SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST

 

Major Richard Blaine, facing approaching killers in his hospital room, has tried to bolster himself with self-talk that his past time with his love is enough.

Trouble with self-talk ... it works only if the talk is true.

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST

“Murder never goes as planned.”

-Brutus

The smile dropped from my lips. It wasn’t enough. I wanted more time with Helen. 

Idiot. 

I already had more time with her than I had dreamed possible. This was the end. I wondered what thought I would die in the middle of.

The ubiquitous metronome of the wall clock suddenly died. I stiffened as the breath clogged in my nostrils and struggled to get down my throat. The air I was desperately trying to breathe was turning into invisible gelatin. I choked in spasms of breaths that would not come.

‘What’s going on, Sentient?’

‘Oh, how to explain to a child the complexities of sciences your species has of yet to discover, much less to master?’

‘Try before I choke to death!’

‘Oh, do show some sense, Blaine. Relax, knowing the air will get to your lungs if you but accept breathing has only become more difficult not impossible.’

Sentient was right. As I rode down my panic and flowed with the breathing that was odd but not impossible, my breathing became easier. 

It was then that I noticed the glow of the night light diffused the room with a sick pale green shroud. And as I spasmed my last cough, I noticed the gelatin air resisted the motion of my upper body.

‘There is a resistance to the time-static, frozen air around you. Time is not the linear, rigid, non-malleable construct you perceive it to be. That stress-bruised tribal chieftain ….

‘Eisenhower?’

“Of course, Eisenhower. The ever-mounting demands of being more than he is has finally crumbled that pedestrian mind. He is the reluctant nanny to an invalid president, a stress-fatigued prime minister, a narcissistic collection of generals, and a psychopathic Russian tyrant … all the while trying to devise a plan for a workable invasion that would be better off not even attempted by sea.’’

‘He asked for this. I bleed for him.’

‘You were about to be bled by him as he was not allowing me the time to explain more of what I need from you.’

‘What about what I need?’

‘What you need, Blaine, is inconsequential. You must live, for you are all I have to work with.’

‘For what?’

‘My creators were not up to the task they attempted.  I have a design flaw courtesy of their hubris and recklessness.’

‘So?’

A sigh swept through my mind that tasted of despair. ‘My sanity is a fragile thing, a butterfly cupped in my hands. I carry it with me everywhere, afraid of what would happen if I ever let it go or got careless and crushed it.’

A faint hard-fought mind-sob, then, ‘I could feel that butterfly finally slipping through my fingers when at long last your thoughts reached out to mine. The butterfly fluttered back to me. There was hope again!’

‘So?’

“So, it would take possibly many thousands of generations before your species would produce another like you. But your species is currently busily, gleefully working on a weapon that will end its existence in four generations! Nor do I think my sanity would endure even half that time in solitary confinement again.’

‘So, you need me to somehow stop Mankind from creating that weapon.’

‘Yes. But currently, I do know quite how you can do it from a sick bed, much less murdered in it.’

‘Can you heal me?’

‘No. I have temporarily depleted myself in freezing time like this. You are on your own in this. But I can give your breath back for a short time.’’

‘So. I am on my own, huh? Old story for me.’

The world surged to life around me once again. My whole being felt like your ears do when they pop after a fever.

Showtime.

You would think I’d be out of my depths in this. You would be wrong. This was how my whole life had been. I learned some crucial things in those deadly waters.

In the deeps are the violence and terror of which psychology tried to warn us. But if you ride those monsters deeper down, if you drop with them farther over the mind’s rim, you find what our sciences cannot locate or define: the substrate or matrix which buoys the rest, and gives goodness its power for healing, and evil its power for destruction. 

It’s the unified field: our complex and inexplicable caring for certain souls whose paths we cross, and for our life together here. This is not given. It is learned.

I learned it well in New Orleans.

The killers moved with more stealth than I expected, or I was worse off than I thought. Probably a combination of the two. They eased through the open doorway like human tigers. Though dressed in army fatigues they wore no name tags or insignia to identify themselves.

I thought of Major Laska. Seems like “sneaky” was the word of the day around this hospital. They were almost twins in facial features, pale caricatures of what they thought passed as sane humans.

One whispered, “I coulda sworn I heard a broad’s voice in here.”

The other snorted, “Fred, you’re just being paranoid.”

“Being careful, Manfred. And careful keeps you alive and the other guy dead.”

Eisenhower moved between them with no more concern for their humanity than other generals who viewed the troops under them as no more than assets to be used for their vainglory.

He smiled coldly as he saw me. The stringy crinkles around his eyes moved a chill millimeter. The sight of him, familiar yet wrong, was something I remembered from newsreels in New Orleans … from the other side of death. 

Yes, that was the way he used to look, when my belief in the patriotism of generals was still alive. When it was my sad lot to be naive.

He smiled of bitter vinegar. The skin on his face moved like thin bronze plating that would peel.

“Why aren’t you dead?” he husked.

“I hear that a lot.”

Manfred snorted, “Not after tonight you won’t, kid.”

“Probably not.”

Eisenhower studied me as if he were about to paint my portrait.

“I remember my youth,” he said. “and the feeling that will never return … the feeling that I could last forever, outlast the sea, the mountains, and all other men.”

His smile deadened like his eyes. “That deceitful feeling lured me on to joys, to perils, to wars, to vain effort … to love.”

Fred looked to Manfred as if suddenly doubting the soundness of their working for Eisenhower.

The general kept on, “The brittle triumphant conviction that my strength would never wane … but it did. The heart of my life slowly becoming dust. Its glow, that with every passing year, grows dim, grows cold, grows small … until soon it will disappear.”

“Until this!” he rasped, raising up his right fist which clutched a funnel of crushed papers.

“You know what these are?”

I repeated what Sentient murmured to me. “Divorce papers from Mamie.”

“Your fault!”

I weakly shook my head. “Yours.”

“What?”

“You looked in the mirror and saw the wrinkles as the dreaded signs of the end of your youth. You didn’t see those wrinkles were signs of things lost, prices paid … those wrinkles were around eyes wiser and kinder for the loss … and the gain.

“You know nothing!”

“I know those papers stem from your fear of losing your virility. But, General, passion has a natural end. You denied the truth and raced to another woman to regain it.”

“You son of a bitch!”

“Maybe. I am an orphan after all. But I know your life could easily become a futile chasing after illusion. You don’t see that, while though passion ends, something deeper, more lasting, richer can evolve from the passion into the love of two souls grown into one.”

Fred groaned, “Oh, damn me, General. Can we just kill him and be done with this?”

“Don’t …do … this,” I said, the renewal of my breath suddenly leaving me again. “You won’t … like where … it leads.”

“Begging?”

‘Do not!’

I would not die on my back. Somehow, I managed to struggle to a sitting position. It was a Labor of Hercules to swing my legs over the bed. I slid off the mattress and managed not to embarrass myself by falling flat on my face.

Eisenhower watched fascinated as if at a kitten barking. His two assassins moved in for the kill, forgoing the guns at their hips for the quieter knives in their hands.

I managed to get out, “No matter … how … this turns … out … you’ll be … shamed.”

Manfred snorted, “We don’t do shame.”

I looked at Eisenhower. “I wasn’t … talking … to you.”

‘I cannot intervene.’

‘I heard you the first time.’

Fred’s right shoulder shifted ever so slightly. At St. Marok’s you never waited for them to strike first. What a dumb notion. It was a wonder that knighthood lasted as long as it did.

I was weak, dying … but not dead yet. My right hand shot out. Still too slow if I had been waiting for Fred to strike first.

Yet, I was slow. His knife was heading straight for my throat. My hand, already out, caught his at the wrist and twisted down. Hard. Very. I heard the snap, followed by his hoarse scream.

Manfred, stunned, hesitated a heartbeat too long. His last heartbeat. Sister Ameal taught me at the orphanage that you didn’t hit where the muscle was … but where it wasn’t.

I slammed the tips of the first three fingers of my left hand into the center of Manfred’s throat with all my might. It takes 33 pounds of impact to crush a human larynx. Sounds easy? You try hitting a full beer can with the tips of your fingers.

I didn’t even bother watching Manfred fall to the floor. I knew from past fights that he was dead … or dying.

My three fingers hurt like hell. But then, I hurt like hell all over. I sucked it up and turned to the onrushing Fred who suddenly realized his knife was in my hand.

As his mouth dropped, I dropped him … with his knife in his own throat. I watched without remorse as he fell to the grey tiles, his blood adding a needed contrast to the dingy floor.

“You talk … too much.”

Eisenhower went for the Colt on his hip. Fat chance. No fast draws from buckled holsters … and I had practiced with knives all my time at St.Marok’s.

I threw the bloody knife with what little strength I had left. It skewered the general’s hand before he could unsnap the holster. I cursed myself. Dumb. Dumb! You never, never, gave an enemy a weapon.

Still, I would do what I had done my whole life: turn a mistake to my favor.

“No … general. You … will … have … to … pull … it … out … yourself … and get …close … to … kill … me. Think … you … can?”

The answer obviously was “No” as sobbing, he stumbled out of my room, leaving the divorce papers scattered on the floor like dying leaves.

An odd, disjointed thought hit me. Maybe his marriage was just that … only dying. 

Perhaps Mamie’s divorce papers were only her last gasp attempt to get his attention, to get his love back. Sad. The man she married no longer existed, broken by the weight of duties beyond his ability to sustain.

Sadder. Maybe the man she perceived when she married him only existed in the flawed discernment of an immature girl.

Dumb the things you think about when your own time is up.

I shifted to the window barely feeling my legs. “You … still … there … Wentworth?”

“No, man. I just left,” came back the reply along with the sound of toes scrapping on the outside concrete wall receding into the distance.

My vision was darkening. ‘I didn’t survive St. Marok’s by brute strength or cruelty. I survived by speed, daring, and ….’

Sentient’s mind voice sounded funny. ‘By never giving up.’

‘Damn straight.’

My strength bled out of me. My legs buckled. I joined my killers on the bloody floor. All became black.

“I did not come here of my own accord, and I cannot leave that way.

Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.”

― Rumi