Killer Geezer

by T. Jackson King

  “Hey geezer, come along here,” growled a middle-aged Anglo man with white streaks in his goatee. His rumpled green jacket, stained brown shirt and patched brown pants made him look slightly cleaner than some homeless people. A short knife flickered in his right hand as he twirled it like a cooler fan. But the four other men who now followed him to a spot ten feet from where I stood at the end of the low bridge were anything but homeless.

  I held up my hands in a placating manner. “Hey, sorry to disturb you folks. I’ll head back the way I came.”

  “No you won’t!” yelled a Black guy with thick black beard, dense curly hair and the shoulders of a linebacker. He aimed a semi-auto pistol at me. A .45 it seemed based on what I could see.

  “Yeah, old fart!” hissed a young Hispanic guy in his early 20s. Black tattoos covered his neck and bare arms. “Get your butt over here and show us your wallet and smartphone. Maybe we’ll let you leave in one piece!” He pulled out a long knife and waved it at me.

  Another young Hispanic with shaved sidewalls and a Mohawk ridge of black hair atop his narrow head spit out a lump of brown tobacco. His t-shirt barely covered what looked like full body tattoos. Then he put his hands down to his zipper.

  “Hans, get his wallet and phone. Me, I need a butt fuck to make my day!”

  The Mohawk guy pulled out his pink-brown dick and waved it at me. Then his free hand pulled a .38 pistol from behind his back and aimed it at my chest.

  The last guy, a street punk and likely mugger who looked barely 18, wiped snot from his nose and glared at me. His dark brown eyes were filled with hatred. Since he was Anglo and not a minority, I had to wonder why he hated. Then he pulled out a snub-nosed .22 semi-auto from his pants pocket. He aimed it at my head.

  “Old bastard, you’re just like the guy who fired me from my trash dumping job. He was a smart-ass guy like you.” A nasty smile showed under the pencil mustache he wore. “Maybe we’ll let you beg for your life. Before we dump you in the creek!”

  Thinking fast I mind scanned the area. There were no security cameras anywhere close. No other people were coming along the Ramble trail, either behind me or behind the five muggers. Or killers as I saw the intensity of the black tornado aura that enveloped the three men with handguns. Similar black tornados swirled around the older man named Hans and the heavily tattooed Hispanic guy in his 20s. There was no escaping these five, unless I teleported away. A fact all five would surely spread around amongst their fellow gangbangers. I smiled.

  “Sorry, guys. No Smartphone. Just a simple cell phone.” I put my right hand into the outer pocket of my suit coat and pulled out a clip of $100 notes. I had more money elsewhere on me but this was the closest and easiest to get. I waved the clip at them. “But I’ve got maybe $2,000 here.” I dropped my smile. “I’ll wrestle you five for it.”

  “Ah, shit Hans!” groused the Black guy, his .45 still aimed at me. “Let’s just shoot the fucker and grab the bucks. Wayne can butt fuck his corpse. Then we’ll all get drunk and fuck a few putas.”

  Hans looked puzzled, then shrugged. “For a guy dressed in a fancy expensive suit and shoes, you sure are stupid. You could have dropped the clip and run back over the creek and likely we’d have let you escape. Wayne could make do with a puta. Now, though.” His goatee moved as his mouth opened wide. “Now, we just kill you. Shoot, amigos!”

  The .45, .38 and .22 all fired faster than I could melt their firing pins.

  Melting those pins to stop other shots I watched as the gray slugs of three bullets headed for me. I focused on them, visualizing them slowing in flight. Slow. Slower. Almost to a stop. With a thought I told the bullets to fly upward. Then, as the five stood frozen in time, I lifted both hands, held my thumb and forefinger apart, framed the Black guy and the Mohawk guy between my fingers, and slowly lowered my fingers. The two began to shrink down. I let go of time and leaned forward.

  A whale of a gust hit me as held back time rushed into me, then past me. The screams of Black guy and Mohawk man drew the attention of Hans, the street punk and the young tattooed guy. Their eyes went wide as they saw their two allies visibly shrinking. The small dick of Mohawk man melted away. The crackle of ribs breaking and collapsing in on themselves was loud. And unmistakable. Femurs broke next, dropping the body masses even lower.

  Street punk yelled. “You fucker! Die!” The .22 he aimed at my head failed to fire.

  Hans backed up, clearly worried by what was happening. The two I’d shrunk were now heads sitting atop an orange and red goo of blood and flesh. The tattooed guy threw his knife at me. It bounced off my barrier field.

  Time to finish things before someone with a smartphone came into view and began recording the impossible.

  I thought of street punk and tattoo guy surrounded by yellow and red flames. They became mid-air fireballs. Screams barely escaped their open mouths before their lungs combusted.

  Looking at Hans, who now had his hands up, terror on his face, I thought of what to do with him. A textbook medical image flashed through my awareness. I smiled. Then I reached out, my fingers curled outward and began pulling apart the air in front of me as I focused on the man’s chest.

  The buttons of his brown shirt flew apart. The shirt separated and fabric flew out to his arms. Then a red ridgeline appeared in the middle of his chest, running from just below his throat and down to just above his belly button. The red ridge became a gaping wound from which red blood misted up and outward. The white of his ribcage bones became visible. Then the ridge line touched the ribs.

  “Crack! Crack-crack! Crump!”

  “Noooo!” screamed Hans, his goatee moving as his mouth filled with pained screams.

  The rib-cage split open vertically. Then its edges lifted and peeled-back, one side going to his left arm, the other side curling back to his right arm. Underneath I saw the sack that surrounded his heart. Below that were belly muscles. They were a mix of white tendons and red muscle tissue.

  The heart sack split open from top to bottom.

  The belly muscles ripped apart and spread outward.

  The man’s dark blue liver, his two red kidneys, his red-white intestines, they all became visible.

  Then they parted into two sections.

  Amid his screams and the gushing of dark red blood from separated veins and the abdominal artery, the ridge line dropped down through the split-open intestines. The triangle shape of the heart, its chambers beating wildly as the man tried to push his rib-cage back over his heart, the heart now split apart.

  Gushes of red spurted out in both directions, drenching his arms and covering the top of his pants. The man’s eyes, now mostly white from shock and total fear, moved upward as blood drained from his brain. No sound came from his gaping mouth. The only sound in the woods of the Ramble was the dripping and gushing of blood as four liters of life essence filled the stone-paved walkway under the man.

  When the deepening ridge arrived at the white bone of the man’s spine, I stopped pulling apart. Instead, I aimed two fingers at the spine area underneath his heart and speared forward.

  “Crack!”

  The man’s spine broke apart.

  He collapsed into a mound of flesh, bones, a knife and futility.

  Shaking myself I pulled back from the image of a man splitting apart due to my mind’s command.

  Looking around I noticed the three handguns, their pins now melted and no danger to anyone who would come across the bodies. Which were now two puddles or orange-red good, two piles of black ash and scorched white bones and one mound of a man whose chest had split open as if a sliced by a giant blade.

  I turned away. My joy earlier at walking along paths I recalled from my family trip was gone.

  I had done my duty as a Solder for Life. Five evils were no longer present on this plane of existence. There had been no witnesses. No doubt some NYPD cops and detectives would wonder at what someone else would report. Beyond identifying the remains as belonging to known muggers, based on DNA match
ing and one set of fingerprints, they would know nothing more.

  “Jack, it is not polite to remove evil on the doorstep of another Transcendent,” came Ansgar’s thoughts in my mind.

  I gulped. Then I filled my mind with acceptance. “Sorry. It will not happen again. They surprised me.”

  “Perhaps,” came Ansgar’s gentle voice. “But keep in mind one fact. Each Transcendent controls a territory. You know the names of four other Transcendents. Be careful you do not repeat this episode anywhere within the domain of another Transcendent. Some of them are not as patient as I am. A few are even hostile.” He paused, then his thoughts came again. “I will make known to TikQui Tok, Alicia, Dominique and Alejandro that you now control the Southwest and West Coast of America as your domain. Be respectful. And if you travel to their domains, send them a mind message requesting their acceptance of your presence. Understood?”

  I nodded. Then thought quickly. “Understood. Thank you, Ansgar. I owe you.”

  He laughed softly. “You will have plenty of time in your long life to pay me whatever you believe you owe me. Take care, be discreet and enjoy your powers. Good day.”

  Ansgar’s mind presence vanished.

  Building the image of my living room in my mind, especially the image of Sancho and his terrarium, I teleported back home.

  “Woosh!”

  “Pop!” went the air as it rushed away from my appearance.

  Instantly I felt the presence of another person in my home. Stella.

  “Oh! My god, Jack! You can teleport!”

  Ah, crap.

  I returned to the living room after having changed clothes into my blue hoodie, jeans and sneakers. I’d grabbed a glass of orange juice as my gut was rumbling with the need for food. Teleporting a second time today, zapping the five killers and also maintaining my barrier field had run through the ham and cheese sandwich given me by Ansgar. Soon I would have to eat a real meal. But now, now I had to deal with Stella. Who had stayed on the green fabric couch after my sudden appearance and instant command to “Stay there!”

  Standing beside Pancho’s terrarium, I ignored his expectant look at me. Instead, I focused on the New Age woman who was dressed in a slinky purple sheath dress, a quartz pendant hanging from her neck and her light brown curls brushing her shoulders as she watched me, her gray eyes still wide with surprise.

  “Thank you for waiting, Stella. Had to change. And I needed the juice for the energy I expended . . . teleporting.” I frowned as I realized several things, apart from it being early Sunday afternoon in Santa Fe. “Why are you here? And how did you get inside my home?”

  Brief guilt showed on her lightly tanned face. Then she shook her head, curls flying every which way. “Jack! I did not break in! I heard you had been shot. You weren’t at Christus St. Vincent, so I came here after learning from your friend Mabel where you lived. When I got to the bottom of the stairs leading up to your apartment, the gate was unlocked. I assumed you were at home. So I walked up.” Her eyes met mine as her aura billowed with bright pink, yellow and green colors atop her normal red core and outermost gold aura. She was surely enlightened in the spiritual sense. Right now her colors showed friendly concern and worry. “I knocked on your door. No one answered. Worried that you might have passed out from your wound, I tried the door knob. It turned and the door opened. A search showed you weren’t here. So I decided to sit, watch your cute lizard and see how you were doing in person. When you came home.” Her pink tongue licked her lips. “I just . . . I just never expected you to return the way you did.”

  The way I did. Suddenly appearing out of thin air. An old phrase best known to geezers like me, and maybe folks in their late 50s like Stella, but it did describe what she had seen. Damn.

  “Stella, I need you to keep secret about this ability of mine. It’s one of the psychic powers that landed on me Tuesday. It’s why I came to see you. Please?”

  “Oh, of course!” she said, her tone light and reassuring. “Since I see auras all the time I have learned to keep people’s private issues private. Sure, I’ll not mention this . . . ability of yours.”

  There was no trace of blackness in her aura layers. She had truly been concerned for me after hearing about the shooting. I walked over to my recliner, sat in it, swallowed half the glass of orange juice, then put it on the end table. Folding my hands in my lap, I considered the implications of her entry. Through a door I knew I had locked before going to church with Leroy. I’d also locked the stairwell gate.

  “Stella, when you arrived, did you see anyone else around the garage? Or watching my place from across the street?”

  New concern filled her face. “No, Jack, there was no one on the property or watching out in the open. Some cars drove by but they seemed to be going places. None of the drivers looked at your place. And I took the bus to get to your café, then walked down to your apartment. It was a normal midday walk. No one nasty. No cops. Just normal life.”

  Life would never again be normal for me. And now someone had broken into my place, but without damaging anything. Had they planted a new listening bug? Worse yet, a tiny vid camera? I had to solve this issue before we talked further.

  “Stella, give me a moment.”

  I got up, went to the kitchen, opened the pantry and got out the bug detector I’d bought at Radio Shack. Last night, before my buddies arrived, it had shown my place to be all clear of anything snoopy electronic. In truth I had just three items like that in the place. My laptop, my flat screen TV in the bedroom and my cell phone. I flicked on the power and then held the detector out at arm’s length. I walked slowly along the walls of the living room, then the furniture like the green fabric couch, my red leather recliner, the wood book shelving that held Pancho, then back into the kitchen. Nothing. A search of my bedroom and bathroom also showed nothing. Which left me with a quandary. Could someone have turned on my computer and input a malware bug by way of a thumb drive? Or done the same to the TV, which had a USB slot in one side? Well, I could trash those items and buy new ones. That was one way to use the bills in my money clip. I returned to my recliner and my guest.

  “Are there any listening bugs in your place?” Stella asked, her pale brown eyebrows lifting.

  “No. None that I could detect.” I sat in my recliner, grabbed the juice glass and drained it. “And this device is advertised as able to detect passive bugs in addition to active ones. Nothing seems to be missing. Which makes me wonder who broke into my place. And why?”

  Stella turned thoughtful. “Could it have been a TV reporter? Yesterday evening I saw a report on KRQE-TV by the reporter Rachel Knapp that you had been shot by gangbangers in a car that crashed, killing them. Could someone have been intent on getting a live interview with you?”

  It was a possibility. A reporter could have used simple tools to unlock my locks, then enter, hoping my failure to answer the door would be defeated by their sudden entry. More likely was a visit from someone at the police department, though my last encounter with detective Warren had been halfway congenial. Was there any way I could place a barrier field around my home when I was away? A field that would not allow anyone to enter? As soon as I thought the question I sensed the faint shimmer of a barrier field come up around the entire garage, hugging the stucco, stairwell and roof closely. Rain would drain off normally and so would leaves. And since the Websters were not due home for two more months, it did not matter they could not enter the garage portion to store their car. The sensing of the second, outer field reminded me of Ansgar’s comment that powers appear when needed, even if we didn’t know we had them. I looked to Stella.

  “A reporter breaking in is a possibility.” Stella looked more calm and relaxed than when she had first seen me post-teleporting.

  She gave me a playful look. “Jack, when you first appeared, I thought that linen suit you were wearing was awful snazzy. Quite nice looking on you. Is that a new side of you?”

  I almost laughed at the teasing tone in her voice. “
Yes, it is my benefactor of the arts and donor to cop groups look. Since I’ve come into a nice chunk of money thanks to some investments, I figured I would give a try at living beyond my Social Security check.”

  Stella laughed, her face bright and happy. “Sounds great to me!”

  Her expression and her quick agreement to keep secret my teleporting ability brought forth a decision. It was time to be a Healer of Lives, now that I had dispatched five evil ones as a Soldier for Life.

  “Stella, let me take you to lunch at a fancy place here in town. Where would you like to eat?”

  Surprise showed on her oval face, then a happy look. “Welll, I do like the Blue Corn Café on Rodeo Drive. I love Southwestern food and their Mexican dishes!”

  “Sounds great.” I leaned forward toward her, showing her my serious side. “Let’s pick up your partner Celine on the way to the café. I . . . I would like to hold her hands for a few moments. Think you can convince her to be friendly with me?”

  Realization of what I intended quickly overcame her amiable nod. Now, she squinted at me, her lips trembling a bit. “Jack. Can you really get rid of cancer? Cervical cancer is one of the worst cancers for women, with a low survival rate.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Actually, I had heard that while roaming the PBS.org website on my laptop. Keeping up with national and international news had always been a focus of my curiosity. I lifted the left side of my hoodie and the green t-shirt underneath it. “Yes, Stella, I can heal your partner. See? The bullet hit my left side ribs. I Healed the wound. No sign of anything, any damage. Right?”

  She leaned forward, gave a shake of her head, then looked me in the eyes. Her gray locked onto my brown. “Jack, thank you. Thank you!” Tears showed at the edges of her eyes.