The Good Kill

by Kurt Brindley

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  It was strange, she felt, bringing a person back to life: her own strength and determination being the beating of his heart; her own breath and spirit being the breathing of his lungs. After Killian started coughing and taking in his own breaths as if he had never breathed before, RJ collapsed and lay flat on her back next to him and began crying to the point near enough to hyperventilation that it became hard to tell exactly who the survivor was. She was soaked with sweat but soon became chilled from the cold dirt floor. After coming to a calm, she lay there shivering, thinking she had brought a person back to life. She had defeated death.

  She wasn’t sure what to do next, lying there on the dirt floor in the middle of a cold barn next to a man who had been determined to die, next to a man whom she had long ago once loved, back when she still had the capacity to love. With her eyes fully adjusted to the dark, down there on the ground where she lay, the light that angled in through the open door now seemed unnaturally bright.

  She noticed Killian’s breathing had found its rhythm so she leaned up on an elbow and looked at him closely. He was lying there completely naked, staring straight up, looking at what she did not know. He had shaved off his unruly beard and his long hair had been pared down drastically to an induction cut. She hardly recognized him. He sat up slowly and, without looking at her, brought his arms across his knees and then rested his head atop his arms. His broad, muscular back spread out wide before her. She sat all the way up to get a closer look at it, for it seemed to have its own story to tell, by the looks of which wasn’t a happy one. A tattoo, its lettering a deep black and engrossed in an English roundhouse script similar to that of the Declaration of Independence, stretched across the back of his shoulders and read, For God and Country. What he was willing to sacrifice for his god and his country was engrossed everywhere else on his back in the form of thick, fibrous scars, scars that shined a silvery, almost translucent, white. Most of the scars were an inch or less in length; however, there were several that were much larger, with the largest beginning in the center of his back and running zig-zag under his left shoulder blade to midway down his side. She reached out and touched it.

  Killian turned from the touch, the pain in his neck evident as he did. He looked wild, possessed. RJ felt threatened and sat all the way up, preparing herself to flee.

  But he didn’t attack; he just turned back around and again rested his head on his arms.

  “I fucked up,” he said in a dry, raspy voice.

  RJ moved close to him and put her arm around his shoulders. “Don’t think about it, Killian. You’re alive. That’s all that matters.”

  He shrugged her arm off his shoulders. “No, I mean I fucked up my own suicide,” he said emphatically. “The god damned knot must have slipped. It was supposed to break my neck when I dropped.” He stood up and walked over to the clothes piled up near the ladder. He began to dress, uncaring or unconscious of her watching him as he did.

  RJ didn’t know what to say. She spun around and turned her back to him to give him some privacy. “I think we should take you to the hospital, Killian.” She said this gently, softly, in an effort to lessen its impact for she had anticipated his answer.

  “Not an option,” he said without hesitation.

  “But, Killian, there could be damage to your—”

  “I’m sorry I put you through this, RJ, I really am,” he said, cutting her off. “But I’d really like to be alone right now.”

  RJ turned around and looked at him. “That, too, is not an option,” she said. “Look, I’m sure you feel like hell right now, Killian, and please believe me when I say that I understand the feeling, but there is no way that, if you’re not going to go to the hospital like you should, I’m going to leave you here by yourself right now. Case closed.”

  Killian, dressed now in blue jeans and a blue tee-shirt with the word NAVY written in bold, gold letters across its front, grabbed the ladder and set it under the light that hung from the rafter several feet up from where the burned butt of rope still hung. He climbed up and screwed the lightbulb back in, casting a weak yellow glow out upon the front of the barn.

  RJ looked around, seeing things she hadn’t seen since she was a teenager. All at once a warm, comfortable feeling came over her triggered by the many memories she had from all the time she had spent in the barn growing up. “It seems just like yesterday I was in here with your mother tending to her horses,” she said. She turned back to Killian who was staring at the noose lying limp on the floor. The skin all the way around his neck was worn raw from where the rope held its grip. She walked over to him and put her arm around his waist. “What do you say we head over to the house and make us a warm cup of tea.”

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  RJ filled the vintage kettle with tap water and then set it on the stove. There was a box of matches on the counter next to the stove and she lit the burner beneath the kettle. After rifling through the cupboards for a moment, she said in mock dramatics, “What, don’t you have any tea? I was hoping for a nice soothing cup of chamomile, but heck, I’d even settle for some Earl Grey right about now.”

  Without looking up, Killian said, “I never drink the stuff, so if there is any...” He left the sentence unfinished.

  RJ went to the refrigerator and opened it. Looking inside, she said, “How about lemons? We can at least make a hot lemon tea to help soothe our throats.” She looked quickly over at Killian to see if there was any reaction from her unconsciously saying, our throats. There was none. She closed the door, empty handed. “Sheesh, Kill, what have you been eating since you’ve been home?” She found a Lazy Susan under the cabinet and spun it around without any expectations.

  Killian sighed. “Look, RJ, I really appreciate what it is you’re doing... what you’ve done for me. I now realize I made a mistake.”

  RJ turned and gave him a look.

  “No, I’m not talking about a mistake as in how I hung myself,” he said quickly, “I’m talking about a mistake as in I never should have tried to hang myself in the first place. It was stupid... and weak. And now that it’s over, I’m glad you found me and did what you did to save me. I promise I will not do it again. Ever. I just... I just really need to be alone right now.” He looked at the back of her as she searched his cupboards. “You can trust me, RJ.”

  To her surprise RJ found the fixings for coffee just as the kettle began to whistle. As she made them both a cup, she said, “It’s not a matter of trust though, is it, Killian? I mean, isn’t it simply a matter of doing what’s right? After what you just went through, are you really expecting me to just walk away and leave you by yourse—”

  “Are you kidding me? Killian snapped. “Why wouldn’t I expect you to just walk away and leave me? You’ve done it so well in the past.”

  Such an unexpected reference to a love they had for each other thirty years ago, a teenage love, took RJ by complete surprise, but she wouldn’t allow it to show how struck she was by the harsh words as she calmly set a steaming mug of coffee in front of Killian and then sat down across from him with her own steaming mug.

  “Killian,” she said after allowing a moment for the sting of his words to subside, “I’m sorry for what happened between the two of us, I really am. But what went on between us decades ago in high school has nothing to do with what we’re dealing with now. Right now, we’re two adults who understand what life is, what pain is. Believe me, Killian, I know what you’re going through. I’ve been there. And I really do want to take you for your word that you have no intention of hurting yourself ever again, I really do, but I also know we can’t just ignore what just happened. It’s going to take some time to even process it let alone get beyond it. So, I’m sorry,” she concluded, “only one of two things is going to happen right now. Either I leave and I call the hospital to report your suicide attempt, or I stay and you put up with me until I am sure that what just happened won’t happen again.”

  Killian pushed the coffee away from him.
“Well it won’t,” he said in frustration. “Listen, as soon as I kicked that ladder out from under my feet I realized I had made a mistake.”

  RJ studied Killian as she sipped on her coffee. She had so much to say, so much she wanted to tell him, but she didn’t want her baggage to get in his way right now.

  “Why was it a mistake?” she asked from behind her mug.

  Killian looked at her.

  “I mean, I know it was a mistake,” she said quickly. “Of course, suicide is a mistake for anyone. What I mean is, what went through your mind just as...” She couldn’t finish the question.

  Killian pulled back his mug and stared down into its black, liquid emptiness. He looked exhausted, bags dark and heavy under his eyes. The rope burn around his neck looked an angry, inflamed red, an aching raw scream of a wound. “Suicide isn’t always a mistake,” he said slowly. “Sometimes it’s a necessity. Look at me, a fallen SEAL, a failed warrior, a man whose only purpose is found on the battlefield. So, like a samurai who has disgraced his Shogun, I chose the only honorable solution. Except I chose not to do it by disembowelment since I didn’t have a second to lop off my head and clean up the mess after me.” He looked at RJ and offered her a thin smile.

  RJ shuddered from the imagery.

  “When the blackness started to fold over me, a white burst of light exploded in my head. I don’t know what it was. Maybe that’s what happens to the brain when it’s desperate for oxygen. But right then I had... I hate to use the word epiphany because it was far from a spiritual sensation, but it was a revelation regardless.”

  RJ closed her eyes, trying to imagine what it must have been like hanging from the end of a rope like that.

  “Right then,” Killian continued, “I understood that as broken as I was, I still could serve a purpose. I don’t know yet what this purpose is, this epiphany or whatever it was wasn’t too specific, I just know that you showing up when you did to save me was for a reason.” He picked the cup and swirled its liquid gently. “Now I just have to figure out what that reason is.”

  RJ sighed heavily as she involuntarily looked upward. “I wish Diego were here with us. He was always so comforting to me during my hardest times, so understanding.”

  Killian took a tasteless sip of his coffee and set the mug down. He stared down into it for a moment before looking up from its black depths and locking his bloodshot eyes onto RJ’s. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Of course, Killian. Anything.”

  “Since you became so close with Diego, maybe you would know why he gave up being a priest. I’ve always wondered but never felt comfortable asking him. All I know is that a couple of years after my mother died he left for Mexico for a long time, and when he came back he quit the priesthood and opened up his retreat. We were what, thirteen, fourteen at the time?”

  It was RJ’s turn to look down into the black void of her cup, searching for a way for her to best respond. After a long silent moment she looked up and met Killian’s eyes again. “Diego took me into his confidence, Killian, I don’t know if I am comfortable speaking about it.”

  Killian nodded his head in understanding.

  “But, knowing him like I did, I’m pretty sure that if he were here right now he would do whatever he needed to do to help you get through this. So perhaps, if this is something important to you, he would want you to know, he would want me to tell you.”

  She took in a deep breath and shifted in her seat as she steadied herself for what she was about to say. “You’re right. We were thirteen at the time Diego returned to Mexico, to his hometown, a small village somewhere on the outskirts of the Chihuahuan Desert. He went there to attend the funeral of his nephew Ricardo, a boy just turned thirteen himself if I’m not mistaken. The letter Diego had received from his sister-in-law, Ricardo’s mother, didn’t explain how Ricardo had died, so it wasn’t until right before the funeral that Diego found out that... that the poor boy had taken his own life, had hung himself right in the courtyard of the church, from the beam of the large cross permanently displayed there.”

  RJ paused to give Killian time to respond if he wanted, but he just continued looking down despondently into his mug, his face expressionless. “After having been sexually molested for years by his own priest, a man Diego had gone to seminary with and whom he considered a friend, Ricardo just couldn’t take it anymore. Diego’s brother, his only sibling, had died during a mining accident when Ricardo was just a baby and Diego loved that boy as if he were his own. Much of the meager income he earned as a priest he sent to Ricardo’s mother so she could support the boy.” RJ took another deep breath. “It’s hard for me to talk about this because I know how much pain Diego was in when he told it to me.”

  “Take your time,” Killian said softly.

  Tears welled up in RJ’s eyes and her voice shook when she continued. “Killian, Diego murdered that priest. He told me he couldn’t help himself, that he had become possessed, another person. He turned himself into the sheriff right away after the murder, but charges were never pressed. It was seen by, not just the sheriff, but everyone in the village, as Diego’s right, his duty in fact, to kill the priest for molesting his nephew. Then not long after Ricardo’s suicide it started to come out that he wasn’t the priest’s only victim. Diego became a hero to the town. They begged him to stay there and be their priest, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t live with himself after what he had done and came very close to taking his own life. But, eventually, he found the strength to go on. He couldn’t stay where the murder had occurred so he returned to Gettysburg, resigned from the priesthood, and opened the retreat that over the years has helped so many victims of sexual assault.”

  Killian didn’t react at first after RJ had finished speaking. Then he began nodding slowly, as if he had suspected all along something like this had happened to Diego. “When I was hanging at the end of that rope and had that epiphany or whatever it was, I tried to save myself,” he said, his voice still raspy. “I grabbed the rope above me and tried to pull myself up to the rafter, but by then it was too late. I was too weak from the lack of oxygen.” He paused to try to clear his throat. “The only thing I was able to do was to get the noose pushed high up on my neck, under my chin, to try to allow as much air to pass as I could. Had it not been for you, RJ, I would be dead. But you saved me and now I’m alive. And I’m alive with purpose. That’s why you can trust me not to ever do anything like that again.”

  RJ brought the mug up to her lips, but then set it down without drinking. “I believe you, Killian,” she said in barely a whisper. She reached out and held his hands. They were warm from his mug. “And I want to promise you that I will always be here for you. I will never leave you again.”

  Killian looked deeply into RJ’s eyes. Within them he saw her truth, her pain and for the first time he wanted to talk about what had happened to him, to confess all his failures and faults to the woman he once loved. He told her about his final mission in Mosul to save thirteen Yazidi girls who had been kidnapped by ISIS and turned into sexual slaves to be bought and sold from terrorist to terrorist; he told her how he had failed in this mission, how twelve of the thirteen girls had their throats slit like cattle before he could save them; he told her how, as he was rescuing the only girl still alive, there was an explosion and when he finally awoke from it months later he didn’t know what had happened to the girl; he told her how he had had his commanding officer find out what happened to the girl and learned that her name was Shene, that she was twelve-years-old, that her immediate family had all been killed by ISIS and that the only family she had left was an uncle who, himself, had lost his family to the terrorists; he told her how, soon after Shene had went to live with this uncle, he had murdered her in what is considered over there to be an honor killing, how he had cut her throat wide open just like the terrorists had cut open the throats of the twelve other girls all because she had become pregnant against her will by one of her terrorist rapists; and finally he told her how somed
ay he was going to go back to Iraq to kill her uncle just as he had killed Shene, how finding justice for Shene’s death just may be the reason he had been saved from death himself.

  After he had finished explaining all this to RJ, she shook her head sadly and squeezed his hands. “You are a very good man, Mr. Lebon. A hero. You realize that, right?”

  “Me a hero?” Killian said with a look of disgust on his face. “The last thing I am is a hero. Those thirteen girls are dead because of me.”

  “It’s horrible what happened to those poor girls, Killian. I can’t even begin to imagine what they went through. But you need to understand that you did all you could. You need to let go of them and allow yourself to move on with your life. You need to heal, and you need to let me help you.”

  “How can I when all I can think about is poor Shene being murdered by her uncle. It drives me mad I want to kill him so badly. In fact, I want to kill with my own hands every sick bastard out there who does to little girls what those ISIS fucks did to those poor Yazidi girls and the thousands more like them.”

  Shivers went down RJ’s back and the hair stood on her neck from the thought that she may have saved Killian’s life only for him to rededicate it to a purpose darker than that which had drove him to end it. “You can let it go, Killian, you can get over this anger and hate by letting me help you. I made a promise to you, Killian, and I intend to keep it. I will always be here for you... forever.”

  It took some time before the rage and frustration that had built up inside Killian subsided. “Tell me, RJ,” he said when it finally had, “what happened between us back then? What did I do to you to make you stop seeing me, to cut all ties between us so completely?”

  RJ dropped her eyes from his and stared down into her lap for a long time. When she finally looked back up at him, tears were running down her cheeks. “It wasn’t you, Killian. It wasn’t you at all. It was my... my father.”