Reckoning

“Well,” the voice booms, “What do you think, the elevator up or a quick push and let you fall?”

This has to be a trick question, afterall I have arrived in the afterlife, and I doubt I get a say in my plans anymore.

My lack of a verbal response causes the old man seated at the desk to shake his head. “So no pleading then?” He says, “Alright then, my name is Tobias and it’s my job to get folks moved along to their final destination.”

Tobias looks like every cartoon of Father Time I had ever seen, long white hair and beard, wearing a simple white robe. There is nothing around me but this old man and the wooden desk he sits at. The room we are in is a solid white cube. No fake potted plants, no inspirational posters, not even a window. Just an old man, a wooden desk, and the brass scale that sets upon it.

“Let us proceed,” Tobias interjects into my curious thoughts of this scale that seems to hold an ominous vibe. “To begin, your name is Dane Winters, ending age thirty-two, and your profession by all appearance was working as a contract killer.”

Never thought that is how my life would be summed up so succinctly when the end came. “I am not sure what you want me to say,” I ask Tobias. “Is this a predestined thing, I am sure my ticket is for a trip down and not up, so let’s not waste either of our time.”

A chuckle escapes from the wizened old man. “Slow down, slow down, Nothing is set in stone. Your record there on earth speaks for itself, but what we don’t have is the circumstances, your reasons for those choices. That is where you get a say.” He taps the brass scale resting in front of him and leans back and folds his hands together.

I don’t fully understand what he means by that. “Are you saying I get to plead my case?”

“There you go!” Tobias exclaims. “I am just a mediator, not here to decide anything. We each will present our cases to the scale and it will weigh your life. I will introduce three separate events from your life and after each one you will get to counter with your choices during said event. The scale will weigh in, no pun intended, after each of us speaks.”

This seems a little like the Egyptians were on to something in their mythology, my deeds are about to be weighed against The Feather of Truth.

Tobias laughs, “I bet I know what you are thinking, Maat and the Feather of Truth. But it’s nothing so gruesome as weighing your heart. You get to explain yourself in the three worst things you were a part of. This is how things have been handled long before people dreamed up Anubis or Ammit the Devourer.”

Three events? How in the world could they nail down the wrong I have committed to the three worst. The last ten years of my life has been an ocean of blood and pain inflicted and received.

“Let’s begin,” Tobias says, his mannerisms have taken on a business-like demeanor. “The first event is from seven years ago when you murdered Richard Langhurt. Along with Mr. Langhurt, three of his bodyguards were killed in the explosion.”

I remember that day well, Langhurt was supposedly untouchable, the contract would be hard to carry out. An evil man and one made even more paranoid by the severity of the crimes he ordered inflicted on people. His drug empire was founded on car bombs and torture. He rarely ventured out from his beachfront mansion. His wealth gained through filthy methods had ensured his safety behind the army of mercenaries he employed and the state of the art security that surrounded the mansion.

For weeks, I surveilled him looking for openings. The beach in front of his house was private and secluded, but the waters out past the breakers were a great place to fish and study. I was careful to charter different boats each time and alter my appearance so anyone watching out would take little interest in a newcomer each day. Every morning he liked to go down to the beach and drink his morning coffee flanked by bodyguards.

The only thing that could make it onto that beach without being accosted were the seashells that washed in each night with high tide. The idea snaked its way into my head and I worked out the details carefully. I spent the next two days procuring what I needed. The following morning as Langhurt relaxed on the beach drinking his coffee and plotting new ways to get his drugs to destroy innocent families I watched from offshore.

With no feelings in my heart I lifted the detonator and sent the signal to end his life. Among the hundreds of seashells that had washed upon the shore overnight were the dozens I had swam in and placed in the darkness. The deadly explosives hidden inside the hollow space of the conch shells were enough to end his reign of evil.

Tobias looked at me knowing that while he was waiting for my answer I had returned to the memory of that day and I had no regrets.

“You may explain,” Tobias prodded me for a response.

“He was a bad man,” my response triggers emotion in me. Not regret, but that of a reconciliation with what I had done.

Tobias waits and when I have nothing more to add he says, “Very well.”

He is quiet for a few moments and then on its own the scales balance shifts down on the left side. I lean in and look at the side weighing the heaviest, engraved on the surface are flames. Tobias nods with remorse.

“To continue,” Tobias says, “the second event that was selected is one in which you committed the murder of four men in a cabin. Would you care to explain your actions in this event?”

Another contract that would require a special touch. The four men were part of a ring of human traffickers. I didn’t know their individual names, but there was definitive proof they were responsible for the kidnapping and smuggling of over two hundred women and children. Innocents who would go on to live in unspeakably horrifying situations. The law had failed to be able to touch them.

I watched them and gathered my own proof, nothing that would be admissible in a court of law, but irrefutable in the eyes of any decent person. The group liked to gather for a weekly poker game at the cabin. The cabin was in an isolated area of woods on private property. The card game happened like clockwork every Saturday night. Beers, pizza, a blazing fireplace and they would swap stories in a vile competition.

Access to the cabin was easy. The hardest part of this contract was getting my hands on the right material to carry out what I had in mind for these depraved men. Everything came together over a Friday night and all was in place for the poker game the next day. The police report a week later said how the case was under investigation, but I knew how those men had met their violent sputtering end. I could imagine how amongst the dark talk and laughter there gathered around the roaring fireplace the ampules of Phosgene I drilled and hid in the firewood ruptured and filled the air of the cabin. The deadly hate of that consuming agent choking the life from four deserving men.

“They contributed nothing but misery to the world,” I tell Tobias. I am callous in my response and wonder if that will be a strike against me.

The left scale drops even more. Tobias, who I am sure is supposed to be impartial through these proceedings, seems to be sad that things don’t appear to be going in my favor.

“That’s quite a body count, Dane Winters,” he says nervously. He has one more event to bring up and the scales are definitely not showing my favor. “This last event is the one that brought you here to the afterlife. Harold Thomas was a widely respected billionaire businessman, a pillar of society, and a philanthropist. You took his life in the same event that cost you yours.”

The final piece in my ten year puzzle was getting to the man I felt was most responsible for it all. Harold Thomas was a man with two sides. His public one helped people with his charitable contributions, but it was just a cover for his dark side. This corrupted persona was the real Harold Thomas and was responsible for thousands of deaths.

Thomas held court over drug dealers, street gangs, murderers, thieves, and human traffickers. He was the real power behind an unseen unified criminal syndicate. The murder of many innocent people could be traced to the scourge he employed. Innocent people in the wrong place at the wrong time. The contract to reach him would be the hardest and I knew my final. The study of this target took a year to plan and put into place.

Harold Thomas had an expensive car habit. His private collection was unrivaled. I learned what he had in it and more importantly what he didn’t. I ensured that his path would cross mine while I was out for a drive in the 1977 Triumph Spitfire. The look in his eyes was instant greed to obtain this car. He made an obscene cash offer on the spot and my only condition is that he let me drive him back to my house to grab the title to make it all legal.

His security detail objected strongly, but Harold Thomas with a nod toward me and my family man appearance said sarcastically to them he thought it would be ok and they could follow behind. He planned after dropping me off to drive his new prize home. We got our drive underway and I aimed the Spitfire up the roads into the canyonlands.

The curvy road rose higher and higher above the city stretched out far below. Harold was excited to add this new item to his collection and chattered away. I told him we were close to our destination and asked him to reach down and grab the item down by his feet.

He lifted the small blanket up off the floorboard and looked at me curiously. Open it, I prompted him. He pulled back the corners of the blanket and looked at the photograph in the gold frame. The smiling woman and baby in the picture focused me into what I needed to do. My wife and daughter I tell him, as he looks past the frame at the baby blanket with a stain on it. A red stain. Before he can question or protest I send the car off the road and plunge down the three hundred foot drop off.

Tobias waits for my explanation for this latest event. He seems saddened for what is to come, as if sensing there is more to this story also. “Here is your opportunity,” he says to me.

I am afraid the balances might swing the other way if he knows the truth of it all now at the end. “No reason, he was just another contract.”

The scale bottoms out on the left, a trip to the hot place it is.

Tobias asks, “Was the money worth it?”

“The money?” I responded.

“The money you made as a contract killer, was it worth it here in the end?” Tobias explains.

I smile, “There was no contract for money in this. It was a contract between a husband and father to bring reckoning to those who took his wife and child.”

Tobias is in shock and says, “You could have saved yourself, if you told the entire story.”

“I am not finished with them yet, sending them to the afterlife was just the beginning, their suffering is not at an end,” I tell him.

“But you could have been reunited with your wife and child.”

I lock eyes with the old man, “I still will be. Once I have ended their existence entirely you can be sure I will claw my way back here to you and once that happens there will be nothing stopping me from going to them.”