Played: “Sometimes you never know who is playing who, until the damage is done." (47 page)

He discovers his likeness upon the glass of the fireplace doors—his image in flames. The fire licking around his features seems fitting for the moment. There, he loses himself in thought, questioning himself. Why cannot I trust anyone? Even the one I love?

Then, catching him by surprise, Kimberly appears in the room; she’s composed, as if nothing has happened. Softly she speaks, “I want to go to bed…I want you to hold me.” Joshua stands, consenting with his gaze. “Do you love me, Joshua?”

He draws her into him, feeling the wet warmth of her flesh, and peers far beyond her beautiful eyes, replying, “Yes…until the ends of eternities.” They melt into one another, unmoving for a time. Then with a gentle arm around her trembling shoulders, he leads her to the bedroom and lays her down. There he holds her tight, smelling her fresh skin. He knows he absolutely loves her. Even from the very day they met, it was apparent that he and she were truly the same. Even when she is gone, he never feels alone. She awards him security and purpose along with a sensation of knowing her before they were created. He reminisces the times they’ve spent together, vacationing, making love, planning mischief. He loves the way her short hair looks when she emerges from the shower, the way she gets nervous at parties, her giggles, her silly ideas of having a family, the way she trusts his every word, the way she shudders when she comes. Everything she is, was, and will become.

But the covenant with himself is obligatory; he is bound by the rules of the game. The only way for two to keep a secret…

Is if there is only one.

He pulls her in tighter and tighter to the point she starts to resist, struggling under his control. His arms sink deeper, and powerful legs wrap around her midsection, cinching in when she exhales, constricting, strangling. Bed sheets twist as she thrashes, clawing into skin, but his clench is unyielding, contracting with every movement. Sounds of her are muffled as her ribs pop and crack. He lets up briefly only to hear her scream, merely wanting to hear her beautiful voice one last time before setting her free. Then he squeezes with all his might, all his anger, until her resistance subsides, her pulse lightens to nothing, her body dies.

He loosens his grip, believing her to be gone. But her unexpected and violent end enrages her spirit. She fights with everything she has to remain in the room, hovering, watching, trying to understand, bartering for vengeance.

Joshua places her lifeless corpse back to the pillow and stands exhilarated. Trembling, morbid thoughts are speeding faster than his heartbeat. Fuck, that is such a rush! To kill what you hate is easy, fucking effortless. But to kill what you love is an ultimate pleasure. I will never stop!

Undaunted he floats down the hallway and into the soft, glowing blue lights that illuminate his living room; he spins in the open space with arms spread wide and eyes closed. And there waiting for him is the present Kimberly bought for him. It’s a vintage, eighty-year-old bottle of scotch. His eyes close again as he remembers how sexy she was, coming in the day before with the magnificent-looking bottle and pouring him a drink. He plans to down it all and get rid of her vessel in the morning hours. How ironic it will be for her to go missing once again. How ironic is it that I can never be arrested for the same crime twice? “Ha-ha!” Ha-ha…ha-ha…ha-ha!

As he laughs out loud as well as in his mind, he pours the aged whiskey into a tall glass, swirls the liquid, and drinks half of it in one gulp, admiring his handiwork. How he’d used his father. How he’d cast a dark cloud over the Roman Catholic Churchs’ reputation. How he’d swindled himself out of trouble with the car club by bringing a new power player to the fold – a well-known captain of the Seattle Police Department, who now drives a Cadillac XLR and guarantees there will never be any investigations into the secret order.

Then he refills the glass and holds it in the air, commemorating the past. He speaks to the room. “This is for you, Danny Marshall!” And within the recesses of his mind’s eye, he visualizes the last time they played together.

They were best friends and fooling around with Danny’s father’s gun, which they’d found hidden in a bedroom closet. Joshua knew he could shoot him and then act as if it were an accident—fulfilling his sick desire to watch someone die. And seven seconds after the notion entered his psyche, with the both of them just standing there, he aimed the pistol at Danny’s head and keenly squeezed the trigger.

Boom!

Joshua, reliving the incident, points his finger in his living room.

The hollow-pointed lead crunched into Danny’s forehead just above the right eye, but he didn’t fall, he merely stumbled backward across the room, wobbling around, similar to a drunken ape, and clawing at the air for balance. Joshua, keeping in step, watched intently, savoring every little moment, while making a parody of his movements. He studied the warm blood that pumped down his face, his eyes that stared into some other dimension, his shoulders that began to twitch uncontrollably, and his body that jerked as he fought to utter something.

“I…I…I…Marcy…I…I…love…love you…Marcy…Marcy! Marcy?” Then, like being unplugged, he instantaneously became static and plummeted to the carpet—his arm breaking from the fall.

Later Joshua cried like a little girl to the police over his grave error. “I didn’t know it was loaded! I wish it was me instead of him!”

“Ha-ha!” He pours another large glass to toast the hitchhiker couple in Idaho.

The two were cold and stranded on a dim winter highway, thumbs in the air, begging. He picked them up, befriending them and waiting until they were cuddled together in the back seat, not paying any attention to the road. Then he pulled off onto a dirt trail and drove far into a heavily wooded area.

Joshua drinks down the rest of the glass, recalling how he’d made the tied-up man watch him do his girl. And all with the knife his father had given him for Christmas.

One more tall glass of ice is doused in vintage scotch. And another salutation to the sixteen-year-old runaway he and Kimberly had tortured in their garage.

“Good times,” he says to the night. “Good times.” Then he lies back on his couch, taking a big gulp straight out of the bottle, and plays the clip of his latest execution. It isn’t until this very moment that he realizes just how close he came to being killed himself. Kimberly had let Cools aim his weapon before she took her shot. This excites him even more. He relishes the closeness of death, taking more swigs off of the bottle, to the point he becomes woozy. He calls out to Ra; however, Ra doesn’t answer. He calls again, but nothing. And it isn’t long before he finds the bottom of the bottle and passes out cold—swollen with self-pride, and alone.

Soon he is dreaming.

It’s revival week at the Clemsens’ church, and as always little Frankie is sitting in the front row, accompanied by a few girls near his age. The guest pastor, Tim Ryan, takes the stage and introduces his pretty wife, Betty Ryan.

She looks the same yet somehow different. She now has elegance, grace, purity, and a genuine smile that seems foreign to her. But it’s her; it’s the woman from my visions! little Frankie yells inside his head.

The lady catches his gaze, and her body begins to visibly tremble just before she shrieks, “Frankie!”

And the instant his name crosses her lips he knows—Mother.

She leaps off of the stage, pulls him out of his pew, and frantically begins examining his face, running her fingers through his hair, and explaining to a confused crowd, “This is my son…I’ve been searching for him over the past five years…and, thank Jesus, I’ve found him!”

Immediately an energized congregation starts praising the Lord and singing hallelujah. Women weep tears of joy as a lightning round of conversation ensues within the Clemsen family and friends.

Next the guest pastor, Tim Ryan, guides his wife and little Frankie to the pulpit, where Betty tells her story in full. She explains to the congregation that she was a foolish mother who took things for granted, and as a result, she’d lost her only son to her sinful life. She searched everywhere, but he was gone. Days went by then weeks and months, without even a clue of what had happened to him. She blamed herself, and with nothing left to live for, she contemplated suicide. Fortunately a man saw her at the pharmacy buying six bottles of sleeping pills and a jug of wine. He followed her outside and shared with her the miracles of Christianity. And after some time, he convinced her to return the sleeping pills and bottle of alcohol and give the money to the homeless man standing outside. And he then suggested that she come to his church Sunday morning. Betty sobs as she tells everyone that was exactly what she did. She went to the service, where she found God, where she found hope. Then eventually she joined church and married the youth pastor, who’d agreed to start a traveling ministry in an effort to search for her missing son.

Again, like time traveling, Joshua’s dream skips forward. He finally sees Pastor Tim and Betty Ryan settle in the hometown, where little Frankie lives, and build a church of their own. Little Frankie, now not so little anymore, becomes himself the youth pastor in the ministry where the Clemsens are counted as members, but really as family.

Somehow Joshua comprehends this is the end of the little Frankie story. He experiences fleeting winks of contentment. But soon they vanish; they’re taken away. A truth enters the void bringing forth the knowledge that although every man has good and evil in them, sometimes one’s good only shows itself in one’s dreams.

Then without warning, he witnesses pristine depictions of Kimberly. She’s dancing under a loose, silken sheet. Her hair is long and flowing. Erotic flashes of her shape and breasts beat to the sounds of carnal tones. She’s sexual, stormy, like he’s never seen before. Her hands knead her naked flesh. She falls to the floor, crawling. Then the view draws back, and now Joshua can see everything, his darkest fears, who she is dancing for—Trace Friesen, and other men. He sees twinkles of light and more pictures of her conspiring, scheming. She’d held a secret, one that he now understands. A chill shudders through him, seeing her performance, so devious even from its very inception. How she would get him so high and trick him into believing her ideas were his. How she intended to let the media believe that he killed Cools and ran off to escape returning to prison. That she planned on keeping all the fortune, fame, and recognition for herself. Placating him from the beginning, forever faking, and never once sharing any love for him. The last of her images exemplifies her pleasure in him, now knowing as she floats away inside a mist, laughing.

Next he leaves unconscious thought, but it’s not conscious either; he’s confused. He is neither dreaming nor awake. He moves his arm, except his arm stays still, motionless. Displacement overwhelms him. His head doesn’t shift even though he turns to look. He sits up and comes out of himself. He is still lying, but now standing beside his body, staring at himself; he’s hollow. A feeling of déjà vu engulfs all thought. Time ceases. And the sensation of breathing has left him.

And this is where he was before he was—alone and cold.

Have I crossed over? Is my reward waiting? Should I be afraid?

There’s a sense of inclusive nothingness, then fear and horror. He is not alone. A black shadow moves in the dark. It has piercing yellow eyes and is mocking him in low ominous echoes of laughter. Joshua is terrified to look upon it. It begins to express itself in a distorted inhuman tone.

I am the Dragon of old!

Unto Us, your rebirth has been granted!

Now you are Mine!

Returned!

Joshua tries to flee or even scream, but is held in its influence. The black shade of darkness stands and hovers over him, expanding. Its yellow eyes grow larger as it roars out, “Your precious Kimberly poured enough morphine into that bottle of scotch to kill the largest of beasts!”

Then the apparition touches him, and all things are known to him. The terrors he will endure. The scorn and ridicule he will suffer. And the vengeance that he will be denied.

“This and much, much more will we torment you with, slowly devouring your soul, hour by hour, day and night, for years, for millennia—for all of eternity!”

“Sometimes you never know who is playing who until the damage is done.”

.

Epilogue

N
ine days later, a sensor is activated, opening large, sliding glass doors for a stunning woman. She exits the tall building, where she generously draws the fresh, midmorning air into her lungs, cleansing away her anxieties. Surrounding her are the sounds of playful sparrows, filling in the scenery of green shrubbery and colorful flowers that make up the landscaped grounds. The woman, full of new hopes and desires, surveys the people in the parking lot. Several are coming and going while others smoke cigarettes under the cover of a wooden gazebo. She smiles to the day, knowing her life is about to drastically change—part from her doing, as well as second chances granted from the heavens, sparing the repented.

Sixteen hours before, she did something she should have done long ago— that is, she prepared a guided path for her and her man. She spoke to him softly, though insistently. “You are a very lucky man, and I know you love me…And we are going to spend a great life together; you need to marry me…and build a life with me.”

He agreed wholly, devoid of any uncertainty. And in that moment, their fate was sealed. Then they spent the rest of the night planning their future completely devoted to one another’s passions. Together they’ll move far away to some cute, little sunshiny town in California, where they’ll open a small coffee shop and work it together. Two children are planned—first a boy and then a girl. The perfect family, living in the suburbs, where weekends will be spent working in the yard and attending their children’s sporting events.

Fully recharged she reenters through the glass doors, makes her way to the elevator, and pushes the button for the seventh floor. A wave of emotion washes over her. For an instant she begins to cry tears of delight.