Turn 12
November 30, 2009
7:38 A. M.
Persephone’s Cemetery, Portland, Oregon
“Molly Mokuba Sears. 1983-2009. A kind soul with an even gentler heart.”
“How did you know? How did you know I’d kill her?”
“Gary Gozuboro Sears. 1931-1999. A legend among his peers, a hero among his family.”
“Enfant, a man need only look in one’s eyes to see the course he will travel. Your rage gave it all away.”
“Sylvester Vantel Jayden. 1974-2006. A kindly mother, a kindly sister, a kindly wife.”
“Is that so? Where are we off to next, then?”
“Your own funeral.”
“Seth Kaiba Sears. 1979- . A loving husband, an heir worthy of Carnegie.”
Cemeteries were somewhat of a conundrum for me. I had so many departed family members and friends here that it wasn’t rare for me to come at least once a month, if not once a week. Even if I felt uneasy, knowing that very quickly I’d be placed within the tomb that I had already dug out and marked for my own, I knew I had the responsibility to visit all those who I had outlived. Funny that I, the unstable invalid, would be the last one to depart.
Yet even now, as I visited my family one final time, I wasn’t sure what to do or say. I had brought flowers, or at least Pierre had; a single white rose sat upon every marker, giving at least a little more beauty to this green and dreary land on this overcast, stormy day. Within a few minutes, maybe an hour, we’d be forced to depart… but even now I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t sure what to do… and no matter how many times I said it to myself, it didn’t change. I wasn’t sure what to do.
I would have been there forever if Pierre wasn’t there.
“I’m actually surprised, mon ami. I expected a Scrooge like you to have no one to mourn.”
“Did you think I was born such an asshole? It took Jack to make me this way; it took God and Moriarty to screw me over every chance they could to make me so hardened.”
“That so?” Pierre asked, hands fidgeting in his pockets. I had begged him for at least fifteen minutes of peace before I had to deal with his blasted cigarettes; we’d gone four minutes before he began to exhibit signs of nervousness. I could only wonder how he lasted in no smoking zones.
“I didn’t end up like you. Couldn’t have been my genetics.”
“Funny boy, I might have actually been insulted if it wasn’t such an idée stupide.”
I didn’t need French to understand him, turning an orange eye his way as he stood there with his usual snide, snarky grin. “Because the chain smoking killer knows all about how religion works.”
“More than you païen. Even if I’m not as good at living it, I met the Christ. Met the Father as well. I can assure you I can strip any argument you have with the same ease a nine millimeter to the head puts a man down.”
“Then enlighten me. What was my heresy that I said?”
“Only if I get to fumer.”
“Fu what?”
Pierre actually became indignant for a moment. “Smoke you idiot!”
I sighed, waving my hand and settling for the five minutes I got. Delighted, the Frenchman reached into his never ending supply as he took out an especially long white smoke and, with the usual v of an experienced smoker, took what felt like the longest drag I’d ever seen as he held it to his lips and lit the poison. Thunder roared in the distance, the mood failing to improve, as I was forced to wait and breath this disgusting addiction.
Well, that’s exaggerating it now. Now that I had the physiology of a vampire, it seemed I no longer had the gag reflex to cough. No wonder Pierre was hooked; all of the pleasure without any of the side effects.
“Ah… mon ami, you really should consider starting the habit. Not like you have long to live anyway.”
“I can’t. It’s the principle that counts, not the end game. Better to obey than to sacrifice; at least, that’s what Samuel told Saul.”
“Which is why I’m right.”
So we were going to talk about it. Folding my arms, tense even as my father continued to relax, I eyed him up and tried to get him to at least look serious as I pressed him. “Then we’ve gone in a circle. Why am I in the wrong?”
“Pour deux raisons. First, the principle is that a man’s reaction to any given situation is ten percent circumstance and ninety percent self. Job had a worst life than you, deliberately screwed over by God and the Devil, and remained a righteous man. David was a vagabond and a hostage for most of his days, yet he remained righteous in all save for Bathsheba. Joseph was a slave and obeyed God; Moses was marked a criminal and obeyed God; Noah and Abraham were both surrounded by wickedness yet obeyed God. No matter what kind of life God gives you, you are expected to obey-”
“Even if your mom’s a crack addict and your father a child molester?”
“-Vous petit cul, let me finish!” The man cursed, his statement unfit to be translated. Shaking ash from his cigarette, the man continued “Unless you were never given the light and knowledge that pertains to doing good. A sociopath from birth can’t expected to do what’s right if he has no ability to do so; a retard will never be held accountable for accomplishing nothing in life if he wasn’t born with the intellect to make ends meet. A so called crack bébé will be forgiven if they continue the addictions of their parents, and rewarded if they don’t.
“You, capitaliste égoïste, cannot afford that same mercy. Gary provided you with all the knowledge and resources you need in life, with Alucard taking the time to ensure you’d learn anything Sears himself forgot. You and only you are accountable for you your actions, which brings is to the greater problem which we have.”
“Which is?”
“I can’t have you killing yourself.”
So just as I always did, I had somehow given away my hand. Sighing, pushing my long hair back and over my ears as the wind blew it apart, I actually had to shake my head in embarrassment as I looked to my so called dad.
“What makes you think that?”
“I have served with many a soldier, mon ami. I’ve seen dozens of men, meilleurs menteurs, break and realize that they have nothing else to live for. The slouch of the back, the dead soul in the eyes, this constant indecision like they don’t know if they want to scream or cry; if it were depression it wouldn’t be so obvious. You have logically concluded that you deserve to die, even if everything else in that head of yours doesn’t want you to.”
So it was. “And what does it matter to you if I die? You couldn’t save Molly; why do you have to save me?”
The man actually considered his response, taking another long hit off of his white and smoking vice as he let the steaming ash rise and join the gray clouds above. Another strike of lightning, another booming clap in the distance, before he looked to me again and gave a nod of his hat.
“Réponse courte? Alucard paid me to keep an eye on you and keep you going from appointment to appointment… and I don’t want to keep looking over my shoulders every five seconds to make sure you’re not slicing your wrist or something.
“Longue réponse? Suicide is an awful thing that does more damage to society than anyone could imagine. More religiously and spiritually inclined people are in tune with surroundings, detect the moral fiber and conditions of any given area and learn things that the eye cannot see.”
“You only have one. That must be especially important for you.”
“Secousse, but true. Experience and the truth has helped me become one with my spirit though, from curiosity and necessity, and now I am as in tuned with the greater universe than any prophet modern or old.
“And do you know what it tells me? Why I insist on having my tobacco here, of all places?”
“Because this is Richard’s office?”
The man might have laughed if he didn’t look so edgy. “Because this place reeks of violent atrocities. A good death is all a man can ask for, and some of the holiest
places in the world are locations where the righteous have moved on. This graveyard though, especially in this side of the country… they say rainy weather is bad for one’s psyche, and the voids in the air make that clear.”
“Voids?”
“Voids. Abysses. Black Holes. Call it whatever you want… but where a man commits suicide, there is nothing to be found. There is no love, no hatred, no sorrow or joy, no misery or pleasure. It is not grief, not drunkenness, not lust or anything else that drives a man to kill himself, no matter what either they or the story tells you… it is simply Nothing, a desire for non-existence, a wish to see all life end and never to begin again that causes a man to do the dirty deed, a hope that one dies and goes nowhere else after the grave.
“You may be tolerant of these so called atheists, but there’s a reason why a soldier says there’s no such thing as an atheist in a foxhole. Suicide is the most cowardly course of action a soldat can take in battle… yet it is an atheist’s wet dream, a fetish that their conscious and their soul that they reject try to keep them from experiencing.”
The thunder roared again, encapsulating his point just as the rain finally decided to make its appearance. Massive, large streams of water began to dance upon my face, giving me the appearance of a crying man while Pierre’s hat saved him from the same fate. Strange that it took the weather to give me the look of a man truly mourning, finally helping me appear as I felt inside.
Or as I previously felt. With renewed vigor, willing to deal with the downpour if it meant resolving things myself, I looked to Pierre in earnest and asked
“I’m doomed to die? WOLFDIE will end my life before the month’s end?”
“Tel est votre destin. If it does not kill you than I will, a minute before the new year happens.”
“Then I’ll promise to live. To live and do whatever Sherry needs me to do with the last month of my life.”
Pierre’s cigarette broke, a drop of water dousing it out and snapping it in two. Annoyed, unable to do anything else about it as long as we remained out here, the man didn’t even ask if I needed more time as he began to walk away, telling me over his shoulder
“Good, because nous autres Français détestent la pluie. It’s time to get some shelter and see her.
“It’s time to go home.”
Times of Peace: Volume 1 of the side adventures to The Mercenary's Salvation Page 53
