Not Dead Yet - Forum

THE FORCE – Fiction

The winds have gone. Yet as the hurricane had blown, life had changed so dramatically for me that I find it hard to describe. But if only to make sense of it myself, I must.
It had been the second major change in my life in such a short time, the first coming with questioning; with a realization that I saw nothing in this world that proved the life I lived. Since I had left I’d been living in a less than desirable area, the only real light in my troubled life the kid who’d play outside in the street.
Such a happy kid he was – a miracle considering the poverty around there. But he’d always speak to me, want to be my friend. Of course, his mother would take him in, tell him about speaking to strangers, but it never bothered him with me. And the day he found his mother with her eyes staring blindly and two bullets in her chest, I was the first person he ran to.
I felt the injustice of the world as he cried in my arms, and as the police failed to gain any angle on the killer, I resolved that I had a duty to bring this person to justice.
The hint came when I found out the nature of his mother’s ‘friendships’, and that she was well known with the local gangs. One by one I put the pieces together, my only worry, the kid, who just wouldn’t leave it alone either. He’d follow me everywhere, yet I knew I was moving into a dangerous world of which he should have no part.
What I intended to do when I caught up with the killer, I had no idea. Certainly, my previous life, before the change, would impact on it – I hoped. Or had I become something more primeval since leaving?
I caught up with him as the hurricane came. Knowing what he had done, anger rose up in me, reflecting the wind howling around me, the rain lancing into my flesh. I dived at him with a similar ferocity, and I felt that darker side rising from deep, deep within.
At what point in the fight he brought out the gun I don’t know, but suddenly it was a fight for my life. Grabbing his arm, I struggled and twisted until the gun fell from his hand. Turning and diving to reach it, I suddenly noticed it was in another’s hands.
Reality and goodness returned to me then. Noticing the hatred in such a young face was a shock indeed, and it was obvious who the kid was pointing the gun at, his finger hovering over the trigger.
I pleaded with him not to do it, but knew that even I had almost succumbed to that evil force. As for the killer, he merely pleaded for his life, his voice struggling to rise above the rage of the storm.
I saw the crossing point of intent in the kid’s eyes and knew he was about to be ruined for ever. Yet, at that point, a movement attracted my attention. I turned my head slightly and watched as, almost in slow motion, the road sign soared through the air, carried by the wind.
I had a precognitive vision of the kid sliced in half with its ferocity. Yet, it passed inches from him, its final turn contacting with the gun and knocking it clean out of his hands.
All three of us looked on in shock at this amazing thing. Amid all this carnage, such an important act of good.
Coming to my senses, I hit the killer, rendering him unconscious and soon he was in jail. As for me, I looked on the world anew, and as I entered the church for the first time in so long, I was greeted with those comforting words: ‘Welcome back, Father’.

© Anthony North, September 2008

Nice one Val !