Alienated

“Give me everything you’ve got,” demanded a voice weathered by the winds of time.

The Stevi B’s employee looked the sunflower stalk-limbed man up and down in confusion. “Sir, aren’t you a little old to have ghost peppers?”

“Do I look like I care? Give me the damn peppers! If I get sent to the ER, I get sent to the ER. I don’t have much life left, buckaroo.” Although his physical appearance was weak and frail, John Charles Lanier exuded an aura of strength. The young employee, now very unsettled, wrote down the order and went to have it processed. John turned around and sat at the handicap table though there was nothing to earn him a place there.

John heard the doorbell ring and lifted his head to judge the stupidity of the next person who walked in and was met with the sight of a young mother. Then something happened that John dreaded with every fiber of his being: they made eye contact. The young woman smiled a cheesy and disgusting smile at John. Get your baby away from me, woman. Keep your munchers to yourself, he thought. John scowled and looked away - furthering his reputation as the physical embodiment of an eye roll.

The woman sat down at the table across from John, presumably to wait for someone to arrive before ordering, and rocked her baby back and forth in its stroller. John looked at the baby with contempt, repulsed by the snot covering its nose. The mother picked it up to clean its face, and it turned to look at John. Great, now I have to smile at the baby. This is revolting. I came in here for a pizza, not people. Reluctantly, John stretched his lips over his mouth, revealing his teeth to communicate joy and happiness. When the baby saw him, it screamed. You and me both, kiddo.

As he waited for a mediocre pizza, not paying for his meal, the smell of grease and grime took John back to a much darker time. Back to crouching in alleyways with his rifle, waiting for his unlucky target to walk into the crosshairs of doom. Back to slinking through murky streets to get his next order of business from behind Papa Renaldo’s Pizzeria. Back to swimming through oceans of guilt and shame for the sole purpose of saving the one he loved, only to be paid for his work in death.

Before John could retreat into the depths of his mind even more, he felt a dark and threatening presence enter Stevi B’s. The threatening presence had a name, but John didn’t care enough to learn it. John knew this presence was a scared and desperate teenager, and he knew what a concealed rifle looked like; he’d had to conceal all sorts of weapons back in his day. John knew he was going to regret his next words, but that didn’t stop him from saying them. In fact, that’s what drove him to say them. “Young man, you got a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

The young man, now flustered and stammering, pulled out his automatic rifle, causing an uproar of fright. He wasn’t expecting to be called out by an old man. The employee tasked with delivering pizza to John failed. Instead of going to John, the pizza fell to the floor with the terrified shriek of the employee.

“Are you here to send me to assisted living?” John poked the bear again, hoping maybe this one would be man enough to pull the trigger. “I told them they’d have to take me with force, but I didn’t think they’d actually do it.” John stood, slowly moving toward the attacker, and laughed. “Oh! You’re here to rob the place! Y’know, it’s really quite easy, you just have to scare the cashier and walk away, but it’s no surprise that a stupid little whippersnapper like you couldn’t figure that out.”

“Shut up, old man!” cried the teenager, visibly shaking as he pointed the gun at John. “Shut up or I’ll shoot!”

“Do it, you won’t.” John inched closer, praying that there was a fire hot enough to kill behind the boy’s tear-brimmed eyes. “I’ve shot men and women between the eyes without blinking and you can’t even shoot an old geezer with one foot in the grave in the heart? Pathetic.”

“I’m not pathetic!” A single tear escaped the young man’s eyes as he raised the gun to aim at John’s head. John’s eyes fell to the tip of the rifle, praying the next thing he would see would be a flash. He knew the young man needed another push to drive him over the edge. John hoped this boy would actually shoot instead of hurling empty threats, but John knew he needed to say something more. He searched his mind to find words, and he needed them quickly. He didn’t know if the three he chose would work, but it never hurt to try.

“Then prove it.”

John heard a loud gunshot and then a small ringing in the back of his head. He saw nothing until a scene faded into the darkness of the backs of John’s eyelids. It was a parade; a small moment that at first would only be remembered by those present but would become a moment that would live in history books for years to come. As John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his beloved wife Jacqueline rode down the street, John Lanier saw them through very small crosshairs. He pulled the trigger and the scene changed. The ringing grew in his mind, and the parade faded from cars to grey masses and finally to darkness.

“You can’t say no to me, John!” A voice rang out among the inky black mass of his thoughts – the voice that once belonged to John’s commanding officer. “It’s his life, or it’s hers.” A picture was brought through the darkness. The figure of a young bride and her groom, smiling on their wedding day. John’s thoughts were filled with one word: Willa. He saw them dancing, he saw them laughing, being utterly in love, and he saw her being taken away.

Willa’s face was no longer smiling. It was full of pain, of tears, and of suffering. He had to do what they said, or they’d hurt her. He had to kill who they said to, or they’d kill her. He had to lie because if he didn’t, there was no way to predict what they would do to her. They kept promising that he’d see her soon, but he never did. Very conveniently, the day after shoulders that had seen the weight of the world were let go from the Organization’s control, her body was found. They said she’d died in her sleep. That she went peacefully, and that she was happy when she left, but John saw his wife just as she had been the day they took her: in pain, in tears, suffering, and young.

Five words that John had been terrified of for years came falling out of his lips, almost like they had been practiced. “It was all for nothing.” Eyes that had been dry for decades slowly and then violently became a river, and a neck that had come close to the blade too many times bowed to the anvil of time. Words that John had almost forgotten how to say came clumsily tumbling out of his mouth. “I’m sorry.” With those small words, the pictures went away and John’s mind was filled with the darkness of his soul.

It was his fault. He hadn’t done enough. If he’d done what they wanted quicker or done more of what they wanted, she’d still be here. If he had looked harder, if he had looked longer. If he had searched just a little bit more, he would have found her. They wouldn’t have taken her from him if he’d just had a spine. Maybe if he’d fought back the day they told him to kill JFK. Maybe if he hadn’t given in to rig the votes for Nixon or leak some information to Loose-Lipped Laura from the office. Maybe if he’d done something to fight for her.

In the midst of all the black, a light appeared. Small and distant at first, but slowly it grew bigger and brighter until John felt as if he were flying toward it. As he approached, a figure appeared in the middle, as if they were the source. John’s vision grew clearer than it had been in years, as if he was seeing things with new eyes. He looked toward the figure in disbelief, sure that it was impossible for him to recognize it. He squinted, a beam of hope piercing the lump of scar tissue John called a heart. His hopes were confirmed when a melodic voice that had not graced his ears in decades said words John had only ever dreamed of hearing.

“I forgive you, my dear.”

As John pulled his wife into his arms, he felt complete and whole. He felt something he hadn’t felt in over twenty years. John felt relief, and he was happy. All the walls he had built to protect himself from connections with people fell down and the pain that had made its home in his heart finally moved out. The only thing John had wanted to happen for decades finally happened; he was reunited with his Willa.