Happy Child

The car bucked as it ripped past the seams of a forgotten strip of interstate, sailing down Highway 95 in the early A.M. Each seam, with its "kachuka" sound felt as if the stale Georgia heat and wet earth couldn't stand it any longer.  The car sailed, rather than hurtled, just the way that only a white 1976 Chevy Impala could. The bench seat, cherry red vinyl, held two passengers in this early morning drive.

His passenger was a bound woman, silent and still. The dashboard rolled cajoling songs from crackling speakers that inspired the driver to sing. Her body bounced with the car and she started to roll face first against the driver. He righted her with his elbow, making sure the plastic black bag which was tightly bound around and her neck, hadn't worked itself free.

You wouldn't be tryin' to escape salvation, would ya?" he asked with a smile broad enough to show his broken and discolored teeth.

He had found her differently than all the others he had saved and rescued; each with their own sins and solitude. He found the others in the same age range, the 20 to 27 year old females. Just like the bleach-blonde sorority girl who was just a few weeks pregnant from being raped at a party. She never reported it to the police and blamed herself. Instead she chose to go to a clinic outside of the city limits for an abortion. He wouldn't allow the child to never know its father. The brunette with thick black glasses, who lived alone, dyed her hair, painted her face in Atlanta. She was working for a talent agency. She wanted to became a man and change her body forever. He would never allow her to throw God's gift back into his face. His latest was not like the others. She wasn't like the vagabonds walking on the side of the highway, pretending to need a ride and be down on their luck, actually selling themselves at every chance at rest stops and gas stations of the deep South.

He said he was saving them all from fates worse than his own, saving their very souls. "Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." He whispered to her.

He found them, every one, to save them from the false prophets of this world. "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock." He was her true prophet.

This time the one he chose was older, far older in fact, than most of his souls. He was driving along Violin Road, a dirty prospect of crumbling highway near neatly trimmed suburbs, where the kudzu grows more than 3 feet a day. Violin Road had been forgotten by the newer city, spread out far to the west with its hedgerows and meticulously lined subdivisions. Violin Road was a far cry from civility with its vine-choked green coating. The blanket of vines finally spilled into the streets onto its all night liquor stores, calling its desperation of escape. This is where you put someone you want to forget. She had been forgotten in a slump-roofed nursing home called Elysium Nursing Facilities.

He had the windows rolled down and the air that rushed in was sweet and lovely, perfumed by wildflowers and honeysuckle that grew along the roadside. Suddenly on the lonely stretch of road he hit an embankment of cold air. Its' cool perfume rushed in and filled his lungs completely. That's when he smelled her. His soul felt instantly attached and could feel her. It was though a thick red chord was stretched out from him and its indomitable fingers deeply entrenched through her chest, winding around her heart. Through the night he sought her, through the trash of both human and inhuman alike that strewn the roads, grass, and clamoring vines. He smelled her and knew her death. He knew her death before she even knew she was sick and her soul felt detached.

He felt life throbbing beyond the copse of pines, junipers, honeysuckle, and maple that lined the wide expanse of ditch. His mind could see her there, sitting and looking onto the road. She was there beyond the debris of the highways, the one-shoes thrown out of car windows, and plastic dumping grounds of travelers, he knew she was there. He smelled her scent of familiarity down the overgrown gravel road of Christchurch, into the decaying sagging wrap-around porch, into Elysium.

He knew she was the next one and he could instantly feel her. He didn't need any directions or room numbers as he could feel her direction and every inch of himself attuned to finding her. Her soul was calling to her, calling for death, release, or infinity, whichever it was, he could feel it call. He found his way in, the access code posted boldly outside the back entry for the smoking orderlies and junkie nurses looking for their next fix. The moon glittered on needles in the grass and spilled across the pathway as he strode down the crumbling concrete to the door.

Elysium Nursing Facilities would never miss patient S. Augustine of RM 327, at least not at midnight, and not right away. They wouldn't miss her, plastic bags, needles, and uncooked Lima beans. Her lack of presence would go unnoticed just as it already has for so many untold years here at this nursing home. No one would miss her, especially with both orderlies in one broom closet, grunting their own animal passions and him locking the bolt behind them.

The door to her kempt room stood open into the hallway. He came in unafraid of what could have happened to him. He was unafraid of the ex-cons, the only job they could get right out of prison, wearing scrubs and shuffling through patients' personal belongings, looking for pay dirt. She slept in her wheel chair facing the window. He quietly slid the needle of linamarin into her skin before she could wake or scream, and caught her as he slipped the chloroform over her mouth and nose. She smelled warm, familiar, and almost comforting to him.

As he drew the bag tightly around her face, he kept her facing the window so he wouldn't have to see her eyes. He never wants to see the eyes. ``Darlin' if I see your eyes your soul would be attached to me, doomed to stay here on Earth forever. You wanna go to heavn' don'tcha?'' He carefully bound her feet and legs. He bound her not of making sure she would escape but rather making a human package out of her. He hoisted her to his shoulder. He carried her to the car in the way he came in, not making a single sound except the shuffle of his dirty sneakers.

He had slept well that night, most unusual for the nights that he takes his lady friends home and delivers them to creation. He had tucked her gently into his mother's bed, black bag still on her face, drawn tight around her neck.

``You won't die because death is not real.'' He whispered to her that night. He placed dried mums and daisies, between the sheets, and next to her head on the pillows. He meticulously placed petals, mums, daisies, and roses he managed to cut from the wild bushes that grew near abandoned trailers. The flowers were all dead and dried. Rose petals he delicately into the bag and slid them over her eyes.

He slept on the floor soundly. He slept like death, and awoke sharply at 4:45 am, just like all the other times. He helped his older lady friend to the car, whispering that they were all really just ``happy children'' and reminding her that he was her savior, and that Salvation would deliver her to the Thanatos Swamp.

``Isn't this what Saviors do?'' There would be no answer. He again hoisted her up, and staggered out the screen door, letting it bang shut behind him. The gravel path crunched beneath his feet as he walked toward Salvation. Salvation's door eagerly stood open, as if its arms were waiting to take her. He reverently sat her in the passenger seat of Salvation, closing the door behind her. He got into the driver's side and started down the stretch of road to the bayou, swamp territory. The only company came from Salvation and its metallic-sounding speakers.

``Now don't get cross with me.'' He said with a drawl to his long dead companion. ``You had plenty of rest last night. Besides, we're all happy children. I imagine my hands are clean; I only brought you closer to God. Isn't this what a Savior does?'' He wiped his grimy dirt-stained hands nervously on his filthy khakis and flannel shirt. "I have the power, not those scribes in their towers of white, the churches, and the synagogues of hypocrites."

"The hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men." His voice stabbed like a knife, the sharp staccato ringing back at him.

The early Savannah heat started to penetrate the cabin, even before the sun rose. He cranked up his windows and started the air conditioner.

``Don't want you goin' bad before we get to the Thanatos.'' He ribbed her in jest. "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. I am beyond the sight of the law because I am the hand of God. I am God, his greater good, my greater good, and his terrible love."

"In Thanatos... There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest."

His mind pulled back as ``Free Falling'' played on Salvation's reconditioned mono-speakers. He chuckled for a moment, the song taking his mind back to when he was 17. His father was a harsh Catholic man who was prone to bouts of teaching his son ``religion'' with the nearest object handy while reeking of cheap liquor, had died that year. He died tragically and mysteriously from a massive heart attack.

His female companion, had suffered the same mysterious affliction his father had, as had all of them. Every victim stretching back as far as he could remember them had suffered a heart attack. It was liamnese. The skin of the Lima bean when in its uncooked state and carefully peeled from the bean, can be a massive and toxic poison when mixed with a carrier such as alcohol or palm oil. Nearly undetectable, everyone has eaten a lima bean in their lifetime, even forced as a child. Massive coronary infarction, they called it, in the shadows of a coroner's office and the news. He called it saving their souls. Salvation delivers the soul.

This affliction he could deliver in a liquid after sedating with a dose of old fashioned chloroform on a cotton pad or rag.

He long ago thought that he was a savior, during the fists, the names, and broken bottles of temptation and trials that his father administered. He suffered with his father's good ``Christian faith'' that he would eagerly pass down to his son with belts, glass, and blood. He long ago thought himself Jesus, a new kind of martyr, suffering the tortures of Catholic School at the Conception of Our Immaculate Lady. Long ago he thought himself long distant from the rest of humanity and breached far into the divinity. He had imagined that he descended from Jesus in both the spirit and blood. Not quite a reincarnation, but thought himself as a new amalgamation of savior-type devotion. Long ago he far surpassed grandeur, and broke into the mind of a God. His mind had reached a new savior to his people and himself.

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."

Childhood bruises, cuts, and wounds can leave more than just scar tissue behind, more than flesh could ever heal over time. Home is where they abused you in ways that left scars and some that didn't.

He loved the sisters of the church, but many would turn blind eyes to the teasing, fists, bruises, sores, taunts, and abuses of children. Condescendingly they would tell him, "That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also."

Not just as children, they grew in their hatred of him. The stronger and angrier teenagers, they would fling fists and rocks. Sister Mary Valentine once at least aided his rescue, and all he had paid for it was a swipe against the back of his neck. Well worth evading a broken nose or busted lip. Nothing in comparison to what his father delivered in piety later that day, but worth the humiliation.

An awkward childhood eventually led to an even more awkward teenager. College preparation academies for the other children in Catholic school, but for him it was public school for the rest of his schooling years. Girlfriends were nonexistent, and he was even more of an outsider as everyone had known each other since childhood and possibly daycare. No parties, no dances, just the solitude and silence broken by the occasional fistfights both at school and at home.

What of his mother? She was barely a presence, a ghost of woman, wispy hair that grayed before its time, papery thin skin covered by cheap shawls from a man too proud to leave his job and too cheap to treat his ``loved'' ones. In overpowering and tainting shadow of his father, she disappeared completely in the way barely spoke at all, her condescending phrases of the lies she told herself to make marriage tolerable. She faded from view and his life almost as instantly as his father was dead.

If she had only once stood up for him, let him know that someone was at least there to protect him in some way. His Valentine did, if even just for once. And no one was to save her, either.

Salvation had chosen him. A gift this Salvation of his, from his uncle Robert. Robert unwittingly came into riches, someone else's, and bought himself a foreign car that cost some unknown fortune. Not that Uncle Robert felt the dent in his wallet or the wallet of the widow that died and left him his fortune and with it her mansion. Robert had always been a little strange, the slick greasy feeling of his eyes on him even as a child when he would invite him swimming over at the widower's pool. Not exactly a widower then when his uncle married her that summer when Robert had turned 35 years of age. She had died suddenly and tragically, and Robert was a millionaire by the time he was 40.

He kept Salvation clean, washed her every other day, had her detailed and waxed. Salvation was a sharp contrast to his dirty home, clothes, and even filthier hands. He had a tune up every time he had an oil change and an oil change ever 1500 miles. If passion were a religion, his religion was Salvation. Money was hard to come by as he didn't live in the city and did odd jobs to get by. He spent nearly all of his time and his money on Salvation, his one true passion, except for his souls. Salvation was really for his souls.

``Bad men will never touch you again,'' He said, the sound bouncing back at him. Whether he said it to himself or his companion, it didn't matter. Bad men will never touch them again. He will never be forced into anything again. He's now older, stronger, and had no one looming over him as he slept in a strange bed in someone else's house, the widow's house. She will only be touched by him, her savior, before he delivers her soul. "Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men." His voice echoed off of the windshield.

He's not a bad man.

He pulled back from the reverie of memories as he slid a Suzie-Q out of the plastic sack lying next to her feet. His greasy hands slid it from the paper, to his mouth, gnawing at it with his brown and blackened teeth, washing it down with a coke. He cautiously placed the gooey wrapper to the plastic bag, making sure that each and every crumb was bagged or devoured.

He pulled the car off to a stop in a clearing, careening slightly off the gravel road that led to the launch. He chose the east side of the swamp.

He knew the swamp. Knew this area better than any other thing in his life, better than any human, he was a child of the swamp and was a swamp rat in his spare time. He knew its turns, its sinks and its moods. He knew the swamp would take her body down, as it takes anyone and everything down in its eager murky-green arms of weeds, water, and bones. Thanatos would take her down in its even tempered and equal judgment of all mankind. So much more than people, the swamp's nature of equality seemed divine to his judgment. This Judgment and persecution would be delivered quickly and evenly, leaving no areas of grey between the starkness of sin and salvation, clean and dirty, or good and evil.

He deftly slid her cold and hardened body from the bench seat; he struggled to carry her over his shoulder. As swung her, a shower of petals rained down from her clothes and blew outward from the hard shove of his foot to close the car door. The petals continued to work themselves free, falling underfoot and carpeting their way as he walked.

``I want you to see the sun rise... and first your soul would be taken.'' He lurched and staggered unsteadily through the thick underbrush, burr brushes caught at his jeans and swiped at his arms. Burrs caught and tore at her delicate shawl. ``Trials and tribulations cannot stop me from delivering your soul.'' He riled breathlessly, struggled with heavy load of companion. The burrs and thorns reached out at them like harsh fingers, wanting to stop them. They brushed and tore at her paper-thin skin.

"Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift."

He reached a low embankment, nearest the water on the edge of a stable part of marshy land. The heat commanded the sweat down his forehead and into his eyes. The pain chided him for his labor of love. He swung her gently down and laid her carefully on the ground. Wiping the stinging sweat from his eyes, he first realized the bag was missing from her face.

To his horror, the bag fell from her face. He frantically searched all around him for the bag. He tried desperately to find it and replace it, as to not see her eyes and for the soul to be trapped here with him. He couldn't help himself, feeling drawn to her face. Whatever forces that were at work inside him, demanded that he turn his face and look into her eyes. He noticed her face, and the face of Sister Mary Valentine.

Her dead eyes gazed upwards, caught in a death stare that begged for Mercy. Begging for release and mercy from him? Death? God? Her Savior? "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

Was he really her Savior? Something sick inside him finally broke, it twisted with a dull wet snap against the thoughts of his self-righteous rationality. A flood of mixed emotions rushed into him, crashing on the rocks of his consciousness and threatening to overtake him completely. Flooding through him was all of his emotions, memories, and pain. He wanted to hug her, to throw his arms around her and shield her from what he had done. He wanted to beg for her forgiveness, cancel all the wrong in the world and make everything anew for her. Why didn't he know it was her, why didn't he feel different?

He felt his knees give way, prostrated himself from his misery, the cool grass against his cheek. His tears rolled down uncontrollably as he thought of the damnation that awaited him for killing a sister, his Valentine.

He felt the pain well inside of him, starting in the pit of his stomach, working through his hands as he trembled, his vision blurring over.

His pain became a physical manifestation of his realization. He wasn't a god nor was he ever a savior of the lost, forgotten, or damned. He was a man taking these innocent but confused women and killing them. He had been dumping bodies into the swamp for nearly ten years and all the sins of killing these innocent people could never be erased, just as their bodies could never be found in the murky depths of the Thanatos.

Blossoms of red swelled and widened outward from torn flesh, swelling from a shiny red sea of teeth, a sea that tossed him, made him scream from searing rips of white hot pain. "Curse God, and die!" His screams broke the silence of the hot day and hung in the air. Then there was quiet as the swamp swallowed him whole, this nature, a power greater than any god.

Damnation, creation, and Thanatos.