Goodnight, Isaac
by Cristie Armstrong
Isaac had played ball that evening, meeting up with some friends after work. His blue athletic shorts struck just above the knee. His strong muscular legs, lean arms, coupled with his height made him a worthy adversary on the court. After this game, he would head home for dinner. His wife and three children would be waiting. He didn’t often take time for himself, but this time he did. Played some ball with the guys, it kept him in shape, healthy and youthful. He didn’t look too bad for a middle-aged guy. He worked hard, provided for his family, was a pillar of the community and a ruthless ballplayer. He made the shot and talked trash with the boys. It was his way of staying young.
Isaac waved at the guys and unlocked his car. He tossed the basketball into the backseat and wiped the sweat off his face with a towel, tossing it on the back floorboard. With a smile on his face, he started his car to head home.
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Just another normal day, a good one. Unfortunately, it would be his last.
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Officer DeGraham pinned on her badge, #762, the black numbers contrasted against the gleaming gold. She headed to work that evening just like any other night. She had been on the job for seven years. A good officer, one that cared about the community and still young enough to not suffer from the burnout that most officers crossed into after the 10-year mark. She took her seat in the line-up room, waiting for her fellow officers to settle down. They would listen to the announcements for the evening. Their supervisor would pass on important suspect information and BOLOS (Be On the Lookout) of the most wanted.
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Tonight, just like the last two weeks, they were still looking for the gold Lincoln Mark 8 that had been reported stolen and was being used in a string of armed robberies that had plagued the city. A black male suspect, in his early 20s, armed with a black, automatic handgun, had robbed numerous restaurants with both employees and patrons present. He was their number one suspect. They had to find him before things escalated and he shot someone, when the thrill of only brandishing lost its high. He seemed unusual compared to most robbery suspects. He wasn’t laying low. He was robbing everything left and right, night after night. He seemed unhinged and reckless, desperation that would only leave the injured or a body count.
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The older officers muttered about where they planned to eat dinner as DeGraham pushed her seat in and joined the group of younger officers as they left the line-up room. They devised a plan: locate the car, locate the suspect. If he still had the gold Lincoln, they had a
shot. It was a unique car. Unlike the multitude of tan or gray Hondas that plagued the city, funny how those just blurred into the background. No, the Lincoln would be sleek, with rear sloping lines and an unusual curve on the trunk; it would glitter gold. They divided up areas to focus on as they loaded their equipment into their patrol cars that evening. Then, they went on duty, a constant search. DeGraham smiled. She started her patrol car and headed out of the station’s lot. The anticipation of the hunt beat through her as her fingers gripped the wheel and her leather gun belt creaked in the seat. She could almost hear the hounds bay.
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Just another normal day, a good one. Unfortunately, it would be the worst day of her life.
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Sometimes the windows would fog up and little trickles would race down the glass. Probably, it would rot the windowsill, but she’d never complained about something so trivial. Rotting wood... she closed her eyes, then flashes, flashes, a slide projector in her mind, switching to the next slide.
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The white sheet... his bloody leg... his smooth head.
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It made no sense to her about the temperature in the house, how her sensitivity to temperature had changed since the accident. She froze in the winter, cranking the heat to eighty degrees was the only comfort in late January. She kept it like a freezer in the house for the rest of the year.
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“Comfort,” she huffed.
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She had no right to be comfortable, she thought as the cool breeze from the vent filtered over her in the bed. The air, like invisible fingers tickling her hot skin. She kicked her restless legs, fighting the blanket and sheet the rest of the way off of her. Heaving a sigh, she closed her eyes and tried to find sleep once again.
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“Goodnight, Isaac,” she whispered to no one.
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She waited. He said nothing to her. He always refused to speak to her. She knew this and she couldn’t blame him. It was her fault, at least partly. She had robbed him too. The air conditioner cycled on, grunting in the hallway.
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She was hot, frustrated, sleep-deprived. The guilt made her feel hot.
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“I’m truly sorry, you know,” she said, frustrated.
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Isaac ignored her.
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She closed her eyes again, seeing him in her mind. He was handsome. Tall, athletic, a ballplayer. So many good things about him. She hadn’t made them up, she knew them to be facts. She had learned so much about him at the trial and sentencing, more than she ever wanted or needed to know.
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The red block numbers on the alarm clock mocked her that it was 3:08 a.m., not a real shocker. After all those years working midnights, she still couldn’t sleep at night. After the PTSD diagnosis, sleep was a blessing and a burden. A hard yawn stretched her cheeks, her eyes watered a bit at its intensity. The numbers blurred and she rubbed the moisture from her eyes. She needed to get some sleep. Isaac would be there, they both would, waiting for her in the darkness. They would just quietly join her as the repeating, movie-like memories began flashing through her mind. They were harsh critics, judging her with their haunted eyes. Isaac and Keauna, her dead. Night after night, it never ended.
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Sleep finally came and so it began…
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She reluctantly handed her tokens to the Ferryman. They were shiny and gold, cold metal. They dully gleamed, even in this dark place, still brightly polished and bearing the number 762. His bony fingers would unfurl slowly, a laugh on the dark wind as the metal clinked against bone. He ferried her soul to the place it truly belonged.
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“Fuck you, Ferryman,” she sneered.
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She hated his laugh, so mocking and judgmental. She wanted to give him a swift kick and send him hurtling over the side of the boat, steal back her soul and run, run as fast as she could back to the light. Bony fingers would never let her make it. Her soul would just sadly shake her head with that look of You know better, why do you even try? The three-headed beast would tear her to shreds at the gate. It would feast on her flesh and pick its teeth with her bones.
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She was sucked back through the vortex of fog and haze, finding herself standing there on the bridge where it had all happened. The night of the accident, but this time... it didn’t look real.
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The smell of antifreeze, transmission fluid, oil, and flame. Particles of airbag dust glittered in the night, dancing in the blue strobes. Like tiny insects floating together in a swarm, going nowhere, just steadily floating before her. She wanted to reach out and touch them. The strobes clicked, clicked, clicked, just like the burning engine. Genies in the smoke danced around each other wickedly as they used their magic to pull life from everything in their reach.
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“Come with me,” they whispered, hissing and swaying to the music of eerie calm, clicking and crickets in the night. The train was coming. The soft hum, a distant timpani drum building, or was that just her heartbeat in her ears? A soft vibration growing as the conductor’s arms waved. She walked through the glittering haze, forcing her way through.
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The smoke Genies hissed at her when she called for help. They wanted no interference in their work, and she would bring that. She could end them. She had the power to end them and they knew it. They joined hands and danced, drawing everything they could from around them and growing their flames in size, trying to scare her away. She didn’t give them a second thought as she climbed through the glass, crunching, biting, and tearing at her sleeve. It clawed at her thighs and the hot curved metal joined in to tear at her too. A smoke Genie reached her hand down her throat in warning as she climbed through the mangled car. She coughed her back out and kept going. She had to get to him, he was right there. She could reach him... just a... little... farther. The smoke Genie scraped its nails across her eyes, they burned and blurred. Her eyes battled back with hot and wet. The smoke Genies hissed at her for not retreating, they wanted him too. They wanted the unconscious man in the car. Her legs shook, the adrenaline warriors racing to join in the battle, flanking.
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The basketball sat unmarred in the backseat. An uninjured passenger.
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There he was, at last. The relief flooded through her and she placed her hand on his arm, her relief gripping him in the tips of her fingers. She had him.
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The alarm clock sounded its assholery. She hit snooze, five more minutes, she had just made it to him. Sleep-dazed wishful thinking always bartered for a different outcome. A new chapter, spinning in her favor. He would talk to her then, she knew it. If she could change it, he would even smile at her, maybe even shake her hand. One day she was going to get the hammer and smash the ever-loving shit out of that alarm clock. She’d feel better for sure, not a cure, but a quick fix. It would buy her more time. More time to save him.
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Now she was cold. She pulled the covers up tight, flipped to her side and shoved a pillow under her leg. Another harsh yawn, so tired.
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“You get to sleep,” a voice whispered inside of her head.
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“I don’t deserve to sleep,” she thought back at it, “do I?”
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The alarm sounded a second time. Her snooze over. She scrubbed her hands over her face and tried to shake off the dream. Always the same one, over and over. Never able to save Isaac. She got up, still tired, and got ready for her appointment with her therapist.
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Officer DeGraham moved through the motions of a normal life during the day. Her day, which was really night. She went to work, smiled and was always civil. The utmost professionalism. Faking it for everyone around her. Trying to be normal when nothing in her life was normal, not anymore. Now she was talking to a dead man and was trapped in a never-ending movie-like reel of that night playing over and over in her mind.
She told James, her therapist, about talking to Isaac. She told him how she didn’t in the beginning. But Isaac had somehow found purchase in her mind and life. And she made room for him. Him and the other one. She weeded out some unnecessary space-takers in her life, so the dead would have plenty of room to roam. She got rid of love and lovers, friends and even material things. She didn’t feel like she deserved any of them. No happiness for her, not if Isaac couldn’t have it. Why should she? Everything was guilt-driven, but she could give Isaac this, this empty space to move into. Clean and fresh, he could be comfortable there, settle in and relax. He could live after all, there, in her mind. They would be together forever. It was the least she could do.
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“Tell me how you are feeling today,” James asked.
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“Like shit,” she answered.
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James nodded, frowning.
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“It’s the anniversary of the accident,” she said as she looked out of the office window at the perfectly manicured grass. She couldn’t make out the individual blades, just a collective blur.
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“Any more consideration to writing the families letters?” James asked.
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“No, I’m not going to do it. It was a stupid idea. There is nothing I can say, no matter how well I wrote it or how carefully I chose my words, it would change nothing,” she answered sadly.
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“I do think it is a good idea, from a therapeutic standpoint,” James said.
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“If I write it, will it change the outcome?” she asked with a deadpan expression, already knowing the answer. “They are both still dead.”
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James sighed, “Maybe we can revisit that in a few months.”
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She nodded and stood up, thanked James and took the prescription he handed her. She left his office and headed to the pharmacy. She waited while they filled it and then she left. Stopping for gas on her way home, as the gas pumped, she pulled the bottle from her purse and tossed it into the trash at the station.
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“Fuck you, Ferryman,” she thought as the pills rattled to the bottom of the can.
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She had never taken them. It was a requirement of her treatment, but she had never been one to believe that solutions came in the shape of a little, convenient circle. She would never pop pills to solve her problems. Besides, why should she deserve to feel better?
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Isaac didn’t get to feel better.
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She thought about when she went to see him, well, where he was buried. The Confederate Cemetery, a military cemetery.
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The smell of the gas fumes from the pump lingered up and tickled up her nose, they worked into her mind.
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Her mind swirled.
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His old place was so bleak, everything so white. The stones, so uniform, so equally spaced. A sad sea of Servicemen. She had gone there, where he was laid to rest, she went there to see him, to try to explain. That was when he came home with her.
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The gas nozzle clicked loose and released, stopping the flow and snapping her back into the present. She rubbed her temple with one hand and replaced the pump with the other.
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“Fucking triggers,” she muttered as she got into her car. She knew better, the smell of gas always set her off. There had been so much of it burning that night. She reached down and rubbed at her leg through her jeans. Her skin still crawled with the feeling of melted flesh and fabric. How they picked the melted fabric out with cold metal pinchers, like tiny fingernails, that had hurt worse than the burn. A tremor raced through her and she shook her head, she needed to get back home. She yawned. Maybe she could get in a short nap before she had to pick her daughter up from school. It had all affected her too. Changed their relationship, love was hard to show when bound down by guilt.
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Sleeping in the daytime was normal. Her brain had been rewired to do that, sleep during the day, thanks to all the years on the graveyard shift. She preferred shorter naps, fewer dreams at the point of complete exhaustion. Or at least, that was what she always hoped for. She climbed back into the bed.
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“Goodnight, Isaac,” she said and clicked off the light. She had left the closet door cracked open. “Mine has a name,” she mused out loud but without humor.
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She visualized Isaac in skeleton form, lingering amongst her winter coats. Maybe he slipped in and out of the back, just like going to Narnia. She would happily go with him, but he would never let her. That must be where he slipped off to when he did disappear. Always slipping back in once she realized he was gone…
“I’ve got you. Can you move?” Her hand gripped his arm as she gasped out her words through the smoke. “Let’s get you out of here.”
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Nothing.
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Worse than nothing.
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“Sir?” she asked.
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She shook him hard.
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“Sir!” she said.
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She closed her eyes to a different burn.
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She hated to leave him, she had no choice, there were others that needed her.
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“I am so sorry,” she said to him.
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Her hand slipped gently from his still-warm arm as she worked her way backwards through the hot twisted metal and glass. Slicing and tearing, the Genies ran their hot fingernails up her thighs leaving unfeeling cuts the adrenaline warriors battled back. She ran hard, through the dancing Genies and the cloud of glitter-powdered gnats. Finally making it to the next one, a good thirty feet from the car, burning. A boy, about 15 years old, with a pulse, breathing. She pulled her fingers from his neck and rose back up. Moving on, running hard to the next one. It was him. Of course, he would live. It seemed they always lived, the ones who didn’t deserve to survive. But no matter the level of destruction, it seemed that they always did. He was the robbery suspect, the one who caused all of this. Johnathan.
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She fastened his new shiny bracelets upon him. The tightened click of locking metal teeth sounded in the night. Her quarry was captured. The hounds were quiet as the hunt ended. She felt no pride in the trophy. These thin manacles wouldn’t loosen up the longer he wore them, he couldn’t break them in either. She would make sure he wore them for a very long time. She could at least do that for Isaac. A wishful penny in a well, but it amounted to nothing.
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She ran to the burning gold car, coughing and waving away the Genies. They were relentless as they tried to kiss her cheeks. Their heat was on her arms, they were coming closer, closing in.
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“Come with us,” they sang like Sirens and danced in the blue flashing lights.
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No one.
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Empty.
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Thank God.
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God?
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Nothing.
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She stepped back from the burning metal, as the gold paint dissolved and bubbled, her head swam. Her blood pounded in her head and her pulse throbbed across her thighs that were hot with blood and smelled like something burning. As little black dots danced and darted before her eyes, she looked back to the rail of the bridge and swore she saw St. Peter sitting there. His ankle propped on his other knee. Book laid open in his lap as he tapped his pen and eyed her.
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She took a staggering step towards him, the guardian of the gates.
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The gates to Heaven. She knew all too well who he was.
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“It’s not my fault,” she pleaded.
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He smiled sadly and shook his head, his keys jingling against his belt.
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“He crashed, not me, I didn’t hit them,” she pointed a shaking finger at the unconscious, handcuffed man who lay prone on the bridge. His skull cracked open as he snored a wet, guttural death rattle.
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St. Peter tsk-ed as she swayed and looked back to him. He glanced over his shoulder, over the edge of the bridge. The bridge over the train track. He stared down, as if seeing something far, far below. He sighed and drew a line in the book, crossing something out.
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She hung her head as she felt the line drawn across herself. Not even fit to enter. Denied entrance. She would descend, not rise.
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“Please,” she pleaded weakly.
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He tapped his pen in thought.
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Tap.
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Tap.
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“Hey! Are you alright?” the loud booming voice of Officer Thomas jerked her out of the trance.
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She jumped out of her skin at his touch.
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“You’re bleeding,” Officer Thomas, her back-up, said, pointing to her legs. He reached for his radio on his lapel, “I need Fire and Rescue, MEMS, three times.” He turned back to her, “I’ll turn off your siren, stay here.”
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“It’s nothing... I’m fine,” she mumbled.
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Odd, she hadn’t heard her siren until now. And then it was off.
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“Fuck, how many?” Thomas asked.
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“Three,” she responded.
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“Jesus,” he said and turned his head, looking around at the carnage.
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She looked too, that was when the shaking had started. Shock. The Genies faded as fire extinguishers gushed. The fluttery insects flew away with the wind. Blue was replaced with red and then latex-covered hands were on her.
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“No, take care of them first, not me,” she waved her hand at the wreckage.
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She watched as someone cut away melted fabric, she couldn’t feel it anymore. She watched as they ripped the twisted door that she had crawled through off of the car. Jaws of life, not a fitting name today, as the hydraulic machine worked. She knew it was pointless, but some small hope made her watch anyway. It was better than looking down as she heard medical tape tearing.
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The heads began to shake back and forth, and they stretched out the white sheet, laying it over him. She waved away the paramedic and watched the quiet moment.
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“Thank you, that’s good enough,” she said and walked slowly to the side of the bridge.
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She looked over the side, the rail holding her up. She stared where she had imagined St. Peter had looked down at. All she could see was darkness staring back at her. She thought of a quote her old professor once told her. It was something about fighting monsters and not becoming one yourself. She looked back at the scene before her, the destruction, the death. The darkness.
Officer DeGraham took the stand. She raised her right hand and repeated after the judge, swearing to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” She took the seat behind the microphone.
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“Officer DeGraham, can you tell the jury about the night of the accident?” the Deputy Prosecutor instructed.
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“Yes sir,” Officer DeGraham responded and turned in her swivel chair and faced the jury. Twelve stone faces looked back at her.
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They had received a BOLO for a robbery suspect. She had found him... there he was, she hit her lights and siren, radioed for back up. She had him. After weeks of searching, she had him and she slid the guard forward on her holster, ready. He punched it in the stolen gold Lincoln. She raced behind him. He was armed, dangerous and violent. He went faster with no regard. Desperation drove the fleeing car. She was an expert driver; he could not out-drive her training. Running stop signs and approaching the bridge in a curve, he tried to pass a car already on the bridge, blocking his escape. As he went around the car…
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She slammed on her brakes and yelled over the radio, “Crashing, bad, need help, 10-18!” and she reached down, pressing the red emergency button on her control panel.
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Through her windshield she watched as “he” drove over the car pulled to the side of the bridge, crashing, crushing, and destroying as he drove right over the hood and the driver was trapped inside. Like a shredder, a monster truck, crushing. She felt the crash through the reverberations in suspended concrete and steel. She was out of the car in an instant, running to the crushed car as “his” car spun like a top, spinning and spewing.
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A person (turn).
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A shoe (turn).
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The windshield (turn).
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The hood (turn).
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A person (turn).
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A shoe (turn).
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The glass poured down like tiny square raindrops, six revolutions, flinging something new with each pass. Then, the explosion.
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She had felt it in her chest. The booming punched her with a hard fist as she began crawling through the window to get to him. The chemicals burned her nose and eyes as the car caught fire. Her heart raced with the fear of a second explosion. Now the car she was in was on fire too. Crackling flames filled the air, but she kept going, squeezing and crawling through to get to him. Her gun belt got hung on something, causing the hot metal to burn into her skin.
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She had watched him watch it coming.
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He watched death come for him.
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She watched it happen. She couldn’t stop it from happening. He had tried to crawl to the passenger’s seat. That’s why he was so hard to get to. There was nowhere to go on that bridge. No shoulder on the roadway. She tried to save him; she couldn’t have saved him. No one survives a torn aorta. She dug her fingers into the burgundy leather on the arms of the courtroom chair, a fight for composure. The brass brads were cold.
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“We will resume tomorrow at 9 a.m.,” the judge stated.
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“All rise,” the bailiff announced.
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She stood, then left the courtroom. She walked past “him,” Johnathan Moore, who sat with a cane and a long scar across the entirety of his skull. The staple marks, like dots, marring each side of the large scar further. And she wondered how in the hell he had survived.
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They would continue tomorrow, and she would be back on the stand. She would have to talk about the girl tomorrow. Keauna. She let out a long sigh and headed home to try to get some sleep before she had to testify about her.
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“Goodnight, Isaac,” she whispered in the dark, wondering to herself why she did this over and over.
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Isaac had been particularly restless after the testimony today and she chased sleep the way that she had chased Johnathan that night. She always forgot the girl’s name, she thought as she yawned. Someone’s daughter. She thought about her daughter with unwanted sadness. She had been a good mother before all of this.
Sleep finally came and so it began…
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Those tricky Genies had hidden her. The girl. Their friends had come to the party, centripetal force, velocity, speed and weight. They hid her in the darkness, the darkness that she had stared down into and never knew.
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The phone had rung the day after. The detective asking about a girl. She never saw a girl. There was no girl, she insisted. The girl was missing. Everyone was looking for her. She was last seen with him. Him, in his stolen car, robbing everything in town at gunpoint. She didn’t show up to work or school. Her family was searching. She swore she never saw a girl.
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One day.
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Two days.
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June heat in the South.
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Three days.
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The phone had rung on the third day. The other boy, the teen passenger, woke up from the drug-induced coma, and said she was in the car with them.
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They found her.
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Thrown over the bridge at the hands of centripetal force, velocity, speed, and weight. Could this get any worse?
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80 mph.
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She was just twenty. Three days in the June heat.
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Entomology.
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She never saw her, she couldn’t understand how she had missed her. The crime scene scientist explained that she flew through the back glass as the car spun, she was a human projectile. Airborne and over the bridge, falling more than 80 feet below. It would have been hard for the human eye to see her at the speed she was ejected. Like trying to see a bullet’s path with the mere eye, after being fired. Mathematical equations were explanations, justifications that cleared her. Numbers 35:33, that was the math she knew, Numbers. Old Testament of fire and brimstone her grandmother had taught her as a child. But here, now... she was clear of any wrongdoing, she had followed the guidelines set forth by the Department in official statements to the media. The Internal Affairs clearance rang false when St. Peter never returned.
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She didn’t think St. Peter cared what she was trained to do, she shouldn’t have done it. She shouldn’t have chased him so fast, it only made him go faster, become more reckless. She knew in her intelligent mind that it was Johnathan’s fault. She had listened to the testimony of the boy with the pulse, the passenger. How he swore they both begged Johnathan to stop the car. How Keauna cried for him to just let her out of the car, how she didn’t want to be in trouble. Johnathan had refused and drove faster. He said he could outrun the pig. He didn’t know his engine was no match for hers, few did. The enhanced engine was called the interceptor. The irony was not lost on her. Trained to do it and given the tools to do it exceptionally. That night, she let her humanity sit in the backseat.
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DeGraham tossed and turned in her sleep, these thoughts racing through her mind, falling back into a restless sleep, her mind took her back to the bank of that foreboding, dark river of the dead, as a voice filled her mind.
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“You shall not pollute the land in which you live, for blood pollutes the land, and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that is shed in it, except by the blood of the one who shed it.”
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Numbers.
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No atonement, it repeated.
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She could never be forgiven. The cold coins in her hand for the Ferryman. They still had her number on them, and she handed them to him with a lazy salute. He pocketed them and said nothing. She hated him. The beast yawned and rested its head on its paws, he too knew she would no longer resist.
The next day she testified about Keauna, the twenty-year-old female passenger that was flung over the bridge as the car spun. How she wasn’t located for three days and how she had never seen her. She was excused from the stand and took a seat in the courtroom and watched as crime scene specialists testified about the condition of her body that lay dead for three days in the summer heat before being located by the police.
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She felt sick and disgusted as she, along with the jury, listened to the testimony and saw the images, the evidence, the flies.
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The victim was dead before she hit the ground. That was a relief. The expert testified that she died when her head went through the back glass. No seatbelt. In the car with a fleeing felony suspect, most wanted. The medical examiner’s report focused on toxicology. No drugs or alcohol in her system. The detective said that she had no criminal history. There was no evidence of pregnancy. No scars, marks or tattoos. She was a healthy twenty-year-old female, they said.
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It had taken them a year to get to that courtroom, such a slow legal system, but the sentence was finally handed down. A year of sleepless nights and talking to a dead man. The end of an armed robbery spree that had plagued the city for weeks. Leaving two dead after a pursuit that concluded with a fiery crash. The charge, double homicide. The result, a conviction. Guilty by twelve.
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DeGraham left the courtroom, trying to hold it together. It was the first time she had seen the photos of the girl lying broken in the thickly wooded area. The limbs around her, broken by her fall. Her crumpled body lay facedown in the dirt. They had shown Isaac’s pictures too. She had listened to his wife and children. Isaac wouldn’t be happy about his new roommate she was bringing home. The closet would hold them both. He would just have to make room for Keauna.
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She didn’t understand the guilt for Keauna. She had never spoken to the girl, she had never even touched her or seen her. Just those crime scene photos and now the guilt for her overwhelmed her too. She understood Isaac. She had touched him. She had spoken to him. She had crawled through flames to get to him. She had the scars to prove it. Navy polyester melts to the skin like hot lava. Not flame-retardant after all, not at that level of heat anyway. She had made it to him in under a minute. She later learned the brain could function anywhere from three to nine minutes after cardiac arrest. She had apologized and hoped he had heard it. So, she understood why she had Isaac, she was with him when he died.
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She thought of this as she waited for the elevator in the courthouse.
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Isaac’s wife and children approached the elevators. She stiffened.
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“I hate you,” his oldest daughter said as she stared at her with hurt and hate, angry tears ran down her face.
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DeGraham nodded, she hated herself too. She tried to swallow down the lump lodged in her throat. The throat can constrict and cut off the airway, caused purely by emotion.
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White courthouse marble echoes the loudest.
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She turned and took the stairs down in retreat with Isaac’s daughter’s words ringing in her ears.
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She got home, took off her uniform and crawled back into bed.
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“Goodnight, Isaac,” she said to nothing.
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She set her alarm. She shoved down the white sheet, hot with guilt. They had covered him with that white sheet. She saw it all the time. She would get rid of everything that was white. Reminders, but James had called them triggers. Ironic to call them that; trigger meant something entirely different to her now.
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She lay there, staring at the ceiling, its slightly cracking paint no longer bothersome. She replayed the sentencing. Thirty-five years, they would both be serving them now but in different jails. Johnathan... Supermax for him, the conscious mind for her. Both of their lives were over. Even when their time was served, neither one of them would really ever be out.
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Some mother.
When she could get a break from Isaac, get him out of her head, she swam. Lap after lap, turning and continuing until the water erased the thoughts. A true abyss of no thoughts, just movement and breathing. It was the only peace. She had tried other distractions, some of them regrettable. Not much else worked, he was always there. She had changed so much.
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She missed herself. Happiness was like a sparkling thing she couldn’t afford. She could only admire it through the glass. She could only want it. Maybe she could save up and get it? She paid in strokes and turns. She felt safe there, it was a better abyss. Clear, bright blue, clean water, her sanctuary, she stayed there until she could only stagger to the locker room. Her scars were on display, people saw them, no matter how hard they tried to hide their looks. Sick bastards, all of them, staring at what fascinated them. Slowing down and gawking as they inched past carnage. People are shit. Not Isaac though, he was waiting there too, in the locker room. Metal lockers slamming vaguely reminded her of the sounds from that night. She could relate anything to that night. Smells, temperature, darkness, light, smoke.
“Goodnight, Isaac,” she said and yawned. Sleep was coming a little easier as the pages of the calendar changed. Time passed so slowly when there were dark times. As soon as things were brighter, it seemed to zoom by. She wondered if he would ever move on or if he would punish her forever as her daughter grew a little bigger. He seemed to let his guard down occasionally and she would find herself laughing at something funny. That brought him back in an instant and the laughter faded quickly. He didn’t get to laugh, after all.
​
There had been a big ceremony when she saved a victim from a house fire. They stuck a pin on her chest and made her smile for the flashes. They were blinding. Her family saw it on the television. She got home and tossed the pin in a bowl on her dresser. They did it again when she held onto the guy that actually jumped from the bridge. She held onto him, he was so heavy. She got a dislocated shoulder and another pin for that one. She tossed it in the bowl too. Her math was even. Two dead, two saved. Foolish to think that evened things out. She still felt the line across her body. She still handed the Ferryman her tokens every time she slept, she still felt withdrawn from her daughter and Isaac had gotten comfortable in his new home. He had settled down a bit, but he was always there.
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She avoided the bridge, she drove over it once more, feeling the bump-bump, bump-bump beneath the tires as she drove over the expansion joints. The curb was still chipped, from the Mark VIII, they didn’t fix chips. It would always be there. A chunk missing on the side. The circular tire marks, like tracks of a spinning figure skater in the ice, were long gone. The Bible flashed through her mind. The people had been with Jesus for three days, all so hungry, Mark 8. Three days, she glanced to the left side of the bridge, three long, hot days. The significance was not lost on her and she vowed to never cross that bridge again. She never did. There were other ways and she would go around it. Isaac seemed to agree, they didn’t need to come here again.
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She had seen the smoke Genies several more times, those evil bitches. They were like wicked seductresses, twisting around the pole, luring. Always writhing and dancing, urging with their long fingers, beckoning their “come with me.” They were always hungry and horny, wanting to feed themselves and their lust. Feeding on and feeling everything they could reach. She stared into the flames many more times, remembering how they had touched her once and knowing they would eat her too. They would feel her again if they could, but it was not a touch she would ever crave. Her scars itched every time she saw them.
She stopped by a favorite spot to grab some lunch. The televisions mounted high in the restaurant buzzed with one horrendous thing after another. Death, destruction, someone running, fleeing, racing to impossible freedom. Weaving in and out, evading at any cost. Some even became infamous for fleeing. The patrons around her were all transfixed with sick fascination. She wondered where their guilt was. They just didn’t understand the price to be paid when things went south. This was why she rarely went out anymore, people disgusted her. The public, who thought pursuits were exciting. They loved to watch them. The shock value as the police cars chased and the helicopter gave a bird’s-eye view, while someone narrated the chase on the news like it was entertainment. She got up from her chair, tossed down some money, more than enough, and walked out of the restaurant in a cold sweat. She walked down the sidewalk, heading towards her car, ready to head home. As she walked, Keauna joined her on her left and Isaac fell into step on her right.
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She got in her car with her silent passengers joining her, along for the ride. Not ghosts, no, something different. No name for it that she knew. Not demons, not apparitions, no tangible form. She didn’t even believe in all of that. They were just hers. A polyamorous relationship that actually worked. She was jealous that they never aged, she thought after she got home and looked in the mirror. She was getting older; she could feel it.
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“I hate you,” the words of Isaac’s angry daughter replayed in her mind.
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She took some pride, on his behalf, for having raised such a fierce child. For wanting her to pay. She did pay, but the little girl would never know. Forgiveness would never be given from her or him, or them. She never longed for death, she longed for silence, she wanted them to go away. She got mad at them, then she felt selfish, they couldn’t get mad back.
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The book she was reading was good. The tension built and she couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, her other escape. Isaac tapped his finger on the page. She tried again to read, but there he was with his constant tapping. She chucked her book onto the stack with the other unfinished ones. Maybe Isaac would let her finish them all one day. She doubted it.
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She watched the civilian world and tried to be a part of it. She tried to be a good mother. She just didn’t belong with them, any of them. Not even her old crew, her police brothers, now having been deemed “unfit for duty.” She had given everything and now sat alone with the dead. The PTSD stigma swirled around her, she told no one unless she had to. To say the letters out loud, the acronym was embarrassing. Shameful. She would have it and Isaac forever. And sometimes the girl. She didn’t understand why he was so different. She had seen so many, taken so many reports, helped load so many bodies into the backs of whatever vehicle came for them. None of them bothered her the way that Isaac did.
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“You didn’t just show up after the fact, you were an active participant from start to finish. Your actions contributed,” James said.
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She could still hear his words in her mind. But she had grown alright with Isaac, she deserved his haunting if you could call it that. All over a bad pursuit.
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She would never do it again. She would never give chase. That was what she told the lady in the evaluation after she started having problems. Isaac hadn’t been her first. She had chased another; he ran himself into a wall. Different somehow, because he was a criminal. Because he only killed himself. It was when it was the innocent that it mattered. It was, after all, their main objective, to protect life, to protect and serve. With Johnathan, the cost did not add up for an arrest. She should have followed him and hoped he ran on foot. She could have followed him and waited for more back-up to move into the area. But she had flipped on the lights and siren and determined the fate, a willing participant, a death dealer with no time machine.
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“Goodnight, Isaac,” she whispered in the dark as she clicked off the light.
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“Mommy,” a small voice said, making her sit up.
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“Have a bad dream?” she asked.
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“Uh huh, can I sleep with you?” a scared little voice asked her in the darkness.
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She patted the bed and took a bear to the face and blonde hair to the chin. Cold little feet wiggled down seeking warmth against her and she pulled her daughter in tight.
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“Tell me what happened,” she asked.
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“I can’t remember,” the little voice said through a yawn.
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“It’s good to not remember bad things, shhh... go to sleep,” she whispered in the dark and closed her eyes.
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“Goodnight, baby,” she whispered in the dark.
“Goodnight, Mommy,” her daughter whispered back.