A Journey of Souls

by Michael McKinney

  While sipping her coffee, she wonders how she will broach this subject with her husband when he returns home later in the evening. If she could only find an answer to this problem, her life could resume its normal course. Laura Chandler's intuition informs her that her husband has a secret he's concealing from her. What could it be? she asks herself as she looks again at the key in her hand. She examines it more intently and thinks, ‘if I could open my husband’s heart and mind as easily as this key opens a door, I would know this hidden secret, if it were only that easy.’ After a final sip of coffee she looks at the wall clock and casually slips the key into her pocket. Despite being preoccupied with her marital problems, daily obligations must be met, and a trip to the grocery store is certainly one of them. As she prepares to leave, she thinks tonight will be the time to fully air her feelings to her husband. After a candle lit dinner of his favorite meal to set the mood, she'll gently but firmly tell her husband what's been bothering her. Laura Chandler is optimistic that things will somehow work out.

  Within minutes she enters the garage, gets into her car, and reaches for the car keys. The feel of her keys reminds her of the single key she put in her pocket earlier. Instead of starting the car she pauses and looks over at the locked door in the corner of the garage, and wonders if that key will open it. Curiosity builds as she sits motionless. ‘This is silly,’ she thinks to herself, and inserts the ignition key, but before starting the car she pauses again, and glances once more at the locked door only twenty feet away from her. It somehow seems to beckon her as if it has a dark secret to tell. She slowly gets out of the car and walks to the strong metal door and tries to open it. She finds it locked as expected. Then she reaches into her pocket and pulls out the key she found while washing her husband's jeans earlier.

  Slowly unlocking the door she expects to see a nondescript collection of tools and equipment common to any workshop, but after entering and turning on the bright florescent ceiling light, Laura Chandler is presented with a sight that's totally unexpected. Dozens of pictures with graphic images of women engaging in every conceivable sex act adorn the walls. A few feet away on a small table lay scads of adult magazines. After picking one up, Laura Chandler gets a close up look at the world of hard core pornography, but even this will seem tame compared to what she's about to discover. Mrs Chandler is shocked by the volume of the material she's seeing, hundreds of DVDs, on the shelf, dozens of magazines, sex toys, vibrators, and all the acquired paraphernalia of a full blown male sex addict. After taking several DVDs from the shelf, a cursory look at their titles is blunt and immediately revealing. ‘Teen Sluts Get Rammed’, ‘Slow Suck Masters’, and ‘Tag Teaming Tanya,’ are just a few of the hundreds on the shelf. Then Laura Chandler sees twenty or thirty DVDs that look different. She notices they have no commercial jacket and appear to be privately recorded. As she picks one up, she sees the name ‘Julie,’ written with a magic marker on the front. The presence of a TV and DVD player spurs her curiosity and impels her to see for herself what's been recorded. Turning on the DVD player, and opening the disc tray, Laura Chandler is apprehensive and more than a little uneasy about what she's about to see. The first image she sees is her husband's face looking into what appears to be a wall mounted camera as he slightly adjusts its viewing angle. After he pulls away, Mrs Chandler sees a room with a large centrally placed couch. After going blank momentarily, she sees a young woman enter the scene accompanied by her husband Keith Chandler. She looks no more than twenty years old and her suggestive style of dress strongly hint that she's a prostitute. By all indications, she seems unaware of the camera recording her activity. A hidden microphone also records their conversation, a conversation that doesn't last very long, as Mrs Chandler hears her husband say to the young woman, “Okay Julie, you know the routine. It's time to earn your two hundred bucks.”

  With these words the young woman undresses Laura Chandler's husband and within minutes is performing oral sex on him. Mrs Chandler watches in shock as he completely gives himself over to the carnal intensity of addictive sexual pleasure. After a few minutes Laura Chandler notices a change in her husband's behavior. His expression becomes cold, and contemptuous. The same expression that Mrs Chandler has been seeing more frequently on the face of her husband in the last few months. She sees him become more aggressive and demanding with the woman. The words Laura Chandler hears her husband speak are deeply disturbing.

  “Oh yeah, suck it hot bitch. Suck it bitch. Take it all you fuckin’ whore.”

  With her eyes and ears thoroughly scalded by what she's seeing and hearing, Laura Chandler stops the DVD fast forwarding it for eight or ten seconds, and is then presented with the jarring sight of her husband engaging in anal sex with the young woman named Julie. With every vigorous thrust Keith Chandler loudly verbalizes his deviant pleasure. His coarse, aggressive language seems calculated to degrade and intimidate the young woman who by her expression was experiencing a considerable measure of physical pain. With this, Laura Chandler can watch no more. Quickly turning the TV off, she stands in silence, her mouth agape and in a complete state of emotional shock. Now she knows why her husband is estranged. Now she knows why there is no intimacy, joy or even mutual respect in her marriage. Now she knows.

  As she regains some measure of composure, she retrieves the DVD and puts it back on the shelf. She then looks at dozens of other privately recorded discs and sees name after name written with a magic marker; Carol, Linda, Susan, Pamela, Ashley, etc. etc. etc.. Laura Chandler has just learned that she's married to someone who's not only addicted to sex and pornography, but has an added vice grafted to his compulsive perversion; he feels a sick desire to record his encounters so he can revel in watching them again later. Trying to intellectually and emotionally digest what she's just witnessed, Laura Chandler is shocked and psychologically overwhelmed. In silence she slowly puts everything back in its place, turns off the light and walks out of the room closing and re-locking the door behind her. She doesn't know it yet, but a door is also closing on a chapter of her own life, one that she will eventually be grateful to leave behind.

  Meanwhile twelve miles away, across town, the subject of her thoughts has just concluded another illicit episode with the woman he picked up from the street several hours before. Having served her use, she's been paid and returned to the same street she was walking on earlier. Now that his habit has been gratified, Keith Chandler is in a hurry to get back to his office, but as he's driving, he sees a woman walking in the opposite direction on the other side of the street. He knows he's driving through a part of town where prostitutes frequently walk, and all the unspoken hints in her demeanor suggest that. Her short dress and appealing figure immediately piques his interest, and even though he just had his way with a different woman less than an hour ago, he feels the irresistible urge to double back and pick her up. His brain, like that of every compulsive neurotic is governed by impulse, and once it's triggered, acting on that impulse is nearly always a foregone conclusion. With a quick U-turn Keith Chandler will start that compulsive sequence all over again.

  He checks his rear-view mirror, and though he knows it's an incautious move, he suddenly turns his steering wheel to cut across the other lanes of traffic. The glare of reflected sunlight that flashes in his eyes for a split second blinds him to the fast approaching tractor-trailer that's bearing down on him. The impact is sudden, powerful, and deadly. Striking the car at an oblique angle, damage to the truck is minimal. The collision's full impact is directed to the driver's side of Keith Chandler's car, and the resulting blunt force trauma instantly kills him. By the time the first medical team arrives to assist with any possible survivors, it's clear that the only thing to be done is removing the lifeless body of Keith Chandler from the mangled wreckage. Several blocks away the woman walking down the street has heard the crash and looks back from a distance at the fatal accident scene. After pausing for a few minutes she casually starts walking again as if nothing happ
ened.

  Keith Chandler doesn't remember the crushing impact of steel and glass that ended his earthly life. All he recalls of the event is the glaring flash of sunlight that dazzled his eyes and then being immersed in a strange shroud of darkness that enveloped him. Then, as if in a dream, he finds himself walking down a forest pathway in a setting that's totally unfamiliar. As he walks onward, he's completely baffled by what's happening. Looking at his hands and arms, it appears that nothing is wrong with him. In fact he feels healthy, strong, and confident. He wonders what will happen next. He won't have to wait very long to find out.

  Chapter Four: A Violent Encounter

  In a place no map can locate, and in a time not marked by any clock or calendar, the dreaming soul of Calvin Milner remains blissfully enthralled. Still reeling from the strange, alien images of those other-worldly places shown to him on his tour through the galaxy, Calvin Milner is still rapt in silent amazement. Was it a dream? If it was; it's not over yet. Still in his boyhood home, surrounded by the reassuring familiarity of what was a very happy time for him, he sits in the comfortable living room he knew so well as a boy. Calvin looks over to see his father reading as he did so often many years ago. He sees his mother in the kitchen doing the dishes. All is happy, normal, and reassuring.

  Calvin Milner is beyond the need or desire to rationally understand what he's experiencing. As he looks at his mother and father it occurs to him that the benevolent faces of his parents represent something much deeper, a love that transcends all temporal reality, as if the power and intensity of that love was so extreme it could only be experienced vicariously in the attenuated form of devoted familial affection. Looking at his parents, he feels the overpowering presence of something mysterious and unseen, but undeniably real. A deep sense of acceptance and profound gratitude seems to flood outward from the core of his being. Calvin Milner feels the mystical, silent, all-encompassing presence of absolute love. In a moment of serenely blissful perfection he hears his mother say,

  “Calvin, Brianna's here for you.”

  Calvin responds with the casual ease of one expecting an old friend.

  “Thanks Mom, I'll see ya later.”

  “Okay,”

  A moment later without rising from his chair, or leaving his parents’ home, Calvin Milner somehow instantly finds himself outside, walking down a country road with the woman named Brianna. The mystery of what's happening around him, tempered by a calm, reassuring sense that he's exactly where he should and needs to be. It somehow feels right and natural that he's once again with this mysterious woman, and for some reason they are going somewhere together. Calvin smiles and looks over to Brianna.

  “I'm sure you enjoyed seeing your parents.”

  “I, I don't know what to say. It was incredibly joyful.”

  “I'm glad.”

  “Where are we?” Calvin asks.

  “That's a hard question to answer. We're in a place that has no address, occupying a space that has no dimensions, existing in a realm where linear time has no meaning, but to answer your question more directly, we're going to work. You're an apprentice Calvin. Don't you remember?”

  “Yes I remember. I'm an apprentice.”

  “Well, that's why we're here. We're about to meet our first arrival.”

  “If I'm an apprentice, what exactly is my craft? What is my role in all of this?”

  “Your role Calvin, is to see all those you encounter on to what's waiting for them. It's not unlike the role you once played as counselor to your high school students back in Lancaster.”

  “This is very different from my days with high school students. I don't know what exactly is expected from me.”

  “That's why for now you need to just observe and learn.”

  “What if they ask me a question?”

  “No one will ask anything of you. They won't even know that you're here with me. Your presence is concealed for now. When you're ready you'll interact with your charges.”

  As they continue walking they come to a side path leading into a wooded area.

  Brianna leads.

  “This way Calvin, there's something I want you to see.”

  After a few minutes walking the forest path they see a man approaching and within seconds he's standing in front of them. It's Keith Chandler.

  “Hello, Mr Chandler,” Brianna says.

  “Who are you?”

  “Just someone who's here to help you find what you want.”

  “How do you know what I want?”

  “That's not hard to guess. Is it?”

  “Why don't you come with me? We'll find it together,” Keith Chandler says.

  “Would you like that?”

  “Since you asked, Yes, I would. You're beautiful. I'd love to spend some time with you.”

  “Do you mean spend time with me or on me?”

  “I don't know, maybe both. You're a lovely woman.”

  “I'm not available Mr Chandler. What you're looking for is right over there waiting for you. She's more than ready.”

  Pointing to an open area of the forest, Brianna directs his attention to a very attractive woman lying in the shade. Slender, healthy and erotically alluring her eyes lock on him as her head nods unmistakably signaling her invitation. He hears Brianna's voice quietly whispering in his ear.

  “Go ahead Mr Chandler. That lubricious delight that you made your life a slave to is waiting for you.

  Keith Chandler begins walking toward her and she begins touching herself in suggestive ways enticing him to a temptation he cannot resist. As he gets closer, she starts audibly moaning. Her body is wet with perspiration and pulsing with sexual tension. This is what Keith Chandler knows. This is where he feels in control. This is where he wants to be. Standing over her he hears her teasingly sultry voice.

  “Give it to me Keith. I'm ready. Put it in me deep. Come on Keith. You know I need it.”

  Free will is vanquished by his compulsive neurosis and within seconds he's undressed and ready to mount. She quickly gets into position and tells him, “You're new here. I'll have to break you in myself,” and then says very aggressively, “ and this won't be the last time fucker boy.”

  Compelled to take his unexpected prize, he's completely distracted and doesn't see something very dangerous charging in from the side until it's too late.

  Before his first coital thrust he feels the violent motion of a strong hand ripping off part of his left ear as a vicious attack begins. Keith Chandler turns toward his assailant. It's another male, large, strong, and very aggressive. Within seconds he's fighting for his life as he frantically tries to fend off the unprovoked attack. His opponent seems to fight with an almost crazed ferocity as if he were a wild animal. The sheer brutality of the attack is overwhelming in its sudden intensity and completely unexpected. Blood soon flows from open wounds as Keith Chandler summons the strength to defend himself in what has become a fight for his life. He looks into the face of his attacker and sees what looks more like a snarling beast than a human being. Whoever or whatever this creature is, it's clear he's not letting up any time soon. This fight is to the death. Another surge of hormone driven aggression comes over the fiend and Keith Chandler struggles desperately to resist. Mustering all his physical strength he's finally able to achieve something of a stalemate with force enough to hold back his attacker, but not enough to secure his retreat. As they're both locked in a deadly contest of brute force, he looks over and sees the female he was ready to mount only seconds before, vigorously copulating with a third male. When his attacker also looks over and sees the female with another male, he instantly jumps up and runs over to attack the new male. Shaken, bloodied, and exhausted, Keith Chandler watches as the two males ferociously attack each other. Seeing his chance to flee, he staggers to his feet and runs as fast as he can from the violent mayhem.

  As he runs he hears t
he female screaming at him, “Hey fucker boy, we'll meet again. You hear me fucker boy? We'll meet again. I like you fucker boy. I'll find ya.”

  Running, as fast as he can while at the same time staunching the blood from the side of his head with his open hand, he eventually finds his way back into the forest. After a few minutes he catches his breath and slows his pace a little. As he follows the path before him he hears a commotion some thirty or forty feet away in the undergrowth. Still naked, bleeding, and exhausted, he knows he can't risk another encounter like the one he just survived. He slowly and silently approaches to see the disturbance and soon comes upon a scene so gruesome he's instantly repulsed by its shocking intensity. He sees a man lying on top of what looks like a female, but a clearer view shows the man copulating with the blackened corpse of a dead woman. Self-possessed, he eagerly pursues his hideous pleasure, and as Keith Chandler looks closer at the dead woman's face, he clearly sees maggots dripping from the rotten flesh of her open mouth. Shaking with fear at what he's witnessing, he becomes absolutely still and silent, hoping to withdraw unnoticed from the lurid scene, but as he does the fiendish degenerate looks back at him and their eyes lock. With a malevolent smile and not missing a stroke in his copulative rhythm, he speaks. “After I'm done, it's your turn Keith. Then we'll both do her. She's hot. Isn't she?”