A Guardian of Innocents

by Jeff Orton

  Hey, babe, just wanted to let you know I tortured and killed a guy and now I just can’t stop thinking aboutcha!

  Or how about...

  Hey, babe, have you ever seen what exposed testicles look like? Holy shit, they’re nasty lookin’!

  I decided I should wait until sometime tomorrow. I’d have a clearer head and probably wouldn’t come off sounding like a lunatic rambling about talking ghosts and fried genitalia.

  I sat on the edge of my bed for several minutes after I’d changed clothes, trying to shake this odd, whacked-out giddy feeling. I rested my elbows on my knees and let my head hang low. The events of the night were running their course across my mind’s eye again for about the twentieth time since I’d driven my truck out of the strip club’s parking lot.

  Whatever this bodiless spirit was, it didn’t seem to be a liar. I was able to park Galen’s Camry about two spaces over from the truck and could easily see the interior light shining, as well as the windowless driver’s door that was about two inches away from being properly closed.

  As I swung Galen’s car into the space, the light from the headlights was reflected back by the twinkling sparkles of all the broken glass lying on the pavement beneath the door.

  Cursing under my breath, I killed the engine and got out of Galen’s little sedan, leaving the windows rolled down and the key in the ignition. If I was lucky, maybe some low-life would steal it and leave behind some DNA and fingerprints. If not, oh well. I’d been careful enough not to touch my knit cap or shift it around while I’d been in the car or the studio, not that it really mattered in the studio. I shouldn’t have lost any locks of hair and I knew I didn’t leave any prints.

  I swept some pebbles of broken glass from the driver’s seat, thankful I had gloves. If I had cut myself, even on one tiny sliver, and it ended up on the pavement for the Dallas Police crime scene forensics team to find...

  I had to get rid of these clothes. I decided to throw them in one of the dumpsters at a nearby apartment complex on my way to work tomorrow morning. I thought about just washing and keeping them since there was only a little blood on the right cuff of the shirt, and a single drop on one pant leg, but I had seen a special on PBS awhile back that showed what was then new technology, a special kind of blacklight capable of illuminating bloodstains even if all the blood has been scrubbed off whatever surface was being examined. It seems that blood leaves behind a unique resin that can never be removed.

  Walking quietly through the house so as not to wake Doris, I stepped out the sliding glass back door to have a smoke. She had no idea I’d taken up the habit and I wasn’t anxious for her to find out. I could just imagine the lecturing and whining I’d have to listen to.

  I lit a cigarette and gazed upwards, admiring the stars, the few that can be seen in the Dallas night sky. There always seems to be a reddish glow to it, even in the deep pit of the early AM night.

  How do I feel now that Galen’s dead? I asked myself, Now that he’s paid the price for his cruelty?

  After a few drags from the cancer stick, I answered, “I don’t know.”

  I should have felt satisfied, I suppose. There were brief moments of satisfaction when I stomped on his manhood and plugged in the power cord, but I felt none now. Now I only felt weariness. I was physically, emotionally and mentally drained and in dire need of some sleep before I reported for work at 9:30 at CompuSave.

  As I put out the cigarette and threw the butt behind the shed in the back lawn, I realized it didn’t matter if I was tired. I would never derive any satisfaction from what I’d accomplished tonight.

  But that’s okay.

  Everything I’d done I did for Kimber and Isaac. Because of what I’d done, they would never have to live in fear of him again.

  Galen was gone... And I knew that was all the satisfaction I needed. This wasn’t about me. It had never been about me at all.

  * * *

  Desiree’s expression was hard and flat. She appeared not only in deep thought, but buried in it. The cigarette resting between her fingers was slowly burning away; the ash at the end had grown long enough where it threatened to break off and land in the plush carpet of her apartment.

  She was mentally digesting everything I’d confessed to her. I had called her Saturday evening and, to my surprise, she had invited me over for dinner Sunday night. I’d left out the more obscene details and filtered my thoughts as best I could so that maybe I wouldn’t appear so Jeffrey Dahmer-ish. Despite my efforts, I was convinced she’d seen through me and had gotten the basic gist of every noteworthy event of that night.

  “What scares me the most,” she finally spoke, “is that I know you’re telling me the truth...”

  Desiree’s eyes happened upon the downward curve of the cigarette ash and she flicked it into the ashtray on her coffee table with a well-practiced snap of her wrist, “When you were describing everything, I looked into you to make sure you weren’t bullshitting me. You were definitely holding back some stuff you didn’t want me to know, but everything you did tell me was all non-fiction...”

  She paused for several seconds then, I was about to say something (I can’t remember what) when she continued, “There’s something else bothering me too. I saw his face in your mind—he looks familiar.”

  “The ghost guy? You’ve seen him?”

  Desiree was searching through her memories, but with no success. She felt as if she was running through a warehouse full of filing cabinets trying to find the right file.

  “I don’t think I’ve met him in person. Maybe I just saw his picture in the paper or on TV or something.”

  “Well, I sure as hell don’t recognize him from anywhere,” I replied, “So what do you think he is?”

  She sighed, “I guess it’s possible he’s a ghost. Who knows? Maybe he’s a demon or the devil himself. From the way you described the encounter, I seriously doubt if he’s your guardian angel.”

  I chuckled a little. My mind conjured up an image of the man in black sprouting white feathered wings as a gold halo materialized around his head.

  “I doubt that too. The only thing I know for sure is there must be something he wants from me.”

  I felt her tense up. “Listen to me, Jeshua. If you ever see him again, you need to be careful what you say to him. I know you’re an atheist, but—“

  “Desiree, I’m not going to sell my soul to the devil. Besides, after the events of Friday night, I probably have to reclassify myself as an agnostic now. Now that I’ve seen at least some evidence of a spirit world.”

  “Alright,” she replied, a note of caution in her voice, “But let me ask you this. Have you ever heard of a ghost that sits up from a chair and the chair squeaks? Of all the stories I’ve heard, people always feel a cold draft whenever there’s a ghost trolling around, and you felt warm breath on the back of your neck. And I’ve never heard of a person’s hand going numb because they touched a ghost.”

  “Like I said, I have no fuckin’ clue what the hell he or it is,” I said. I wanted to surrender every argument I had. The more I talked out loud about it, the more real it became.

  An idea popped into Desiree’s head, “Since he’s only appeared just before or just after you’ve killed someone, maybe that means he wants you to kill somebody for him?”

  “Some kind of vengeance from the grave thing? Eh, I guess that’s possible, but—“

  I realized then that Desiree had let something slip. I’d never told her about Jack. As far as she should know, Galen was my first murder. An unstoppable wave of horrified embarrassment swept over me. If she knew about Jack, then surely she must know what he’d done to me throughout my childhood.

  Desiree closed her eyes and winced, “I’m sorry. That’s not something I pried loose deliberately, it’s just—something that kinda just washed up on the shore. On its own.”

  She inhaled a final drag off her cigarette and crushed it out.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said, “It’s just not some
thing I like other people knowing.”

  “Sorry,” she apologized again.

  I shook my head and surprised myself by laughing, “Okay! Time for a subject change!”

  I could feel relief wash over Desiree, but when I hit her with the next question, her tension returned, “So why did you have to come back from Los Angeles?”

  Her mouth opened a little in disbelief, but her vocal cords remained still. I never told you anything about that, she thought. I wasn’t sure if she was just thinking that or if it was a legitimate stab at telepathy.

  I couldn’t help but give her a coy smile, “Those two self-absorbed friends of yours got you so mad, you didn’t even know I was reading you, plus you mentioned L.A. when you blew up at me that one time.”

  The look on her face exposed only the mildest of agitation. Desiree understood she had snuck into my head enough times, making it only fair that I should circumvent her own defenses at least once.

  She sighed, conceding only to relay the nutshell version of this particular time in her life, “Alright. I met a guy. We got married. He was very attractive, very charming. He desperately wanted to become a Hollywood actor and wanted to move to L.A. My friends, my family, everyone I knew was out here and I didn’t want to go, but I wanted to make him happy.

  “We get there and we both get jobs. He got into an acting class and went on auditions. I spent a considerable sum of my own money paying for some professional black-and-white headshots he had to have to go with his resume. I went to school part-time trying to eventually get a computer science degree.

  “And for about a year and a half everything was fine. Then one day he comes home just reeking of guilt and shame. My mind just gets bombarded with images of what he did. He was mentally broadcasting his infidelity to me, just shouting it from the damn rooftops.”

  Desiree’s voice cracked. Here eyes reddened and moistened as her body began to quake. “He’d fucked some girl from his acting class. He didn’t even leave the school grounds. He just drove to a part of the parking lot where there were no other cars around and he fucked her right there in his car.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, very much regretting I’d ever asked the L.A. question.

  “Not your fault,” she said evenly.

  * * *

  Desiree and I had many discussions for the next two years like that one. Not all were as dramatic, but in general, we usually conversed about the heavier subjects of life like love, the existence of God, politics, philosophy, the meaning of life, etcetera. I can’t remember us ever talking about anything trivial for more than a two or three minute burst. A Dez and Jess Discussion Topic always seemed to be something fit for a college classroom, at least when we were by ourselves. I thought this strange at first, but then discovered it really made perfect sense: why would two adult fully-functional telepaths talk about bullshit? There was no sense in hiding your opinions or what you felt when the other could so easily tell when you were lying or failing to be completely forthcoming.

  Those two years were wonderful for me. I did some more plays, went to class, tried like hell to keep my grades at a B or better and saw Dez whenever I could. By the spring semester of ’96, I had directed a one-act play and casually dated four different girls. I guess four girls in two years would be about average (or worse) for most guys, but this is me we’re talking about here. I felt I’d achieved a major accomplishment when I realized Jack hadn’t destroyed my sexuality.

  I still lived in fear that I might become a suspect in Galen’s murder, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as that paranoid anxiety I’d felt for almost a year after Jack’s demise.

  About a month or so after I’d slaughtered Galen, I was up late studying for finals when the phone rang. I knew who it was, who it had to be, and snatched up the phone’s receiver before the first ring was even complete.

  My ear was offended by a blast of country-western music. Behind it was all the background noise of some honky-tonk bar. When I heard this, my certainty that the caller was Kimber began to dwindle, but then I heard her voice: “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me,” I confirmed for her.

  “You know who this is?” she asked.

  “Of course I do. . . So what’s going on?”

  Kimber was silent for several long seconds, “I just wanted to say thank you.”

  She was trying not to choke up.

  “Well... You’re welcome,” I replied, “So, has anything been going on with you or Pete recently that I should know about?”

  Picking up on my lead, she answered, “All the police told us was that it looked professional, like it was the work of some mafia hitman. No fingerprints, no DNA evidence, nothing.”

  I felt such a tremendous flood of relief (mixed with a little pride) when I heard that.

  Kimber continued, “Pete took me out dancing tonight to try to take my mind off everything. He’s in the bathroom now, so I have to get off the phone pretty quick. I didn’t feel comfortable calling you from home, because they did investigate us some. But I think when they saw that Pete and I just barely make enough to support us, Isaac and the horses, well, they knew there was no way in hell we could have shelled out the ten or twenty grand it would have taken to pay some pro, you know? Plus they think that studio owner knows more than what he’s telling. He might be a suspect. I don’t know.”

  “You have no idea how glad I am to hear that,” I said.

  “Shit, here he comes. Gotta go. Bye.”

  I heard the clunk as she hung up the payphone in a hurry. I sat there a moment at my desk, staring off into space. I knew my studying was ruined for the rest of the night. I was grateful, so damn grateful, for the news I was just given, that just the intense relief alone would distract me for the rest of the night.

  * * *

  After five semesters at a junior college, I had maxed out the number of transferable credits I could apply towards a degree at a four-year university. I wanted to keep going to school (even though I had no fuckin’ clue what the hell I wanted to do with my life) and decided it was time to head out of North Lake and into the University of Texas at Arlington.

  The main reasons I selected that school were that it was within driving distance, just twenty minutes from Doris’ house, and that I knew it was a relatively easy school to get into.

  I still hung out with Bo regularly and Lloyd would grace us with his presence every once in awhile. Eli had told Bo about the shit his uncle had found in the recording studio and about the whole fiasco with the police. Bo thought it was hilarious. He laughed especially hard when he heard where the extension cord had been placed.

  “Sounds like he pissed off the wrong man!” Bo proclaimed, “Someone important. Man, I’ve heard about Columbian neckties and concrete boots, but I’ve never heard about the mob zapping your nuts off! I’m just glad we got our demo done before it happened. Police’ll probably be combing that place for evidence for weeks.”

  My first semester at UTA I had so many theatre credits, I was able to skip the acting classes altogether and jump into a directing class. I did another one-act play and the next semester I would get to direct a full-length major production, something that I was surprised to find myself really itching to do.

  I was getting such an incredible satisfaction out of life that, of course, something would have to happen that would send me into a whirling downward spiral of depression.

  Maybe that’s a cynical, pessimistic view, but that’s how my life has always gone. One damn blow after another. The summer of ’97 wasn’t the first hard time I went through and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the last.

  * * *

  Desiree actually expected me to be happy for her when she called and told me she was moving to New York. She’d been taking classes as well these past two years and had finally snagged that MBA she’d always wanted, and had spent the past six months searching diligently for that one perfect new job to test it out on.

  Unfortunately for me, it turned out to be in Lowe
r Manhattan.

  I was grateful that I had at least been told over the phone and not in person. I wouldn’t have stood a chance of hiding the sudden powersurge of emotion that fried all my mental circuitry.

  That one phone call shipped in a whole busload of feelings I wasn’t prepared to deal with. My day had been wonderfully calm before she called me, like a scenic view of the ocean at sunset. Then about two dozen submarines emerge, crashing into the open air after being buried in undersea trenches for so long, and they all just start blasting the shit out of each other. All the while, you’re standing on the shore, jumping around, waving your arms, trying to distract another human being from seeing the war being fought only a short distance away.

  That was what my end of the conversation felt like.

  I’d already known, at least on a semiconscious level, I had feelings for Desiree, but had no idea as to what extent until she’d made that phone call. I thought my crush would dissolve in much the same way my actual relationships with other girls had fizzled: I’d either get bored and lose interest, or she would get tired of my constant refusal to open up and show some personality and then stop returning my phone calls.

  The Catch-22 was that I was never once, not even for a second, bored when I was around Dez. And I did open up. I told her things that I never could have told anyone else, things I still haven’t confessed to anyone else.

  I reluctantly agreed to meet her and some of her friends in two weeks for a farewell get-together at a local bar while I did my best to try to sound as though I wasn’t reluctant. Some of what I felt must have leaked through the phone lines. I’m sure she picked up some of it from the one of two word answers I would give for every question she asked me. But I also think she sensed it, even from about twenty miles away.

  When I was finally able to get her off the phone, I rolled over on my bed and cried. Whimpered is probably a more accurate word. I wept as silently as possible because Doris was in the house.

  At first, I didn’t understand why I was so upset. Sure, a good friend was moving away, most likely permanently unless the job turned out shitty; and yes, she is the only psychic of my caliber I’ve ever met. But those things couldn’t explain the emotional maelstrom I was tumbling around in.