It was the anniversary of the night I killed my business rival, but no one else knew that.
Marta and I had gone to our favorite chain restaurant, themed Urban Wasteland. We like how the servers pretend to be mugging you, but then they return with food, along with your valuables. You have to put your order in your pocket so they rob your order too. Then they tell you they’ve decided to worship you, because of some prophecy they’ve dreamt up in their radioactive minds, and for the rest of the meal they call you God.
It’s a joy watching the other slouched patrons miserably bite into their quesadillas and slurp up spinach dip as they are referred to as The Holy One, and The Light of My Life.
Marta and I were talking about something banal when I noticed him. Or at least, it was the spitting image of him. Gred Valls, my former partner and later adversary in business and life. The man I’d hit too hard over the head in an alley way not far from here, with a broken toilet seat no less, six years ago to the day.
I saw him and he saw me, and he stared, and I could sense he continued to stare even after I looked away.
I got clammy. Marta noticed and asked if I was getting the flu and I said no, I didn’t think so. Then she looked at the food and I said it wasn’t the food. Then what, she persisted. I don’t know, I said, and excused myself to the restroom, because I felt if I sat there another minute she might finally get it out of me.
I’d done an incredible job not telling a soul since that night, not giving away the slightest hint that I was involved, not even when the police came to grill me. They knew I had motive, but there was no proof, thanks to my fastidious cleanup.
I was actually surprised how easy it was to keep the secret, no matter how many times his name was brought up by colleagues and friends, even by Marta on occasion, which I confess made me a bit suspicious that something had gone on between them. But I never felt the slightest tug of guilt about it.
I think that’s because I knew he was an awful person, capable of terrible things. I will not tell you how I knew, but trust me, I knew. That’s not why our partnership ended though, for the record. I was no saint myself.
I had not intended to kill him that night, but as soon as I saw he wasn’t breathing, without a pulse, I felt self-righteously good about it. I think that’s why I did such a stellar job cleaning up. I was filled with a buoyant energy, the kind you feel when you know you’ve done something altogether for the best. One less parasite walking the Earth, making everyone’s lives miserable, despite how gushingly everyone spoke of him at the funeral, and after.
He couldn’t have survived that night, so either this man was a lookalike, which seemed unlikely, or a relative I’d never met, which seemed most likely, or a hallucination, which seemed possible but not plausible.
I hoped that by isolating myself in the restroom, if this man had in fact come to confront me, he’d do it with as few witnesses as possible. So I stood there for a long time, idling at a urinal, pretending to piss. Other men came and went, but none were ever that guy.
I’d almost given up when he finally stepped in. For a long while all he did was stare. He had a black suit on with a black trench over it. He looked like a CIA agent, or security detail at a funeral. He had Gred’s cheekbones and gray eyes. Better hair, but I suppose Vall had hair like that in his 20s too.
I turned and faced him. “Well, what the hell do you want? Who are you?” I asked.
“You know who,” he said, eyes smoldering. Oh yeah, this must be someone connected to Gred. He hates me. Good, a loose end and I didn’t need to go looking for it.
“I don’t. Not exactly. I have some ideas, but why don’t you tell me so I know for sure.”
“I am the Messenger.”
“What’s your name?”
“I am Fate.”
“Oh god, enough with the theatrics. They suit the setting, but still, just spell it out for me.”
“I speak on behalf of Gred Vall.”
“Whatever you came here to do or say, get on with it. My burger’s getting cold.”
He reached to the flaps of his jacket, and only then did it strike me that I’d left my coat, with the pistol I started to keep on me after that night, on the back of my seat. I tensed myself, prepared to leap should he get the draw on me. I’d go right at him, wrestle it away and…
But he didn’t remove a weapon from his coat. Instead, he opened the flaps as wide as a flasher, and what I saw was…another world.
A world where the dead pickle and blossom. A world of terrible light and none at all, at once. I saw faces, many familiar, wailing and lost, yet they were all transforming in spectacular ways.
I didn’t feel afraid at this horrifying spectacle, but jealous. I wanted to be there, with them. I wanted to be them. As palpable as their suffering was, I felt they were in a better place than I was, a safer, more nurturing environment than this rotten world which I’m forced to navigate with my frail body and desiccated soul.
Yes, they were being tortured, but soon their suffering would end, and then something extraordinary would happen to them, I felt certain of it. Whereas, my misery had not yet begun, and therefore I was as far from what lay on the other side of it as possible. And I knew my rival was among them, and I never hated him more than in that moment, even as I was being shown the depth of his misery — it all only underscored my own!
He closed his trench and the vision clicked off like an old television set. I was left with only the dimmest memory of what I’d witnessed, an echo of that impossible light just a smudge on my blink.
“What was that?” I managed to ask.
“Where you sent him. He has nearly outgrown that place. When he does, he will find you.”
Then he turned abruptly and walked out.
I stood there for I don’t know how long. My trance was eventually broken when another patron entered and asked if I was alright. I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I just made my way back to the table, stunned.
“You’re sick. You look sick. I already paid, let’s go,” Marta said before I even had a chance to sit. Then she drove us home.
I did not tell her what I’d done, though I wanted to. The thing is, I knew confessing would do nothing for me, not improve my mood, alleviate my guilt, nor provide any insight that would comfort me.
Further, I imagined it could’ve endangered Marta to hear it. After all, when my rival finished outgrowing that place, becoming who or what he was meant to become, he will find me. If Marta knew what I’d done, and what became of him, he might need to enact his vengeance on her as well.
That’s why I packed my things that night and drove far from Marta, and the life I once lived, fairly satisfied. There was no going back to it, knowing what was to come next. I rented an isolated place by the sea. Day and night, I listen to the waves break against the rocks below the cliff on which my new rests, wondering if that’s where Vall will drop me.
While I am of course afraid, there’s another part of me that is…eager. Yes, that’s the word. Because I know that the sooner he gets here, the sooner will I go where I sent him, and then my suffering will truly begin, and I will be taking steps towards my own transcendence..
He will send me to the place from which he came, the one I saw in the trench, and I too will bathe in its awful light. Then I will begin to grow, experiencing pain of which I can’t currently comprehend, until I too outgrow that place and form and become whatever it is that I was always meant to become.
Just as I kicked off this process of becoming for him, my dear former partner, terrible at first then magnificent later on, I’m certain he’s on his way to return the favor.
So we are friends again, I sincerely believe that and that the feeling is mutual, and all it took to repair our friendship was for me to murder him.