Life Slowly Faded

by Kieran Double

  He leaped off of me immediately, falling against the wall. Bullets might not affect him like a human being, but they still hurt like hell. Susie handed me the Python. I raised the gun and fired before Merkel could move. His body slumped.

  Finally, I’d done it. I’d killed the man who had murdered my wife. I didn’t feel good. For some reason, I’d never expected it to, but I did feel relieved and that was all I wanted. Relief. I had done my job. Merkel was gone from this world forever. More important was the fact that I had successfully protected a child from a person who would have harmed them. I had actually saved them.

  “Susie, we did it!”

  `“We did it, Marty!” she exclaimed, embracing me. Susie had her father’s hair and his eye color. And yet… she was radically different. Appearances could be deceptive. With the Verstecktvolk, this was especially true.

  “Marty… Susie…” called Ashley. She walked into the room, looked at Merkel’s body, then looked at us. “You’re alive. Thank god!” She embraced us both indiscriminately.

  “Thank Susie more like,” I muttered. “She saved my life.”

  Susie just shrugged. “I’m a Wolffrau. A lot tougher than any eleven-year-old you know, Marty.”

  Teddy, John, Muller, and the Loner appeared in the doorway. They were all beat up pretty bad, but nothing looked serious at first glance. “Did you get the others?”

  “With difficulty,” said the Loner gruffly.

  “With difficulty, indeed,” agreed Teddy. “They nearly had us a few times. If I didn’t know better, I would have said it was the luck of the devil.”

  “You two made a good team,” commented John, putting his gun away. “A good day.”

  Teddy smiled his Uncle Teddy smile. “A good day? We killed ten monsters, saved a little girl, and got my nephew the revenge he deserved. I’d say that was a great day in the office, son! You’ll never get that in Bergman international. Not any day.”

  “Calm down, will you? We haven’t won yet, Ted” cautioned the Loner. “There’s something big coming. The Nobles are near to declaring war.”

  “We never really win. There is always another case. Always,” I said grimly. “You can’t win, not as a homicide detective, and not as a Huntsman.”

  “Marlowe, why do you always have to be so pessimistic?” said Muller.

  I shrugged. “Just who I am.”

  Ashley laughed. “No, it’s just he’s been watching movies too much. He practically just quoted the end of The Magnificent Seven.”

  “Minus the ‘villagers won’ bit,” interjected Susie.

  “Yes, well… We don’t have any villagers do we?”

  “We do. Or at least you Huntsmen do. You’ve saved all the people they could have hurt, they’ve won. The people we saved from my father won the day.”

  Muller and Teddy produced seven cokes. They handed them out. Teddy cracked his open. “I can drink to that, Wolffrau.”

  Afterword

  Well, there you have it. I’ve finished what I set out to do. At the start, I thought it was going to be a short article, but it turned out to be a book. I’ve told my story with the written word. Of course, my story never really ends, as no story ever really ends. They just continue between the lines. Anyway, I just wanted to write a little bit at the end, explain a few things, dot a few i’s and cross a few t’s.

  I ended up legally adopting Susie, after a few arguments with Ashley. My drinking habits have gotten slightly better. At any rate, I now have someone to knock me out of my hangovers. I’ve gotten used to life with Susie around. She makes it easier to live without Annie in my life. Even if she wasn’t in my life, I’m beginning to heal, safe in the knowledge that, ghost though she might be, Annie will always be at my side, forever.

  Walker managed to sort himself out, after a few counseling sessions with a marriage counselor. Not to mention a few talks with me. He came out of the whole thing as good as he had been going in. Schalukopf and his family got used to Susie and Amber even agreed to babysit her when I was out on cases. My PI business has become more lucrative – with a small bit of help from the Assistant City Attorney and a certain Homicide Unit Captain – and I’m not broke anymore. Susie reliably informs me over my shoulder, the last part is mainly due to my expenses on bourbon going down dramatically. Oh, well…

  ‘The life slowly drained’, that’s how I described the death of my wife, but my life was draining away too, disappearing into the abyss of addiction, and after what happened to Annie, I didn’t think there was any helping it. That it was inevitable. That hoping that Annie could survive her injuries was pointless. I began not to live, but to survive only, thinking of nothing but my grief. Now, that has changed. As once the life drained from me, it has been rejuvenated, reborn.

  I am not a great man, perhaps not even a good one. I am not a leader, a politician, a philosopher, or one for big ideas and moralism; I am only a man, a human. I do not know the inner workings of the mind, or of the body – I do not even know what is right and what is wrong. No man can know all this. But I do know one thing and I will never forget it, now that I have learned. Once there is any, anything at all, left inside the shell that is a human being, once there is a shred of goodness and harmless joy left, life can always come back. If life can always come back, there is always hope. Not until everything is done and exhausted to the extreme can you really give up.

  We do not live to survive, we survive to live. To do anything else is to waste away. Live. I make it seem so simple, don’t I? What is living opposed to surviving? It’s laughing a friend’s joke, watching TV, reading a book – whether it be science-fiction, fantasy, romance or non-fiction. It is doing whatever makes you happy, that gives you self-worth or enjoyment, whatever strips away the grime of worries that have built up. It is loving those that you will. It is not surrendering to the biology of your body, but surrendering to the ideas of your mind, to the joy and the happiness within all of us.

  Grief has matured me. Though once, it helped slowly drain life from me, it rejuvenated me in the end. I know that my wife is gone, that she can never come back, but I do not despair. I still have oxygen in my lungs and a life to live. And I will live it, no matter what. I will live my life, full and happy, for the rest of my days. Annie would have wanted that for me. I know she would have. I will live with what I have left, which is still more than I lost.

  So that’s it. Goodbye. See you next time, if there is one, which there might be, all things going to plan. For now, goodbye.

  Marty Phillips, PI and Novice Huntsman.

  The Taste of Blood

  (Marty Phillips Novella 2. Click here to pre-order.)

  Even a Huntsmen cannot see all.

  A strange Hunter rolls into town. Vampires are on the prowl.

  Six weeks have passed since Marty Phillips, Huntsman, was introduced to the family business. He understands their world now. He’s not drinking as much. He has a daughter. But there are still things that he does not know or understand. Seattle is just one corner in a big world.

  Others investigate the shadows. Hunters do not have rules or answer to taxpayers, living by their wits and running from the law. Nicolae Brasovneau is from a proud line of hunters. His sister is missing. He comes to Seattle hoping to find answers. Is she buried in her work or is something more sinister going on?

  Huntsmen and Hunters must team up to investigate a vampire gang that leads to a conspiracy far bigger than anyone could have imagined.

  About the Author

  Kieran Double is a native of County Cork, Ireland. He writes fantasy, horror and crime fiction, as well as poetry and reviews. His hobbies include collecting vinyl albums, playing the cello, playing the piano and sprouting useless obscure facts. He studies History and Politics at University College Cork. He can be contacted on Facebook or Goodreads. To subscribe to his newsletter, go to kierandoublewriter.weebly.com/.

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