Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
Screams. Someone grabs his arm. He shrugs out of their grasp.
The driver tumbles from the semi. Staggers. Looks at him. Their eyes meet. The irises burn like golden embers from behind the mask of blood covering the man’s face. The smoke drifts between them, and then the man is gone.
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
He throws himself to the ground beside the passenger seat. The balled glass shreds his pants and the skin of his knees. The van is upside down, the roof compacted. The windows are barely wide enough to reach through. The glass slices his arm clear up to the shoulder. He feels something warm and wet inside. His mother. Withdraws his arm. His hand is so wet that the crimson drains in syrupy lines from his fingers.
Crawls toward the bucket seat behind her. Someone grabs him and tries to pull him away. He brays like an animal and fights toward the ragged gash where the window once was.
He sees Anna’s arm. The middle finger twitches, even though the entire limb has been severed at the shoulder.
He screams, tries to wriggle into the van. Metal and glass slice through his forehead, his cheeks.
Sees the expression on his sister’s face.
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
Sees red.
* * *
The cuts on his face have scabbed over. When they finally heal, they will leave scars like a starburst leading away from his nose. People stare. People will always stare. He doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything.
He walks through the front door and directly to the desk. The recruiter glances up. The crew-cut man’s eyes widen at the sight of his face. Not his face. His mask. The mask of pain he will always wear. The mask that will never allow him to forget, but, more importantly, will always force him to remember. To remember the good times, brief though they were. To remember his family. To remember the man with eyes that burned like golden embers from a face shimmering with blood, a man who had stumbled away from the scene and vanished into the smoke.
The recruiter smiles when he recognizes him.
“Aaron Mitchell, right? Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t you about two months early? You aren’t trying to change your mind on me now, are you?”
He shakes his head and looks away.
“I sure am glad to hear that. So tell me, Aaron…what brings you here today?”
“I’m ready now.”
“I’m sorry, son, but you’re going to have to speak up.”
“I said I’m ready now.” He shouts the words without meaning to. All activity in the office ceases. Everyone stares at him. An office door opens and a man in full parade uniform steps out.
“It’s all right, son.” The recruiter peers back over his shoulder, nods to the decorated man, who returns to his office, but leaves the door open. “Everything has a way of working out like it’s supposed to. You see, your timing is perfect.” The recruiter rises from his chair and guides him around the desk and through the work area toward the open office door. “I want to introduce you to Lieutenant General Middleton. He’s actually taken a special interest in you, believe it or not.”
He stops in the doorway and looks at the man behind the desk. The lieutenant general’s face seems familiar, but he can’t place where he’s seen it before. Or if he ever has.
“Lieutenant General Middleton, sir. This is Aaron Mitchell.”
The lieutenant general rises from his chair, extends his hand. When Middleton smiles, the scar through his eyebrow lightens and widens. It looks like a leech trying to gnaw through his eyelid to feast on infinity.
That thought stops him cold.
“I’m ready now.” He finds himself whispering to Middleton as though they’re old friends. “There’s nothing left for me here.”
“I know.” The lieutenant general’s eyes seek his, but he averts them. “I know all about it.”
The Present – Millington, Tennessee
Jeffers jerked awake early again the next day, the last vestiges of his recurring nightmare clinging to his mind like a shroud. They were never the same, but always similar enough in the fact that his family died in the end. It was barely 6:00 but, realizing additional sleep would be difficult if not impossible, he dragged himself out of bed and visited the bathroom to take care of his business.
Feeling more invigorated following a brisk shower and much-needed shave, he set a pot of coffee on to brew, positioned himself in front of his computer and fired it up, purely out of habit. If he was going to locate Craven’s son, though, he knew he would never find him through the numerous “people finders” websites springing up like weeds on the Internet; he would definitely have to begin his search with Memphis’ Division of Human Services, since both father and son had resided just north of Memphis, Tennessee, back in ’91.
It was extremely fortunate that he’d established a wide variety of sources since his resignation from the Navy, usually trading favors for favors. He’d definitely made some good contacts, and one of them was fortuitously located in the Records Department at DHS. Jerry had discreetly helped him a couple times over the past few years, providing privileged information about foster parents, children entered into the system, and, most importantly, valuable social security numbers. What most people were unaware of was the fact that not only was Jeffers the friendly neighborhood proprietor of a small store selling any manner of personal protection items, he was also a vigilante-for-hire, a “fixer,” if you will. And his sources had proved invaluable in his occasional freelance assignments.
Just last month he had been contacted through the usual channels---a friend of a friend of a friend, who was privy to his underground activity---regarding a “deadbeat” dad who consistently shirked his financial responsibilities, specifically in paying child support to his ex-wife for their four children. Since prison wasn’t a deterrent to the father any longer, Jeffers had stepped in and literally “strong-armed” the man, promising him even further damage to his limb should he continue his “deadbeat” ways. His tactic had apparently worked, and when the aggrieved woman had come to pay him for his services, he had politely declined. He simply couldn’t take any money from a woman who had suffered through so much and been shorted cash due her for the better part of two years.
Killing time on the computer for an hour or so, Jeffers finally broke down and called his DHS source around 8:00AM.
“Mal,” Jerry said. “It’s been awhile.”
“Yeah, how’ve you been, man?”
“Can’t complain. How about you?”
“So-so, you know how it is.”
“So…I guess you need something?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Lemme have the name, and when he or she would have been entered into our system.”
“Thanks. It’s Aaron Craven. That’s A-a-r-o-n, C-r-a-v-e-n. And the year would be 1991.”
“Got it. Call you back in a minute.”
Jeffers puttered around a bit, turned on the TV to catch a bit of the morning news, and within five minutes, the phone rang.
“Yeah?”
“Your boy had a bit of trouble adapting, huh?”
“Didn’t know that,” Jeffers said.
“Bumped around from foster home to foster home quite a bit, until he left the system in 2001 at age eighteen. Hmm…last name we have for him is Mitchell. Aaron Mitchell. No middle name. You want the address?”
“No, just give me his SSN, and thanks, Jerry.”
Jerry gave him the boy’s social security number and they both rang off.
Jeffers stared at the piece of paper on which he’d written Aaron’s full name and SSN.
Getting close now, son…getting close.
After a long morning in his shop, Jeffers shut the door for lunch and began hiking along the street, hunting for a place to eat. As he made his way down the sidewalk, cars passing by on the main drag, Navy Road, to his right, the early summer sun warming his quickly-balding scalp, his sixth sense kicked in for
some reason, bringing him to a halt, his head swiveling about in all directions. But he didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, nothing and nobody to warrant his antenna prickling. Yet just for a second or two back there, he had experienced the uneasy sensation of being watched, perhaps even followed. Glancing about once more for good measure, he chalked it up to his overactive imagination, exacerbated by the stunning news regarding the “Infinity Killer” he’d been dealing with for the better part of two days. Slowly, he continued on his way.
Following lunch and a brisk-paced walk back to his shop, Jeffers immediately grabbed his landline phone on the counter and punched in the number of his source/friend at the huge IRS Facility in south Memphis. On the return trip, he’d once again been bothered by a nagging feeling that someone was watching him. Could Craven’s son have found me instead? He didn’t know for sure, but he could certainly find out very quickly where Aaron was currently residing.
“Mal, Mal, Mal, how’re you doing?” Dennis said.
“I’m doing good, Dennis, how about you?”
“Fine, just fine. How can I help you, ha ha?”
“Got a name and social security number for you. Just need to know if he’s been filing his taxes regularly and where he currently resides.”
“Oh, an easy one this time!”
“I try sometimes.”
“Well, lemme have it. I got better things to do than sit here all day jawing with you,” he said with a laugh.
Jeffers gave him Aaron’s full name and SSN and waited while he was put on hold.
A minute later Dennis came back on the line. “Whoa, did you know this guy works for the U.S. Government? Spends a lot of time out of the country.”
“Hmm, no, I didn’t. You got his address?”
Dennis gave it to him, and they chatted for a moment or two before hanging up.
Jeffers stared at the address he had written down and shook his head, thinking, I’ll be damned! It probably was you today.
According to IRS records, Aaron Mitchell’s residence of record was in Munford, TN, probably no more than a few houses from the place he and his father had called home.
So you’ve come full circle, have you?
See you soon…
2011
He stands in the shade of a copse of willows, through the shifting leaves of which he sees the bare swatch of grass he has traveled thousands of miles to see, if only one last time. The lawn is feral and untended in spots, brown and fried in others, the flat markers invisible from this vantage point. He knows what they say. The letters may have faded and the placards may have collected debris, but the words won’t have changed in a decade. The ground is so smooth and level that he fears the caskets have collapsed and compacted the bones. He imagines the horror of being compressed in earth for eternity and shudders, for in the intervening years he has learned a little about eternity. More than a little, in fact.
And that is why he is here now.
They will come for him. They’re probably looking for him now. And soon enough they will find him, and when they do, they will remove him from the board, introduce him to infinity. He doesn’t fear what they will do, for in infinity lies the salvation he will otherwise be denied. He has done everything they have asked of him, done it too well, perhaps, and maybe with a little too much flair and exuberance. That is why their most likely choice will be to take him out of play. They know it. He knows it. And hence, this final visit to seek forgiveness from the only people who ever mattered, to let them know he will be joining them soon.
He’s done things…things he was trained to do. Things that were once good and noble, but are now looked upon as monstrous. He sees the beast inside of him, for it is that mask that has been glued upon his face. It bears no expression. It is unremarkable, save for the scars. It looks like every other mask he sees on the faces of the people he passes on the street every day. It is the eyes that make it ferocious. The eyes he cannot hide. Eyes that have always been that way.
The eyes of a monster.
The eyes of the beast.
He steps from the shadows, finds the right markers, crouches before them. Brushes the dirt from the placards. Traces the letters with his fingertips. Tries not to envision them as bloody meat shoveled out of the wreckage of the van. Imagines them as they were in life, as they will always be to him. Imagines sitting them down in the family room of their old house and speaking the words he wishes he could speak.
I am not proud of some of the things I have done. I need to tell you about them so that you may forgive me, so that I may forgive myself.
In his mind, he tells them about his time in the marines, about the pride he had felt when Middleton selected him for special ops and initiated his true training. He tells them of the point when he realized that the words “special” and “black” were interchangeable. He tells them about missions in foreign lands he had previously never even dreamed existed. He tells them of being dropped in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, alone, and using his masks to move unseen through the masses, a wolf in the midst of sheep, until he cornered his ultimate prey. He tells them that slitting the throat of a rebel leader is noble, that breaking the neck of a despot is patriotic, and that butchering their families and bathing in the blood of their children in order to send a message is an act that keeps the world safe for democracy. He tells them that he realizes his soul has been forfeited, that changing political climes can make his acts hideous and vile in retrospect, even though he was decorated and celebrated at the time. He tells them that his failures are his own and that they do not reflect upon the Mitchell name or the life they have given him. He tells them that he understands how he was misled, how the course of events had been shaped from the very beginning by men who convinced him that they were his friends in order to lead him into the life of an assassin, a professional killer for the government. He tells them he allowed himself to be led. He tells them that he knows now that their deaths were his fault, that in opening their hearts to him, they had exposed themselves to the blade that pierced them. He tells them of how he figured it out, how he learned that their deaths had been plotted and commissioned merely to sever him from his ties to the world and emotionally bind him to his saviors. That he didn’t recognize it until it was too late. That he didn’t piece it together until he was standing over the bodies of the three dead children of a known terrorist in a ramshackle hut in Dubai, with the cleaning crew working around him.
One of the men had folded a girl of about ten in half and stuffed her into a plastic bag. Her arm had fallen out onto the floor and he had been reminded of Anna’s, there on the road beside the car. He had looked at the man, his face hidden by a black balaclava, and seen him for who he truly was. For his eyes. Eyes that burned like golden embers. And he had known. Right then and there. He had known everything leading up to that moment had been a house of cards, one lie stacked upon another and another until they all collapsed before his very eyes.
He tells them how he had a breakdown at that hut, that he fled the scene against orders, only contacting his superiors after the fact, advising them he was taking an extended leave of absence to get his head on straight. He asks the Mitchells---his parents---again for their forgiveness, knowing that they can never give it. He tells them of how just two weeks ago, he tracked General Stanley Middleton, since retired, to a mansion in Arlington, Virginia, and how he painted the walls with the blood of the man who had “taken a special interest” in him. And his wife. And his teenage son. Even his Doberman pincer. He asks for absolution, knowing that it is not theirs to give. And he tells them of what he has come back here to do. He tells them that he is sorry, knowing that their ears are packed with dirt and they can’t hear him. He is grateful for the dirt in their eyes, which makes it so they cannot see the beast that resides behind his.
He kisses his fingers and places them on the markers.
He whispers goodbye to each of them in turn.
And then absolves himself of t
hem.
He claws at the ground, tearing out clots of grass and dirt until he has a large enough hole in which to bury the boy with his family. He pours Aaron from the now-hollow vessel and allows the beast who lurks in his eyes, who lives in infinity and lusts for eternity, to flood his veins.
He rises and starts back across the lawn toward the street.
There is a very important stop he has to make now.
One of two he has been looking forward to for a very, very long time.
* * *
“Aaron?” The man chuckles nervously. “I nearly didn’t recognize you. It’s been a long time. What are you…what are you doing here? How did you get in?”
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
The doctor’s home office is just like the one downtown. Only this one has pictures. Pictures of a wife and two adult daughters of whom Eichmann never spoke. Of two little girls who look like more like the daughters than the cadaver who spawned them. The doctor still looks like a corpse. Only older. The joints in his long fingers are more prominent and his cheek bones stand out as though the skin beneath is collapsing. Eichmann wears a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. Perhaps it is because the doctor has seen the beast behind the mask. Or maybe the hunting knife in the beast’s hand.
“You have to understand. None of this. None of this was my idea. I never meant—”
The whoosh of air parting for steel. The spattering sound of fluid striking the floor.
“Jesus! Jesus Christ, Aaron! No one ever told me. I swear. No one ever said they were going to kill your fam—”
Thoosh. Thoosh. Thoosh.
The beast moves through the vessel that is him, warm and cold at the same time, muscle and steel. The end product of what the doctor has made him, what he was always destined to be.
“God! You have to know—have to know how very sorry I—”
The beast has been trained to use the knife by men who make the beast look like a puppy dog. A serial killer whose blood flows through the beast and men of no conscience who robbed the beast of his own.
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