The Wishing Gate
“You can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
– Rabindranath Tagore
Fred Maitland followed the shrill whimperings and the click-clack of black boot heels against the wooden planks of that lake dock that stretched out over the purpling ocean. The sun was hidden behind an expanse of violet and magenta cloud curls that echoed on the surface of the water. He wished for the ability to bind his coat closer to his chest against the frosty Michigan winter, but was too busy burrowing his stiff fingers into his pockets. Hades, himself, would be hard pressed to find a way to remove those chilly digits from their snug haven of cotton cloth and fleece. It had been years since Fred had felt this cold; his body was on the verge of mutiny. He wasn’t sure he even wanted to stop it if it came to that.
A fierce shriek abruptly shifted Fred’s focus from the lack of warmth to the trio of men at the end of the dock. Two men in black coats and black pants towered over another, who was on his knees, blood splattering the dock and dribbling from his swollen lips. Fred figured one of them had kicked in his again. Then, the man on his knees started to hack, again. Fred found the sound easy to ignore.
Both the strong men were standing, facing the painted on water, and as Fred approached he could hear them.
“You know – Malcolm – this is kind of like in all those pirate movies when they make the guys walk the plank.” The man on the right spoke, excitement evident even in his low voice. Fred often forgot how young Jim was, but his voice laden with all the fantasies of youth it was remarkably hard not to remember his age.
“Girls, Jim.” Malcolm’s voice was rough like sandpaper, and Fred found the scratchy hum of it comforting. Something about the man’s brute presence made him less tetchy.
“What?”
Fred watched as the kid shifted from one foot to the other. The third, forgotten, man was still bent in the attempt to reach the fetal position, as if that would spare him.
“Girls, Jim, they don’t make no man walk the plank, let them girls do it. Quislings they just shoot.”
“Really, what a waste.” The kid pulled at his moustache, and frowned. “About the girls that is.”
Malcolm’s lips twitched upwards, and grooved smile lines appeared around his mouth, he shot the kid grin. “Indeed.”
Fred was all but level with Malcolm and Jim, the man at their feet heaving, his chest undulating, breaths coming in short little bursts. Fred could see the blood glistening on the man’s fingers, and the way it blotted against his skin made Fred grim. Suddenly, seeing the circular crimson imprints against skin and wood, and hearing the breathing gurgling sounds emancipating themselves from purpled, swollen lips, and smelling, tasting the ripe, acrid stench on his tongue, made him want to violently wretch. Fred settled for scowling.
He nodded at the two men, Malcolm clapped a hand on Jim’s shoulder and silently they sauntered back the way they came, leaving Fred alone with the man, their black boot heels clacking against the wooden planks of the dock, a harsh sound fitting right in with the rest.
Fred grasped the collar of the man, feeling the fine threads of the now-mottled button down shirt; the urge to rip the shirt was like an exquisite spike of heated pleasure, intense, superior to any thing he had felt so far. He dug his blunt nails into the man’s neck instead, forcing the body under his hands upright. It was soft and pliable under his fingers.
The cold didn’t bother Fred much now.
Blue eyes, dark, pupils dilated attempted to focus on him, and Fred studied them. Drugged out as they were they reminded him so much of another’s he could not but stare, but when he focused back of the face, he felt the cold pressing in on his chest again, some one had put the face together all wrong.
He was not supposed to feel like this – this wasn’t supposed to go like this. This was supposed to feel be anger and rage, thunderbolts and lightning, a freeing of his soul, him descending a tempest from a New Testament god.
He gouged deeper into the man’s neck feeling his nails finally break the skin. The man whimpered, his lips quivering, body twitching.
Fred felt the familiar feeling of violence curl and twist in his belly, vehemence spiked: why should he allow those eyes a minute of his time?
The blood slicked his fingers, and Fred forced the body under them to the dock below. It slumped. The tendrils of resentment for this man hooked into him, and Fred grasped his chin, encoding his bloody prints on the man’s clean-shaven cheek.
In one last defiant struggle the man forced his eyes open, his lips pressed harshly together, jaw tightened like a vice.
Fred bowed so that his lips were closed to the man’s ear. “Why him?”
The man opened his mouth as if to speak, but nothing came forth, the only sounds were the mewling as he tried to work his bloated tongue. Finally, the words came between the hacks of blood. Fred absently wondered how much blood loss could a body stand before falling into the abyss.
“Because he asked me to.”
Because he asked me to. It was as if Mjolnir collided with his chest, shattering consciousness into a thousand little pieces, just like the stars in the universe. Donnerschlag. Thor's strike. Because… Fred couldn’t even wrap his brain around that statement. A violent no stuck to his lips. This man as liar, as well as a thief. Lies.
He wrenched the head upwards. “Don’t lie to me.” He hissed, the anger, back now, a searing pleasure.
The man’s eyelids fluttered, his long lashes dark against his pale face. “Lie…never lie.” Blood trickled from his mouth, as he tried to speak again.
“No more lies.” Fred hissed again, but the man did not respond.
Then, just as Fred itched to crush the wretched soul, he reached into his jacket pocked and pulled out a brittle envelope, and weakly pressed the thing into Fred’s thigh. He grasped the envelope, just as he let the man collapse against him. He quickly turned the envelope upside down, a silver piece of metal plopped into Fred’s hand. A flash drive. He slipped it into his pocket.
Looking down at the man, he grimaced. Fred, then, nudged the man with the leg he was leaning against; the man was like a jellyfish, no backbone to speak of, unconscious.
Fred spun, fingers clasping the cold metal drive in his pocket, as the man fell with a thud. Without glancing back, he determinedly walked back down the long wooden, jutting dock his black boot heels click-clacking all the way.
When he reached where Malcolm and Jim were waiting, he nodded.
Several moments later, when a single gunshot resounded in his ears followed by the splash of a body hitting the water, Fred wondered why his chest had yet to thaw.
Fred sat in his plush computer chair starring at the static that shimmered above the hologram pedestal. His voice was feeble against the silence. “Lucy, end sequence.”
A computerized voice faintly girlish gawked in his ear, “Ending scenario, now, Doctor Maitland.” A pause. “Scenario ended.”
The computer screen had long since gone black, when Fred first moved, trying to put together his consciousness for a second time this week. Why was it so hard to form a cohesive thoughts, and then he remembered. He fought the urge to scream, violence warm like honey, settling in his stomach like a dragon poised to strike.
Because he asked me to. Still his brain revolted against those words. Even in front of new evidence.
When he did move, he clutched at a picture, the only antique thing in the room – something he would not be parted from. In the picture were two young men, grinning as they placed the final glass on their pint glass pyramid. Fred had been the dark-haired, young man years before, though there were more creases in his forehead and wrinkles in his skin. The other, grinning like he was Carroll’s Cheshire Cat in human form, was blonde, the bridge of his nose varnished with freckles. The eyes were blue, dark blue, and twinkling – a fissure of thought, and Fred was blinking away absent tears, those blue eyes were fluttering, bloody fingerprints were memorized on a pale cheek. His chest tightened – a freezing Michigan winter and mottled pink and purple sea. There was blood, too much blood. A gunshot. No, two. I don’t understand… he wanted to say. Absent words for absent men.
“Why?”
“Because he asked me to.”
Only then, did he let the violence go and cry.
END NOTES, FOR WHOM IT MAY CONCERN
1. The title - from the quote by Charles Haddon Spurgeon: The wishing gate opens into nothing.
2. Mjolnir - Thor's hammer. Thor is the Norse god of thunder, lightning, wind, and rain.
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