The man gave her a gentle smile. “My dear, I am, Judgment. Destiny has chosen you this night and will change the course of your life.”
“Look, Mister. If I don’t bring enough money back to Raoul, he’s going to change the course of my life by ending it.”
“Then I will grant you the power of judgment over Raoul.”
The sadness on the woman’s face twisted to anger. “Mister, if that were true then I would make that man pay in so many different ways. Sometimes I want to rip his throat out and chop him into pieces. If I had that power I would get my revenge.”
“Perhaps,” Judgment turned his head to the right and looked at the night sky. “Perhaps not,” and turned his head to the left. Looking directly at the woman, he reached out and grabbed her hand.
The world through the woman’s eyes changed from the dark streets to a time past where a young boy the age of ten was on the porch of a rundown house, peering through a window. The woman walked up behind the boy to see what he was watching.
It was a woman sitting in a chair giving oral sex to a man. When the man finished, he handed the woman some money. The man was replaced by another, and the woman continued her sordid act.
The woman sensed that this boy was Raoul, and the woman was his mother.
The scene changed inside the house. Raoul was now inside and the woman watched his mother suffer a beating from a man. The scene changed from one man to another. It was obvious that the abuse had been over a long period of time and with numerous men. More than she cared to count. Raoul’s mother suffered at the hand of the men she brought into her life. Raoul had learned to disrespect women from his mother’s treatment.
Judgment let go of her hand. The woman’s eyes now filled her mind with the world of the present.
“Raoul may be a perpetrator of vile acts, but he too is a victim of abuse,” Judgment said.
The woman shook her head. “I didn’t know. I never thought of it that way.”
“The time of judgment is at hand. What is the fate that you choose for, Raoul?”
Her eyes weary now, she said, “Raoul is just a sad man caught up in a crappy environment. Who knows what he would be like if his life had been normal? I don’t like what he has become. I can’t hurt him though. I . . . I can’t make him pay that way. If only I could break out of the cage I’ve grown into. I wish that for Raoul, too.”
“So as you judge.” Judgment tipped his hat, turned, and walked away.
A fat brown envelope lay on the sidewalk where Judgment had stood. The woman bent cautiously forward and lifted it from the ground. Inside was a stack of crisp one hundred dollar bills, all right side up, and facing the same direction.
She stopped counting at ten thousand dollars. Destiny had certainly changed her life.
***
Raoul awoke in a large cold room hanging by his arms from chains connected to the ceiling. The room smelled of vomit, feces, and putrid meat. He swallowed to keep the bile down as it rose up in the back of his throat.
His last thoughts were of talking to a strange man. Someone that he would not normally become engaged in a conversation with. He couldn’t help himself though. The man had approached him, and Raoul had been compelled to answer his questions.
Raoul’s feet barely touched the floor. His arms were becoming numb from the blood struggling to flow its way up. He twisted himself around and looked about the room.
A chair and a mirror were to one side of a wall. A table with industrial tools and what looked like surgical instruments to his right, a rusty door behind him. The concrete floors were stained in black and auburn, and felt greasy under his feet.
The door creaked open. He spun around in hopes of salvation. It was the well-dressed man, the last person he had spoken to.
His immediate reaction was to curse and demand to be freed. But something about the presence of the man made him hesitate. It wasn’t fear. It was uncertainty. The man emanated a power Raoul felt he wasn’t worthy to challenge. He hung silent, and waited for the man to make his move.
Judgment made his way from behind Raoul, set a bottle of water on the table next to a claw hammer, and stood before his victim as he lit a fresh cigarette. He took a deep draw as the match lit the end, and blew out a stream of smoke toward Raoul.
“You may speak,” he said.
The grip of reverence loosened enough for Raoul to find his voice. “Let me down from here. Please.”
Judgment lifted his eyebrows. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that. You are here by your own decision.”
Raoul heard the words, but they made no sense. He didn’t ask to come here, yet there was a connection to the conversation with the man and the reason why he was here. What was it that happened before he blacked out?
He remembered he and the man were talking. Talking about problems—business problems. A territorial dispute with a Russian rival spilled over into his business district. The man had taken hold of his hand and his mind was transported back and viewed the Russian’s life growing up. When his mind returned to the present, the man had asked him to make a choice.
Raoul’s face lit up as he remembered. “Wait. You got it wrong. I said I wanted to make that Ruskie son-of-a-bitch suffer and die. He’s messing things up for me big time. What’s all of this? Why am I here? I ain’t done nothing to deserve this.”
Judgment searched the implements on the table and chose a pair of tweezers and surgical scissors. “I’ve already told you why you are here.”
He reached with the tweezers and pulled Raoul’s right eyelid forward and snipped it off with the scissors. Through the cries of protest, he repeated the action on the left side.
“There. Now you won’t be able to miss any of the excitement,” Judgment said.
“You’re crazy! Don’t do this. Please!” Raoul’s bowels quivered and cold fear made his whole body tingle. Why was this man doing this? What reason did he give? He couldn’t remember. “Why? Just tell me why?”
“So as you judge. So shall you be judged.” Judgment selected a stainless steel surgical knife from the table and started working on his next creation.
The End
The Art of War
“Yes sir. There ain’t nothing better in life than sipping on a cold beer and catching trout while the Arkansas River flows betwixt your legs,” Mark said, pulling his beer hugger free from his fishing-vest with the sound of the Velcro anchor ripping away. Taking several gulps, he mashed the hugger back securely in place. “Ah, beer—urp—best drink ever. Ain’t that right, Joe?”
“Right Mark, best drink ever,” Joe said. The best way to keep his brother from rambling while fishing was to answer as quickly as possible. The river was up just over their knees. The cool water helped counter the heat of the noon sun, and sang a serene tune as it rolled across the rocks heading downstream.
“You think I can get a patent on my invention? The fishing-vest beer holder?”
“I don’t know, Mark. All you did was glue a patch of Velcro loops on your hugger and sewed in the hooks on your vest. I don’t think you can get a patent on that.”
“Well, that ain’t right. Maybe I could get some Chinese company to make them for cheap, and I could sell them over the internet. You’d buy one of these if you saw how great it worked, wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know. Heck, I guess I would just do the same thing you did and make one of my own. Unless I needed a new fishing-vest and the hugger came with it.”
Traveling down the river’s edge, a creature as old as man himself prowled the boundaries of its territory. It walked upright like man. Its body was covered in reddish brown hair thicker than that of a grizzly and towered over nine feet in height. Its massive feet left deep impressions in the soft earth. Fallen limbs crunched under its eight hundred pounds of weight. Folklore gave it the name ‘Bigfoot,’ but it knew of itself only by what its natural instincts taught. It only thought of itself as Hunter.
Mark whisked his fly back over his shoulder, and then
sprang it forward. The bait soared through the air and landed a good distance downriver. He smiled proudly at his cast, and celebrated with another quick sip of beer.
Joe loved getting away from the concrete and steel of civilization and becoming one with nature. Sure, he enjoyed fishing. It brought peace to his troubled soul. Fishing though, wasn’t a competition for him as it was for Mark. Mark was younger by three years and always felt he had to outdo his older brother.
Joe never gave Mark a reason to feel inferior while they were growing up. In fact, he went out of his way to do just the opposite. Mark took it as a sign of weakness whenever Joe let him win at things. But Joe didn’t have enough of a competitive spirit to care in the long run, an attitude that he carried with him into adulthood. He didn’t care about winning or losing, as long as he had a steady paycheck, a place to live, food to eat, and the company of a woman every couple of months.
A horrid smell broke Joe from the spell of the babbling river. “Good grief, Mark, that smells like you ate something dead. Try to fart downwind next time.”
“What? I didn’t do nothing. I don’t smell . . . whew, what is that? That would gag a maggot. Must be an animal carcass floating down the river.”
A trout nibbled on the fly. Mark gave it a little play and waited patiently for it to hit, then pulled back on the rod to set the hook. “Whoo-wee, got me a big’un.” He reeled in his prize catch with a grin smeared ear-to-ear across his face. “Look-it at what I caught! Look-it what I caught! This one is as big as Jaws!” Mark looked back at Joe.
Joe smiled and gave him a nod of approval, reeled his fly back in, and trudged through the water over to Mark.
With his prize within reach, Mark lifted the line by the fish’s mouth and held it out of the water. “See, it’s as big as I thought it was! That there brown trout must be twenty inches long!”
For once, Joe thought Mark had a right to brag. “I don’t know if it’s twenty inches, but it certainly is close to it.” He unhooked the fish and held it parallel to the water with both hands for Joe to admire.
“Guess who’s coming for dinner? I think it’s you, big boy,” Mark said.
“I’ll go put it in the ice chest. I feel a cramp and I’m going to find a place to take a dump,” Joe said.
“Toss me a beer first, mine’s empty.” Mark filled his empty can with water and threw it to the riverbank.
Joe’s amble out of the water splooshed with each step as he headed for land. Once on the bank, he went to the camp area a few yards away under the shade of a large willow tree.
The latest addition of their catch brought the number of trout up to nine. They were well over their daily limit. He hoped no one from Wildlife and Fisheries would come snooping by later.
After putting the fish in the cooler, Joe opened the other ice chest and groped through the ice for another beer.
The awful smell blew his way again, this time the hairs on the back of his neck started to tingle. An ancient instinct triggered by the scent of a wild animal told him to run, but the reasoning of civilized man forced him to turn and look behind first.
The mighty behemoth stood motionless beside a water oak, looking like a strange creature from a circus sideshow. At first Joe thought it was a stuffed gorilla set in place by some prankster, maybe looking to scare a couple of fishermen and uploading the event on the internet after filming it.
Bigfoot curled its upper lip, revealing two-inch long canine teeth.
Primitive fear trumped rational thought in a heartbeat. Joe turned and made three steps before the creature overtook him and had him face down in the sand. The breath heaved out of him. He didn’t have any air to scream with the weight of Bigfoot’s knee pressing down on his back, breaking ribs, and crushing his lungs.
The beast reached underneath Joe’s face with its clawed hand and pulled his head back until it snapped. Joe’s face froze in a death stare, contorted by pain and terror. The Bigfoot grabbed Joe’s head with both hands and ripped it from his shoulders. It held it by the hair and let it dangle like a mesmerizing jewel as blood drained from an artery to the ground.
“Hey Joe, what the hell is taking you so long with my beer?” Mark called after making another cast, keeping his eyes downriver.
The Bigfoot looked at the fresh meat from his kill and at the interloper fishing its waters. It chose to wait to fill its belly.
“Joe! Beer! Joe!” Mark called.
Something wet from above hit him on the cheek, and then something splashed down beside him. He wiped the wet off his face. It felt warm and thicker than water. He thought a bird had crapped on him.
It wasn’t white like bird poop. It looked more like blood. What had landed next to him was Joe’s head. Its eyes locked to infinity as it bobbled in the river’s currents heading away.
Mark watched in disbelief until the foul stench that plagued him earlier made him turn around.
The Bigfoot let out a yell that echoed off the surrounding mountains. Mark’s bowels quivered. He turned and saw the angry monster with its arms spread overhead standing on the bank. Its mouth open wide showing all of its large pointed teeth.
Mark dropped his rod into the river and crouched in the water until it was up to his nose. In his own mind, he thought it might be possible to hide from the ferocious beasts, but lost hope of that when it left the bank and waded into the water toward him.
Large rocks on the opposite bank presented an obstacle. Mark determined that the Bigfoot could catch up to him easily if he took that direction. He sprang up from the water and trudged down the middle of the river as fast as he could move his legs through the binding water.
The Bigfoot maintained a steady pace using its wide stride to gain on its intended victim.
The water became progressively deeper and the river wider until it was up to Mark’s chest. At that point swimming for it became his best option. The currents picked up speed the farther down river he went. Soon, Mark found the Bigfoot no longer gaining on him.
Mark chanced a look behind and saw the large beast giving up the chase now that the river was chest high on it. He stopped swimming, but the currents continued to carry him farther downstream. “What’s the matter, you ugly stinker? Can’t swim? No wonder you smell so bad.”
The Bigfoot ignored the human’s taunts and waded out of the water to the bank.
“You go ahead and run! I’m coming back! I’m coming back to find you. To hunt you down. I’m going to have your head hanging from my wall for what you did to my brother.”
Once on dry land the Bigfoot continued downriver at his normal stride.
Mark needed to put more distance between himself and the beast, and pushed himself harder. He had no idea how fast it could travel. He needed to get far enough away that he was out of sight, so that he could double back and make his escape in the truck.
The currents carried him even faster. He had to struggle to keep his head above water as the turbulence pushed and pulled at him. Just when he thought he had regained some control, his head smashed into the side of a boulder hidden just below the surface of the water.
Mark went under and was so disoriented that he didn’t know up from down. His lungs ached for air as he spun flaying his arms trying to regain his bearings. He finally righted himself when his feet came in contact with the mud below. With no time left to spare, he franticly pushed upward and dogpaddled to the surface as fast as he could.
He broke into the pure air of the river valley as his world began to fade to gray. As he struggled to keep his head above water, the river carried him still faster.
Mark found himself bobbing like a cork helplessly caught in the rage of the white waters. He needed to get to dry ground or his luck was bound to give out, and he would find himself as a victim of another boulder.
The river turned and the roar from the water became even louder. Mark looked up to a startling horizon. He was heading toward more rocks and what appeared to be the end of the river.
End of the river
? he thought. Then realized, waterfall!
He tried with his last remaining strength to swim to the bank, but the white waters easily guided him into another huge boulder. The impact sounded like a raw piece of meat hitting a wall, with the crackle of bones crunching.
Another boulder brought him to a momentary halt. Darkness drifted over his consciousness. His body went limp, no longer resisting the mighty flow of the river.
Mark went over the waterfall, his body dashed on the rocks below, and flung into the air like a ragdoll as the water churned and bubbled underneath.
The Bigfoot watched him go over the edge. Satisfied the enemy that invaded its territory would never return, it needed to get back to the kill. Human was by far the sweetest of all flesh the land had to offer. It wouldn’t be long before the other predators in the woods would pick up the scent and attempt to challenge it for a piece of fresh meat.
***
The thin air in the mountains surrounding Arkansas Valley made Lauren’s head ache. For once, she missed the thick, humid Louisiana air she was accustomed to breathing. She held her hand up to block the sun and was relieved to see Cecil, the climb team leader, hammer in his final anchor into the rough surface of the face of the mountain.
“Okay, guys. I’ll be on top soon and anchor in the top-rope. You’ll be able to make your ascent quicker. Keep your head in the climb and don’t get sloppy,” Cecil called down.
Jenny, the Second, took a moment to look down at Abe, Donna, and Lauren below, and gave them a thumb-up gesture. The three responded in kind.
She was angry with herself for letting Cecil talk her into letting him take the Lead position. She estimated that she could have shaved an hour off the climb. They could already be on top and be having a glass of lemonade to celebrate.
“Climbing,” Cecil called to Jenny.
“I have you on belay, climb on.” Jenny pushed a few feet of rope through the belaying anchor to give Cecil enough slack to make his climb.
Mind Hemorrhages: Dark Tales of Misery and Imagination Page 18
