by Rick Jones
Kimball closed his eyes and immediately recalled the moment he killed two children in Iraq. He could see the images clearly. He had killed them out of a sense of obligation. Not only had he committed murder, he also committed theft. He had robbed a mother of two sons, siblings of two brothers, a father of children to forward the family line, and future generations from those he killed. He could see everything move in his mind’s eye with the slowness of a bad dream, the way the bullets ripped into their bodies, which had caused the desert air to suddenly become the color of red mist.
It was then that he had had an epiphany, a pang of guilt and regret as he had buried the boys in the desert sand. During the night, as he lay on the desert floor staring up at the countless pinpricks of light in the sky, he sought for the face of God and saw nothing but star-point glitters.
It was then that he knew that God had turned His back on him.
He opened his eyes. It had been several years since that kill. Yet he continued to see their faces as he slept, forever witnessing that final moment when the innocence of their eyes had vanished. The moment he cancelled their lives.
Then: “I haven’t been able to justify my actions,” he said. “Not yet. Not what I did to those boys.”
“After so many years, Kimball,” the Monsignor quickly stamped his cigarette out in the ashtray, “you’re not going to justify this one particular act, because it is exactly as you said: The hardest thing for any man to do is forgive himself. And you need to find a way to do so. The struggle for your salvation is not God’s struggle. He accepted you into His embrace the moment you donned the uniform of a Vatican Knight. The problem lies within you, Kimball. You are a creature of imperfection and good moral character, who needs to best these personal demons of self-guilt on terms that can only be your own.”
“Then why does He continue to remind me every night when I go to sleep, by showing me the faces of those children? Why do I continue to see their blood drain upon the desert floor night after night after night?”
“Your dreams, Kimball, are manifestations of your conscience mind, and not from God. You know that. The obstacle here is to somehow get you to forgive yourself for an action that you cannot readily justify, because it was wrong. But since then you have made incredible strides, by saving numerous lives. You have, in some circles, become a saint to those who cannot defend themselves…and a demon to those who have been so corrupted that their souls are forever lost and they wish to do nothing but untold harm.
“You’ve come full circle, Kimball. We just have to somehow get you to overcome that one obstacle of not being able to forgive yourself, which is a mountain that needs to be climbed.” Monsignor Dom Giammacio maintained a steady eye, waiting for a response that never came.
Then: “Time’s up. But I want you to think about this.” The monsignor reached for another cigarette. “I want you to think about how you can climb to the peak of that mountain and get to the other side.”
“Isn’t that your job? To see me through?”
The monsignor nodded. “I can only show you the way, Kimball. It’s up to you to chase away your demons. That has always been the answer to everything.”
When the monsignor lit up, Kimball got to his feet and to his full height. He was a massive man, standing at six four and with a bodybuilder’s physique, his muscles sculpted and developed by hours in the gym. “Next Monday, then?”
“And please don’t be late—like you always are.”
When Kimball left the monsignor’s office, he could not picture in his mind a viable way to best the obstacle of his own self-guilt, the feeling of this particular emotion that ate away at him like a slow-moving cancer. It was deeply rooted, something that was now a part of him, like a dark pall that constantly followed in his wake.
Tonight, he told himself, like every night, he would see the faces of the two boys he had killed.
But the dream would not be the same.
He did see their faces as he lay asleep in his spartan chamber.
He could see the agony in their eyes, the abject terror, knowing that their lives were about to end. Everything moved too slowly, the pumping of their legs across the sand as the soft desert landscape slowed their chances of escape. And then came the sprays of red mist, the bullets punching through their flesh, as gouts of blood erupted, the bodies falling to the terrain as they bled out. Their eyes were open, then dimming, the ember of life finally disappearing as the air became scented with the smell of copper.
In his dream, he had somewhat of an omniscient point of view, looking downward through a celestial eye and seeing himself standing over the two bodies.
He then looked skyward, appraising the heavens, perhaps looking for an answer.
But nothing came.
The bodies began to move, reanimating themselves to give Kimball another chance at salvation by allowing them to live and move on.
But Kimball shot them again…
…And again…
…And again…
The man was incapable of changing or letting go.
And the mountain of an obstacle grew increasingly taller and increasingly distant.
It was here that Kimball awoke with the final images remaining in his mind. He was looking downward through a heavenly eye, as he continued to riddle their bodies with gunshots, killing them over and over again in his mind.
As his eyes began to focus, he saw nothing but the stilled shadows of his chamber. He could see the outline of the votive rack standing across the room, as well as the podium that seated the Bible—a book he rarely opened.
He knew he’d been granted a conscionable opening by giving the boys a chance to move toward the Light. But Kimball had given in to the lifestyle for which he had been groomed and cut them down repeatedly in this recurring dreamscape, always denying them the right to Glory while preventing his own path to Salvation.
He closed his eyes.
I kill people
He opened them.
It’s what I do.
He shook his head disapprovingly.
It’s what I’m good at…
He fell back into his pillow and stared ceilingward at the pooling shadows, at the unmoving shapes, while trying to make sense of their odd designs.
He would not sleep again that night.
CHAPTER THREE
Two Months Later
Paris, France
Shari Cohen had always romanced the idea of visiting the city of Paris. Now her idea had become reality as she, her husband, and their two children walked along the Avenue Gustave-V-de-Suède beneath a blue sky. The entire scenery was idyllic, and perfect for an artist’s canvas, with Parisian gardens that bloomed in a riot of colors, and with endless rows of trees that were full, green, and plush.
They absorbed everything as they walked along the Pont d’Iéna Bridge, which spans the River Seine, and eventually links up with the Eiffel Tower on the Left Bank. As they approached the cultural icon, their eyes appraised the structure from bottom to top, as if watching the slow trajectory of a rocket, following up to its highest peak of the tower’s observatory.
Even the girls, now ages fourteen and sixteen, were astonished.
“Amazing, isn’t it? Now you have something to tell your friends when you go back to school.”
Stephanie rolled her eyes and tried to mask her appreciation with feigned indifference. “What…everrrrrrrr.” At sixteen, she was deeply rooted in the stage of knowing everything. She constantly pushed the boundaries with her parents. It was a phase that Shari and Gary had come to expect but didn’t have to appreciate—the moment where a teenager just ‘hated’ you overnight for no reason at all. But they both regarded it as a test of patience. They needed to ride out the storm, no matter how tumultuous it could get. There was yelling and slamming of doors when things didn’t go a certain way for Stephanie, who constantly regarded house rules as being ‘lame.’ Terry on the other hand, who was fourteen and beginning to exhibit similar traits, was waiting to ca
st her wings and test the same grounds on which her sister was treading. The idea brought a cold chill to Gary’s stomach. One was bad enough, he considered, but two? He was hoping that whatever genetic disposition that drove teenagers to live life in such a sarcastic manner, would simply hurry itself along.
“Come on, Steph,” he said. “Can you at least try to enjoy yourself? At least for a little?”
She rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue. What…ever.
With a preamble of a smile, Shari took out her digital camera and started to click away, catching breathtaking images.
But as the day wore on, so did their endurance. As the sun began to set and the old Parisian lampposts came to life, they finally headed back to their hotel after eating a meal at a sidewalk café.
The room was elegant, with French-styled furniture conceived with curls and sweeps and lots of paisley designs in the fabrics. Pictures and watercolors adorned the walls in soft colors and hues, promoting an air of comfort. And an attached mini-suite for the girls—which Stephanie strongly verbalized against since she needed to be alone, and that sharing a room with her younger sister was ‘lame’—had a small tub in the room’s center, with all the working jets to soothe the body. Within a moment that was too quick to note, sister or no sister, Stephanie had fallen in love with the room.
Why can’t we have something like this in our house?
Then as the days wore on, with the rules becoming less ‘lame’, with laughter becoming more of the norm, life in Paris was wonderful. The kids became kids again, making believe they were French by acting pompous and speaking a language that wasn’t French at all, but had made-up words that supposedly sounded pleasing to the ear. But they weren’t. The consonants were too hard and the vowels, at best, were painful pronunciations. But in the end they laughed and giggled like the school girls they were. And Gary couldn’t have been more pleased.
Everything was just perfect, he thought.
Everything was just fine.
In the eyes of Jadran Božanović the girls were prime stock.
The taller of the two, somewhere between the ages of sixteen and eighteen he guessed, resembled the mother, who possessed more of an exotic look with copper-hued skin and eyes the color of cinnamon. The younger one was striking as well, with resemblances shared from both mother and father. Her hair was raven, her complexion cream-colored, and her limbs were long and gangly, like her father’s. Both were clearly edging their way toward the build of mature women. Already Božanović was calculating the number of Euros in his head, anticipating a cumulative amount close to a half-million American dollars at auction between them.
After the debacle on the Aleksandra two months ago, and with an estimated cost of losing more than twelve million dollars worth of live goods, Božanović was rebounding with another haul. He had teams in Italy, girls mostly, recruiting female victims by planting dreams of far-off places that bled riches, enticing them with false hopes of attaining the unattainable, of garnering wealth beyond comprehension, only to corral them into a world of dark corruption, where dreams were truly living nightmares, horrific and unimaginable. So far the haul of Roma girls mounted close to sixty, the French girls closer to four dozen—easy pickings since the world was filled with dreamers, with Božanović himself a dreamer in his own right.
As a minority Muslim living in the town of Vukovar, at the time Croatia declared itself to be an independent state from Yugoslavia in 1991, Božanović was the son of a well-to-do attorney who had lived a moneyed lifestyle. He was spoiled and secure, if not overly so. And because he’d had a never-ending well of financial resources to tap, he had believed himself to be the center of everyone’s world, everyone’s life, including his own. In his mind’s eye Božanović was it—the man, the myth, and the legend, by the time he reached his seventeenth birthday. It was also the day the JNA, the Yugoslav People’s Army, began its heinous campaign of war against the town of Vukovar and its people.
Distant mortars and gunfire had erupted the moment he blew out the candles of his cake. Though the sound was far away, it was close enough to cause the floors and walls to tremble and the crystals of the chandelier to clink together in a melody of chimes.
Being people of notorious wealth and privilege, family members chose to turn a blind eye to the effects, until several lines of black smoke could be seen from their balcony, the black-gray plumes of war rising from the city central.
The Serbs, who had taken umbrage with Croatia proclaiming their independence, viciously attacked their political opponent in the first step of a civil war, something Jadran’s father had known was brewing. But the man had believed—or wanted to believe—that the political powers would resolve the matter judiciously rather than by using force.
Within eighty-seven days the Baroque town had come under siege, and it eventually fell to Serbian and paramilitary forces who fought off the brave defensive unit of the Croatian National Guard (CNG). The town was destroyed in the end, with the Božanović estate laid to ruin.
‘Ethnic cleansing’ became the proverbial household phrase, as the international community watched Serbian forces under the command of Slobodan Milošević purge and clear the township of more than 31,000 people, by means of slaughter or deportation.
Božanović ultimately lost his self-centered state of mind, as he saw his life crumble as quickly and easily as the walls of his home. Immediately he took up arms alongside his friends, the teenager fueled by intense anger, as his life disintegrated into dark misery. The moment he hefted the antiquated rifle in his hands he felt an unbridled sense of untold power, the firearm giving him the choice of taking away a life at the pull of a trigger. He was elated, ecstatic by the fact that he was once again the center of the universe, as the man who wielded the power and choice as to who lived or died by his decision. Whoever had the fate to cross his path was surely by design of a higher presence, he considered—he was a vessel to command and power.
Prisoners were laid at his feet before him, cowering, the act in itself making Božanović feel all-powerful and incredibly infallible. He rested the point of his weapon against the skulls of Serbs and pulled the trigger time and again, feeling no pang of guilt, the act always becoming a sense of catharsis as he stood and watched the victims bleed out.
He had lived in squalor with his teammates, becoming a leader amongst men, as they fought bravely against overwhelming odds, the JNA more than twenty times their numbers. But on the seventy-third day, his unit was surrounded. Božanović found himself kneeling before a Serb officer who was holding a pistol that gleamed with a mirror polish to its barrel.
They stared at each other, their eyes refusing to break, a testament of their wills.
The Serb holstered his firearm and removed his knife, a wickedly sharp-looking weapon that held the same mirror polish as the pistol. He had held the blade up in display without breaking eye contact.
This knife has killed many of your kind, he had told Božanović, rotating the blade. It will kill more.
The Serb placed the blade against the young Croatian’s face until the point caused an indentation against Božanović’s skin, just below his eye. Božanović refused to break contact, something the Serb had to admire but didn’t have to acknowledge. So he applied enough pressure to the knife and broke the skin, drawing a bead of blood.
Božanović winced, which drew a simple smile from the Serb.
I will kill you, you know. And I will kill your entire family.
But Božanović’s family had already been slain by the Serb’s invading forces, his entire family removed from the house and slaughtered in the streets, the house then razed by fire. Although Božanović had escaped, he could remember the Serbs gunning down his mother and father, and his brother and sister with such malicious glee, he was sure that they would celebrate by drinking his family’s blood from jeweled goblets—the image unlikely, but so strong in his mind.
Anger had consumed him.
Hatred had filled him.
After I kill them, then I will kill you, yes? The Serb began to trace the point of the knife gingerly along Božanović’s face.
Božanović could not take the taunting any longer, so he turned to the side and spat, the action an ultimate display of courage and defiance, or perhaps one of stupidity depending upon who was watching. To his brethren, he became a god at that moment. To the Serbs, however, it spelled a foolish finality to Jadran Božanović’s life.
The Serb grabbed Božanović by a hank of hair and forced his head back, exposing a smooth and open throat. You think you’re brave? the Serb had fumed angrily, his face growing a shade of crimson. Do you think that what you do will make your friends think differently of you? He searched the surrounding faces of the Croats and would have seen the admiration for Božanović in their eyes. Then to Božanović: You and those like you are no better than the scum beneath my boots!
With the point of his knife, he drew a deep groove along the side of Božanović’s face, from the lower edge of his eye to the corner of his lip, opening a wound that pared back enough skin to show the bloody protrusion of his cheekbone.
Božanović cried out in agony, his bravado gone. When the Serb looked upon the faces of his comrades, he saw whatever sparks of admiration had been in their eyes quickly diminished with flickers of terror.
The Serb was back on top.
So he had smiled—another small victory as he pulled back the knife with its point tipped with scarlet.
In a macabre and sick display, the Serb licked the point and made a face, as if he relished the taste. Now Croat, the man had said, it’s time to die.
