Perdition Gaze by Mark Stanski

Perdition Gaze by Mark Stanski

“Close your eyes until I tell you where to look. The first person you see with your new eyes is vital. We’ve chosen her with care,” said Darkfire. The fallen angel recruited the Infernals, superheroes who sold their souls for their powers. Hesker stood on the last step of a stone stair that led to an arched oak door in the great hall of Waverly Castle, the angel’s home in Hell’s richest province and the heroes’ base of operations.

“What’s so vital about her?” Hesker asked.

“After you’ve seen her, you’ll care more about her than you ever have anyone. She’ll be your compass and help you see what you need to do—until you make your sacrifice.”

“Do what and to who? Remember, I stopped shooting whoever my superiors told me to a long time ago.”

“Murder a mortal fiend before dawn or your power fades forever. You keep your soul, of course,” Darkfire said.

“Why? I signed on for a war and a revolution, not contract killings. Besides, you came to me. Why test me now?”

“The murder proves your commitment to the cause, Roger. And without the blood of a fiend to sanctify the sale, I can’t touch your soul let alone buy it. Trust the process,” Darkfire said. She patted Hesker on the shoulder. “I’m opening the door now.”

Roger Hesker’s exhilaration spiked as he felt a breeze on his face and a dizzy sensation that accompanied the shift from Hell to Earth. They appeared at one of a hundred rifts in New York, near Battery Park, by a sidewalk hot-dog vendor, and walked a short distance to the financial district and the office tower of Hegemony Pharmaceuticals. He hadn’t felt this way since he was five and the first tear of gift wrapping revealed the mast of the model galleon he’d dreamed of.

“Your twelve o’clock, Roger. Pink helmet, the woman locking her bike,” Darkfire said, pointing. “Open your eyes and let yourself fasten onto her.” Before them spread a large courtyard with manicured stretches of lawn and a massive fountain.

This early, the courtyard was empty except for a few groups of people talking or scrolling on smartphones. A woman in a pants suit slid her U-lock into the base and paused. She looked unsure of something, and for a moment she waited. He sent his focal point over the cement and grass to see her up close. 

Late thirties, glasses, frown lines. As soon as he saw her eyes, he fastened. Mary Wilks opened like a map: CEO of Hegemony, single mother, food bank volunteer, anxiety attacks increasing in frequency and severity. His stomach began to hurt, as hers did throughout the day. Wilks fought a losing battle with Shauna Denison, chair of the board of directors, for support for Wilks’ dream of new investment in research for cures and in programs to relieve suffering in the developing world and in the poorest classes of the G15 nations. Denison was winning the board to a near total diversion of resources toward development of Pinnacle, a new high-end drug that enhanced heuristic function. Hegemony would market it to the elites of the world.

Three years ago, Wilks thought she was making the world better for people the markets forgot. Today, she took anti-depressants and forced herself to go to work.

“She’s beautiful,” Hesker said.

“Yes, she is. If she wins her fight to bring her agenda forward, the lives of a lot of hurting people are going to brighten. But if she doesn’t …”

Hesker spanned the terrain of her unfolding mind. Everywhere above her surface thoughts the answer spread like a blackening sky. A year from now, the best part of Wilks would wither and die, her mental health would fail, and she would lose the ability to care for herself or her daughter, Hanna.

Hesker’s father had worked as a formulations development scientist for Hegemony and died that same death of the will years before he finally passed. Brian Hesker had tried to blow the whistle on Hegemony for taking a potentially unsafe drug to final testing, but he’d moved too soon—before there was enough evidence of corporate malfeasance. He’d been blackballed in the pharmaceutical industry and had worked dead-end jobs until he died in poverty.

He turned on Darkfire. “Don’t do that again.”

“Roger, you did the deep dive. I just speculated,” Darkfire said.

“So what are we calling me: Mindrape?”

“Your power hurts no one. You can watch thoughts, not send your own or otherwise affect anyone’s mind. But with practice, you can move into someone’s unconscious thoughts or just skim the surface ones. You can excavate buried memories, search for specific information, forecast cognitive patterns and developments, or set screens to filter the thoughts coming in. Think of it like a software platform with a thousand dropdowns and scroll bars. You’ll get used to how it feels. It won’t always feel like a home invasion.”

Hesker remembered entering that squalid apartment in Port-Au-Prince in 2034 after Pierre Dupont only to have the resident family pull guns on him and shoot. He’d killed everyone with Dupont; there’d been no time. He went freelance after that mission.          

Wilks walked to the bank of revolving doors and went through. He took an urgent step to follow her into the building. The angel seized him by the hand and Hesker jarred his shoulder trying to pull free.

“Whoa, Roger. You’ll see her soon. But now that you’ve seen Wilks, I need you to meet someone else.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said. He felt like he was a five-year-old getting pulled out of someone’s way by his dad. The angel didn’t let go.

“Take some deep breaths. Let it pass.” She slowly released Hesker’s hand. “Now, look up to the southeast wing and the boardroom—the woman at the head of the table, long auburn hair. You won’t like her as much.”

He looked up through the walls and found Denison. Her mind turned to a conversation she anticipated later that evening that excited and scared her. The landscape of Denison’s thoughts differed from Wilks so entirely that he wondered if his power distorted what he saw.

“She’s a psychopath?” he asked.

“No. Psychopaths never have the really dark souls.”

“She sure loves her kids,” Hesker said. Her ambitions dwelt in twin cathedrals of thought she’d built stone by stone for each daughter over more than two decades. The edifices took his breath away. Shan was going to NYU for acting. Denison had missed just one of Shan’s plays in fourth grade while she recovered from surgery. Diane was her favourite and took after her mother in her passion for mathematics and business.

“What’s she worried about?” Darkfire asked.

He felt a spike of anger at the angel and a little dread. Another plunge. Denison obsessed over being stopped or caught: her thoughts of obviating Wilks teemed in a cloud of exhilaration centred on her great master stroke—Elysium: an addictive formulation of Pinnacle. He spoke the broad strokes of her plan to the angel as he sifted for them:

“She’s funding a secret skunkwork in China that’s developing a drug that releases dopamine surges when you scroll or read—you won’t be able to write a text without getting high,” he said.

“But she really loves her kids,” Darkfire’s smirk vanished almost before Hesker caught it. “We’re the Infernals, Roger. We fight evil inside the line and out. It’s uncomfortable, but we still decide. We don’t get paralysed, or the world won’t ever change.”

“You’ve giftwrapped this Denison for me very nicely, but I won’t start my revolution by killing her for what happened to my dad. And as far as changing the world, what good is killing one corporate snake no matter how vile with a hundred of them lined up to take her place and do even worse?”

“How defeatist. The man who would change the world won’t believe it’s even possible. It’s yourself you need to change; then you’ll be ready to move the world. You have a day with your power to see what it’s worth to you, to see if you’ll kill for it. Denison by dawn, or live on like the lost child you’ve always been.” 

& & &

Hesker parked in front of Earldale Secondary School and waited in his rental car for Zach Thomas, a kid from West Bronx, New York’s poorest neighbourhood. He’d become Zach’s Big Brother after he’d arranged for all the documents for his latest identity months ago, and he was getting used to what he could and couldn’t do to help him. It was so easy to return to Wilks as her day crept on. Before ten minutes passed, he returned to her in a panic, as though she were starting to vanish as soon as he left her. She thought most often of how her daughter would fare if she died.

Teenagers flowed out of the main entrance to the school and the portables and made their way to the bus stops. Zach came along with two other boys and took a minute saying goodbye and exchanging a ten-step handshake that amused Hesker every time he saw it. Zach had taught him seven steps so far. He unfastened from Wilks and told himself no more thought watching until he’d said goodbye to the boy. Zach was fourteen, in a gang, as most boys and girls in West Bronx were, and he lived day to day without safety or food security. Hesker waved at him and unlocked the door. Zach smiled, tumbled into the passenger seat, and took out his earbuds.

“Ready for the burger?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Zach said. His right eye was swollen shut, his jaw swollen, and his lip cut. Hesker left the marks on Zach for later.

“So, what’s new?” This poor kid. In his circumstances, no story about his face would shock him.

“I don’t want to talk about negative shit right now, cool?”

“Okay, tell me something else.” He didn’t really know what to say to a teen—much less a troubled boy in Grade 10 growing up in a gang—but it always seemed to be smooth with Zach somehow. He pulled into a greasy spoon in a small plaza nestled among housing projects on the southeast edge of the neighbourhood.

“We always talkin’ about me. How come I don’t know nothin’ about you?”

“Not much to tell. I’m a soldier. But I never got to fight the people who really had it coming. Never fought for the people who deserved the help. Not very often, anyway.”

“That’s charm, Roger. Wouldja teach me to fight? It’s not that I wanna; it’s my sister. They’re on her to join now and she’s too young. I gotta keep her out of this as long as I can.”

The diner was busy. Low-income residents of West Bronx could get a decent meal for as little as forty dollars, but gangs didn’t favour the spot.

“Is that what the eye and lip are about?” Hesker asked.

“Mom did the eye, for fighting Russel about Sis. Russel’s been in charge since Clay died. Mom wants her in and earning too.”

“Zach, what do you mean earning? Drugs?”

“Drugs. But it always starts out only drugs. Sex gets mixed up in it soon,” he said.

He winced, clenched his fists, and then regretted letting Zach see his reaction. He caught a look of shame on Zach’s face, but there was a resolve, too. He loved that about the boy—always staring down a hard situation and looking at it without lying to himself. But how was he going to help Zach this time? In Joint Task Force 2, he’d killed drug lords in South America and jihadists in Pakistan, but against a gang of brutal teenagers in West Bronx who claimed to be Zach’s real family, he was helpless.

“Okay. Okay. Have you talked to Malcolm at GOAL?” Malcolm at Gang Options Advocacy and Liaisons had helped Zach navigate some scary situations before, but that didn’t mean he worked miracles, stopped bullets, or raised the dead.

“Yeah. He’s going to talk to Russel today. Russel might do something to him. I’m scared he’s going to get hurt because of me.”

“Let him do his job, Zach… You’re watching your back right now, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I’m on point. It’s bad when it won’t end.”

“It’s gonna end, Zach. Eat up.” Hesker made himself take a bite; Zach just shook his head. “Fine, let’s bounce. We’re going to a dojo I know that’s not a far trip, but you won’t have any trouble there. Tomorrow I’ll start teaching you the knife. You tell no one. If anyone hears about what I’m going to show you…”

“I know. I won’t tell anyone ever,” Zach said. For a moment, Hesker thought he had some idea how Darkfire felt with him earlier.

He drove Zach home after signing him up at the dojo and paying for a year of lessons. Outside of the subsidized high rise, Zach lingered beside the car as though he were afraid to go home. He rolled the window down. “One more time: what’s our plan?”

“Go to the dojo every day at 7pm. But we train right after school and tell Mom I’m getting tutored.  Text you if there’s trouble.”

“Until we come up with a better plan… I’ll text you tonight about Malcolm. And your ass better be at that dojo later on.”

Then Zach gave him this look. Hesker never saw someone so close to crying without doing it before. He got out of the car, walked around hood, and hugged the kid. It was like hugging a mannequin at first, but Zach hugged back clumsily—as if he were learning how to dance with a partner for the first time.   

& & &

Hesker finished a line of coke in the softly lit bathroom of Elevate, a swanky bar in Greenwich Village he’d been coming to since before he enlisted with the Canadian Forces. The bar was built into the corner of a three-storey stucco building that included a reiki practitioner, a used bookstore, and a dim sum dive. It’s fifty-six seats were full, and three generations of underpaid, over-praised professionals worked on tablets or gathered and talked by the couches. He felt a tranquil, reassuring buzz all over and his thoughts gathered that reckless speed he loved but never trusted. He went up the stairs from the basement to his stool at the bar.

“Another bourbon?” the bartender asked. Julie was forty, married with a couple of boys, tended bar full-time, and had been serving Hesker for ten years.

“And a water this time, if you don’t mind,” he said.

Julie smiled and reached for a glass and the bottle. She knew some of his background—the standard mercenary work. One night he’d started to talk about his time in Haiti. She hadn’t balked, but he had. She’d been waiting for him to slip up again ever since.

“Something up with you? You haven’t partaken in quite a while,” she said.

“The coke. That obvious, eh? It’s just this job prospect. I have to take an entrance exam.”

Julie’s eyes widened. “Something scary?”

“Yeah,” Hesker said. Why was he sharing anything about Darkfire and the Infernals with poor Julie? He needed to shut this thread down.

“Going to go through with it?”

“I must be pretty high to be getting into this kind of day with you,” he said.

“You’re delaying,” she said. She leaned into his space, elbows on the bar, chin on her fists. Julie knew how to work a pause. She waited, not letting it go.

Before he decided what he would say, a superhero walked through the entrance as if she were just another customer coming in to meet a friend. Zealot’s costume and shield bore the red, white, and blue of the flag of the United States but added a gold trim into a design that intimated a costumed agent from an America that could have been or might still be. Over her chest, instead of the white star that would seem to complete the costume scheme appeared an iconic pompadour of flame. Darkfire recruited and fought on the team, but Zealot led them all. The door chimes barely rang, but soon every head turned to look at her as she walked over to Hesker and Julie. She walked up to them as if she had known them for years. He watched as the bar patrons began a bizarre stop-start exodus: some delayed their escape an instant, waiting to see what Zealot would do, only to give in and run as most did after moving past shock. Julie stood up straight and froze.

“She’s not here to hurt anyone,” he told Julie. He leaned forward and touched Julie’s arm. “But you should still go.” Before he knew it, he fastened onto Julie. Her decision to stay with him spanned her mind and will like a bridge of concrete and steel. Before he saw any deeper, he unfastened from her, aghast.

“No. I’m staying. Maybe she wants a drink,” Julie said. Hesker needed a code. No reading friends. This was its first rule.

Zealot nodded at him and sat down, setting her shield on the bar. “Hi,” she said to Julie. “I can see you’re very brave, but I need a private word with our mutual friend. I’ll be gone before the cops or any PowerTrip deputies show. This will cover the lost business.” Zealot slid a crisp stack of hundred-dollar bills across the wood to Julie with a red-gloved hand.  Julie hesitated but took the money.

“Thanks,” she said. “What are you having?”

“All right. A pilsner if you have one,” Zealot said. Julie drew a draft and placed it in front of Zealot, never taking her eyes from her. 

“Zealot. You could have come in jeans,” he said.

“I’m busy today; this will keep things short. Besides, Infernals are supposed to shine. We’re symbols.”

“I can see why you spend most of your time in costume. Having a real life fucks everything up. I don’t see why I try.”

“I have a real life, too. We all need one, or we’ll lose ourselves. The people in my life are the reason I put this mask and costume on… How are you doing with the sacrifice?” Zealot opened her palm to him as if to show nothing he said would surprise her.

“Even if I kill her, someone worse will just take her place. There’s a lesser reptile just like her helming almost every corporation in the world. I just want to help my friend out of a jam, and I can’t even do that. My power is worthless!”

“That’s resignation. It’s a couple of steps from complacency. Take another couple and you’ll be fighting for the other side, Hesker. We change the world in our lifetime. We interrupt it, stop its momentum so that wiser women and men can take it down another path. Tomorrow’s leaders can’t make a new world from under all the accretions of history.” Zealot was right and he knew it. Nothing ever changed without bloodshed.   

“Are you pushing me with your power?” he asked. In addition to her physical strength and endurance, Zealot could drive emotions with her words: the more people gathered in her presence, the stronger her influence. Even one on one, her power was dangerous.

“No,” Zealot said. “I’ll never do that to one of us. Thank you for asking and not taking.”

“All right. Even so, this just isn’t how I think we’re going to make a difference. Maybe that’s my decision.”

“Don’t hurt anyone, Roger. This sounds awful,” Julie said. Zealot glanced at her and then looked at Roger and smiled.

“Where’s the money in Denison’s plan? I don’t have to be a telepath to guess, but search her mind,” Zealot said. He sent his focal point upwards and out, following the grid to Hegemony and the corner office where Denison was working late. Through her mental detritus he found the fear he’d felt earlier and vocalized her abiding thoughts:

“She’ll leak the Elysium formula to partners at international drug cartels. A billion addicts three years from the release date…”

 “That’s not it. Look harder. The money’s not in Pinnacle or the street drug its based on,” Zealot said. “The cartels won’t pay more than a one-time fee for the formula,” she said. You moron, he almost heard in her voice.

Hesker looked deeper into Denison: “A few years after Elysium gets a grip on the world, Hegemony will swoop in to the rescue with an opioid agonist—a lifelong treatment to arrest the addiction—super expensive. The money’s in the agonist, not Elysium and not Pinnacle.”

“That’s what we thought. Now, with your power, we know. And we can hunt down everyone involved like dogs.”

“We can go to the law,” he said. “A move this big leaves a trail.”

Zealot barked out a laugh. “Scan her. Do you think you’ll find memories of anything but phone calls and in-person meetings in five-star hotels and mansions?”

After a few seconds of search, he knew the answer. Denison had left nothing to find. She didn’t know any more about how Elysium was being developed than was good for her. No single conspirator in the cabal did.

“This isn’t just about your sacrifice or your commitment to the cause, Hesker… What if greed terrified people instead of driving their appetites? What if every CEO and board director in the world knew you were watching them? That we were coming for them?”

Zealot crossed her arms and looked at him.

A text came in. [Malcom tried to talk to Russel. Russel shot him. Cops looking for him but nobody knows where]—Zach

[Where are you now?]—Roger

“Something important?” Zealot said. Her tone held no trace of irony.

“Roger, think about what happens to Zach if you turn down this path. Even if you stay alive—what can you offer him? What life will you have left for him?” Julie asked.

[I’m home. Everyone’s home]—Zach.

[I’ll be there in ten minutes]—Roger

“Roger, you’re running out of time,” Zealot said. “You’ll lose your power. This is everything you told us you wanted.”

Hesker thought about everything he’d ever wanted to fight for. Nothing seemed worth it if a poor kid like Zach had to live in fear.

“I’ve got someone real who needs my help. Why don’t you just save the whole fucking world,” Roger spat. He charged out of the entrance and glanced back at Julie, who nodded at him.

& & &

He arrived at Zach’s high rise and sent his focal point right to Zach’s front door. He winced knowing he was breaking his code already. He moved in. Zach’s mother sat in a tattered armchair drinking cheap scotch. Jannelle, Zach’s sister, scrolled her smartphone, face expressionless. No Zach.

[Where are you?]—Roger

[Dumpster @ Mother Gaston Boulevard and Sutter Avenue. Russel got a biscuit. He lookin 4 me]—Zach

[“Text me if you move. I’m coming]—Roger

Zach had left his apartment to protect his mother and sister. Hesker squeeled his tires leaving the runabout in front of the development and took three minutes to reach the intersection. He drew his SIG and saw the dumpster. Both doors were wide open. He could have seen right through it, but instead he ran past, stopped, then dispersed his focal point into a scanning wave that flashed across the whole city and beyond. The wave contacted three of the four minds he had fastened onto since he’d gotten his powers: Denison, home in her luxury flat in Tribeca dressing for a night at the theatre. Wilks, eating popcorn and watching a movie with Hanna. Julie, talking to police and thinking how to help Hesker best in how she answered the detectives. Why no Zach?

He turned back to the dumpster and thought why. He felt the strength leave him and his knees buckled. He half-walked, half-staggered to the dumpster as if he were walking to the electric chair. Inside he found Zach, lying in garbage and blood. He didn’t even check his pulse. He reached for the boy’s mind, for a door with no more handle. Inside Hesker, something he felt in his chest, a part that relaxed whenever he was with the boy, hardened and kept hardening. He scanned again for Denison and fastened on her. Shan and Diane chirped to each other in the back of a limousine. They were dressed for a red carpet. Denison held her husband’s hand and listened to Shan recite a review of a remount of “Eve’s Dossier,” a play that had won the Donaldson award last year. Something inside twisted so tight it felt as though he carried a stone under his sternum.

Hesker wasn’t religious, yet he prayed. He thought he prayed for forgiveness, but maybe he was praying to forgive.

& & &

Hesker slipped into Denison’s penthouse flat in the dead of night as easily as he saw through walls. The concierge and security guards lay unconscious and unhurt in one of the storage rooms; he had a half hour without a worry about interruption. He had taken no measures to prevent cameras capturing his progress from the parking lot to the flat. This was a public act.

   The elevator walls held full-length mirrors without a smudge or fingerprint. Hesker’s black Kevlar costume was trimmed with olive green. A menacing red-veined eye adorned his chest. The thick steel plates soldered over his eyes suggested his sight was blocked, which it was, but for his power. Embossed over his nose a red question mark began, travelled past his lips, and ended on his chin with a period.

He entered the foyer of the flat and sprayed a cloth with chloroform. After moving into each of the daughters’ bedrooms, he gently put Shan and then Diane to sleep. In the master bedroom, Hesker found Denison and her husband sleeping spooned, but he managed them both without trouble. After carrying Denison’s husband to a leather couch in the living room, he returned and set Denison sitting up against a pillow, head leaning toward him. Next, he positioned camera, mic, and lights. Sitting against the headboard, he put his arm around her and drew her into him, her head resting on his shoulder, and started the camera recording the two of them from the waist up.

“Dear Friends:

“I’m Watcher. An Infernal. The woman sleeping next to me is Shauna Denison, chair of the board of directors of Hegemony Pharmaceuticals. We’re filming in the bedroom of her Tribeca penthouse. Denison has tried to hurt a great many people for power and personal gain. She planned to release a formula for a new street drug to cartels and profit from the treatment for the addiction.” Hesker paused and took the stopper off a syringe full of potassium chloride, inserted it into Denison’s carotid artery, and pushed the flange to the end of the barrel. For all his nonchalance, he might have been giving her a flu shot.

“Denison’s bad behavior made her my inaugural visit. Within days I’ll visit each conspirator she worked with and administer them the moral antidote I’ve just given her.” Denison began to twitch and then shake violently. Hesker held her for as long as it took as her convulsions worsened, slowed, and then stopped. He released her and she slid into him, head back on his shoulder.

“I’ll be looking hard at corporate America and planning many, many more visits. There’s no secret you have that I won’t soon know. You don’t have to be on the top of the pyramid. And you don’t have to leave a trail or make a mistake. Sooner or later, I’ll come for you. The Infernals are coming for all of you.”

& & &

Hesker went over his appearance to be sure he wouldn’t be recognized. It had been months since he’d made his sacrifice. He drove out to a little Greek café called Astoria in Greenwich Village. A freezing rain pounded the sidewalk as he darted with his satchel to the front door of the café.

“Somewhere near the fire, please,” he said to the server. She smiled and seated him three tables away from Mary Wilks and her daughter, Hanna, who were having brunch. He opened a tablet and for a few minutes, he just let himself listen with his ears. Five minutes passed. No urge to fasten onto either Mary or Hanna. He knew just where they were and that they were safe.

Over the background noise from the soccer match on the screen and the few groups having brunch, Hesker made out that Hanna was nervous about her clarinet solo in tomorrow’s concert. Wilks reminded her how well she’d played in her last concert and that the nerves before were part of the big performance that came soon afterward.

After Denison, Wilks left Hegemony and worked as executive director of the not-for-profit Council for Addiction Prevention based in Brooklyn. Hesker listened and just let their voices wash into him.

Wilks and Hanna left an hour after he arrived. He looked up from his tablet as the server led Darkfire to his table.

“Rothana,” he said to the angel. “Why are you here?” He sounded sharper than he meant to.

“Can’t a friend join you for brunch?”

“When do you just chum around with any of us?”

“I’m starting now. With you… You’re spending all of your free time on Wilks and Hanna. That first fasten on her shouldn’t have been permanent. I don’t know why you didn’t move on.”

“I only do this once a month. I’m careful… Is this power fucking me up somehow?” Hesker knew the answer.

“It’s love, Roger. And it’s not ever going to be returned. I think it’s time to close your ability to fasten on these two.”

“No! I won’t make it. I’ll kill you if you try. You know I’ll find a way,” he rasped as he lowered his voice to keep from making a scene.

The Angel’s brows arched. In her irises he caught a glimpse of Hell’s Fire.

“No fear. Not even of the flame,” Darkfire said.

“No.” He clenched his fists and prepared for his reality to change, got ready to lose everything and begin his afterlife.

Long minutes passed. Neither one spoke.

“You can find love again if you try. You found it with Zach.”

He thought of the blood he’d spilled since he’d sold his soul, of the nightmares he’d visited on so many. In under three months, the Infernals had destabilized the political and economic climate in the West. He’d murdered hundreds in their homes, leaving them to be found by their loved ones. How could he be anybody’s special anything?

“Without … them,” he said as his throat began to close up, “I wouldn’t have anything left to love anyone with.”

He waited. The angel’s shoulders relaxed and the flames in her eyes began to die.

“All right, Roger. All right,” she said, nodding solemnly. The Angel smiled. A sad smile.

He felt the warmth of the fire and heard the pounding of the icy rain on the cement outside through the nearby window. A few blocks away, Wilks and Hanna parked at the cinema. He thought of the afterlife, the hope of a better world, and felt sure they were making that world on Earth. Their world.

It was enough, he thought. If he could be near them just once in a while, it was enough. 

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Mark Stanski 2023