
and Child God have to decide whether to set the universe on six or to set the
universe on seven. Or to set the universe on both six and seven, however doing
such a thing may cause later complications.

Child Satan wants to set the universe on both six and seven as a means
to endure trial and error so that the final project may be one hundred percent
perfect. He wants all the details. Child Satan wants to witness any possible
complications that may arise, however Child God explains that they have limited
time to complete the project and that going through all the possible
complications would simply be impossible.

Child Satan, submitting himself to logic, agrees to what Child God has
said, and they decide to set the universe on seven to maintain an order, some
type of peace. Much time passes, and much work and effort has gone into the
project, and by now Child Satan and Child God are now referred to as Adult
Satan and Adult God.

As they continue to work on the project they come across a part of the
project that involves actually creating the life forms that would habitat the
universe they have created. Eventually they get stuck when they have to figure
out how, what we know as DNA now, will work in these life forms. Because life
forms can only be set on six, and because they have already set the universe on
seven, Adult Satan and Adult God spend centuries attempting to find a solution.
Eventually Old God would suggest free will to Old Satan, but Old Satan would
not agree. Old Satan's first argument is that giving the life forms free will
will allow them to end their own existence. One might think twice upon hearing Satan
argue for the safety of humans and all things that live, but as it has been
said before, "one seldom recognizes the devil when he has his hand on your
shoulder."

"Knock knock," the apartment door says. I open the door and
it's Mary. She hands me an envelope, it was mail that was accidentally put in
her mailbox. I look up and say thanks, and I can't help but notice how sick she
looks. She gives me a look as if it were my fault and walks away; I am almost
positive that as soon as she gets in her apartment she is going straight to the
bathroom for purposes of vomiting and diarrhea.

The mail is from some Abraham Lincoln fundraiser thing. Lincoln has
always interested me in many ways, but I'm not big on charity. I throw the
envelope in the garbage and then begin to think about a story that has been
told about Lincoln for many years. How one week before his death, he had a
dream of someone crying in the White House because someone had died, and when
he asked that person who it was who had passed away, the person told him that
it was the president. Lincoln walked over to the coffin, and when he looked
inside, it was his own face that he saw.

"Shut," says the car door. When I look outside I see Silvio
standing next to a car in a nice suit, and I see Lynne approaching him. I'm
assuming she looked so nice today because she was going to go out with Silvio.
Silvio must be very charming and very manipulating if he can come back from
beating on his wife. It almost pains me to see her make that long slightly
limped walk back into the past to relive those moments, but thinking about the
time when she brought me to where she used to live, that might actually be what
she wants.

Chapter 42:

THE BROOKLYN TOWER

I put one of the pins down on a specific part of the map. I tell my
partner that we'll wait on that side of the street until he comes out of the
house and starts his day. We had been following a law enforcement officer
around because we were positive that he was crooked. Corrupted. He played the
role of a detective for the local police department, but he was much more than
that.

"We know that he walks his dog over to the newspaper stand every
morning, but we can't risk taking him then because of the noise that damn dog
might make." So instead my partner says we wait until he goes in for work.
"But what if he's off that day?" My partner says that we keep sitting
on his house until the day he has work.

What we realized after the first few days of following him was that the
police department isn't necessarily where he works. Because he works in the
homicide department, the entire city is potentially his work location, and
because the entire city may be his work location, we found ourselves following
a man who has no pattern. There were some nights when he didn't even go home to
his wife and kid.

"We will have to take him at night when he is in a place where
there is no one around. Probably a crime scene that he is revisiting." My
partner looks at the map and says, "Let's hope the crime scene he is
revisiting was a good enough place to commit a crime."

The alarm clock strikes four a.m. and I tell him it's almost time to go,
to make sure he knows where his mask is. We drive out to where the law
enforcement officer lives and wait on the side of the street we agreed on.

There are probably more good people in the world than there are bad, but
these good people may only be good because they fear the consequences of being
bad. If the consequences to our actions were nonexistent, how many people do
you think would still be considered good people? All that is left is the idea
of decency. That anyone who still does good and refuses to do bad is doing so
because the instinct to be a decent person still lives with them. The question
is, seeing as how we are human beings, while you are still a good person and
every one else is now running around being bad, who wins in the end? You for
having morals, or them for taking advantage. Is there even a winner, or do we
all just lose regardless.

What if you can't tell if the law enforcement officer is good or bad
even after you've questioned him for just a little over two hours? That even
after you've threatened to throw him off the tower he still implies that he is
a good man.

So many times in life we get it wrong. We can find disgust in someone
we've never even met, or someone we don't even truly know. In tales of fiction
there are always purpose characters who are meant to make you feel a certain
way. They may only appear when they need to serve their purpose in the tale,
but what if the person telling you the tale is wrong about them. What if they
aren't as bad as you are told, or what if they aren't as good.

We end up leaving the law enforcement officer alive at the top of the
tower, but we leave behind much more than that. We attempted to take him during
the night while he was walking away from someone's house. We assume he was
questioning a witness of a recent double homicide he was assigned.

As we grab him, a vehicle drives up and two men get out demanding us to
let him go. It appears as though we weren't the only ones watching this
officer.

Shots are fired, the two unidentified men are killed, and we drive away
with the law enforcement officer. In the pursuit of a man who we now have found
innocent, we had killed two men we didn't know. Two men who may have been
officers of the law, who may have also been some of the few remaining good. On
the drive back I ponder what side of the line I fall on.

"As soon as we grabbed him, they started firing shots at us."
"No, we grabbed him, then they drove up and told us to let him go. Then
you started firing like an idiot." "I only unloaded because they were
shooting at me." "Did you even see where they came from?"
"They were either watching us, or they were watching him, but either way
they were already there." "Did you see anything that identified them
as police officers?" "No, and they sure as hell didn't say anything
about it either." "I would feel a lot better knowing we just killed
two guys who were maybe going to kill a police officer." "Yeah well
we won't know until tomorrow."

I didn't say that was a dream because of the events that took place and
the characters that were mentioned. Knowing these things always helped me
separate reality from fiction when it was hard to tell the difference. When
dissecting a memory and trying to figure out if it happened in this world or
another.

Often times I have dreams of Maria coming back, but I wake up to find
that it was a dream. If one day she does really come back, I won't know if I'm
awake or if I'm asleep. Things like this are what make you go crazy. She comes
back, and even after days I'll still be questioning if I'm dreaming or not. As
for right now I know that I am awake because I've never been so irritated in my
life. There is a bug flying around in my apartment and I've been chasing it for
the past ten minutes.

I'm wrestling with it now in my bedroom, and I close the door shut
behind me so it has less places to go. "Spray spray," says the can of
bug-spray, but I miss both times. I lose the bug, so I stand still and wait for
it to make its next move. When it does it goes for the window ledge, the ledge
of the window that I opened earlier to let fresh air in. I probably should have
kept it open, but then I would be risking more bugs flying in.

I slowly walk up to it, and I spray again but I miss again. It starts to
fly now, and I spray once more and I hit it. The impact of the spray causes it
to fly backwards into the glass of the window, and then I spray it again and it
falls back down on that ledge. I spray it two more times, and now it's on its
back and is incapable of flipping itself over. I keep spraying it over and over
again until it appears to be caught in some kind of web because of all the
spray. For about ten seconds, after I stop spraying, all I can see is it
kicking its feet, trying to get out. Each kick is weaker than the last, until
it stops kicking completely. That's when the noise coming from the living room
becomes more noticeable to me.

Soft knocking on my door that seems to belong to Lynne, except it's not
Lynne. It's her sister, Claire, who as soon as I open the door makes her way
in. It reminds me of Tao.

We are both sitting down on the couch, and she is trying to convince me
to tell Lynne that she is making a mistake. That Silvio is a bad person. Not in
those words.

It looks like Silvio's hold on Claire has worn out, and she has opened
her eyes, but unfortunately he has his hold on Lynne now. For the second time.
I ask Claire why she came to me of all people, that Lynne and I don't even
really know each other that well. Claire says that when her and Lynne were on
speaking terms, all Lynne would ever talk about was me. I tell her that even
so, I wouldn't want to intrude on something I'm not welcomed to intrude on. The
way Claire looks at me after I say that makes me think that this is Lynne's cry
for help to me. That she wants me to come and save her, but I'm not a
superhero.

I ask Claire why she doesn't ask some of Lynne's friends, and she
laughs. She's not laughing at me, she's laughing at what I said. She tells me
that Lynne isn't exactly the type of person who has many friends. How about
some? Some maybe, if she's doing good. Doing good? "It's not something I can
explain in words," Claire says.

Claire tells me about how Lynne just moved here from the inner city and
probably hasn't made any friends. She tells me about how Lynne isn't the
weirdest person, but also isn't the most sociable. She will dress up all pretty
and nice so that she is noticed, but when someone finally notices her she will
push them away. One of her psychological fragments.

Claire asks me one last time to talk to her, and I say I'll think about
it. That's a lie. Then she leaves through the back door. As I show Claire the
door, I see Mary throwing out her garbage. She still looks sick. I think to
myself that I hadn't seen her around this much since she first moved in. Maybe
she's dying. That would certainly get her to put her priorities in order.