In Good Conscience |
Issue 17
|
|
Karen and I had been returning from a near perfect weekend. My last memory is of her leaning in to kiss me. And then, without pause, I heard Karl talking.
“So I moved in on her. Not a looker, but built. She let me buy her a drink. And another, nother, nother until we went up to my room. Not as good as I wanted, but okay….What’s that?... nah, I gave her a fake name and I’m pretty sure she lied as well.” As his thoughts and speech barraged me, I got the full front view of Karl, wet and naked, cell phone in hand. He was bald, excessively body-hairy and at least forty pounds overweight. He viewed himself a stud. Karl idly scratched a pimple on his leg and I felt its soreness. I tried to shut my eyes or turn away, but I was glued to Karl. Shut the hell up I thought. He jerked his head around, looking scared. Put some clothes on you shrivel-dicked fat ball. He grabbed a towel and ran from his bathroom into the hotel bedroom, waving his cell phone like a crucifix. Without willing it or sensing movement I traveled with him. Karl felt his chest, then his pulse while frantically swiveling his head. His thoughts washed over me and in their troughs I knew his memories, waving like seaweed under his surface. Jesus, Karl, you’re a thief as well. He screamed, ran back into the bathroom, and fumbled through his toiletry kit until he found a vial labeled Diazepam, shakily extracted two pills and gulped them down. You’d have had better luck with the cocaine in your rolled up socks. Karl started trembling, his thoughts an incoherent blotching. I realized what I was doing to him and stopped addressing him. But I couldn’t leave and stood vigil while his panic slowly subsided. After a brief tasting, I even quit bottom feeding on his memories. But the babble that was Karl continued. After several days of suffering through a bad movie I couldn’t walk out on, I began to sympathize a little with him. He’d allowed himself to be dressed up in the worst influences around him. I began to micro comment on alternatives available to him, so softly he almost couldn’t sense it. Maybe call her. Geordie might be right. Will that really help me… And then, after too long, I was jump cut from Karl to Sylvie. I’d learned enough to hold in silence, listen and read her. Sylvia was fluff with delusions of grandeur. Not criminal or vicious, just affectionately artless. She tortured her hair. I liked her, and suffered through her bubble gum chewing thought processes. Does he really like me? Bert’s such a shit sometimes. Maybe most times. Could I be better for him? Could I do better than him? I did a discreet rake through of her memories and discovered that, indeed, Bert was a shit. I suffered for another day through her about him until an idea slithered out. I didn’t want a repeat of what I’d done to poor Karl, but what if I communicated while Sylvia was sleeping? That night while she was asleep but not dreaming, I contacted her in a whisper tone. Bert must hate me to treat me like this. None of my friends have to put up with this criticism and domination. I’m smart and accomplished (okay, I used some liberties here) I should dump him before he damages me. Over a dozen or so nights, as I cited examples of his sarcasm and selfishness, she swung around. But was now afraid of being alone if she cut him off, and felt trapped. I let out an ethereal sigh and continued. I need to tell my friends that Bert is treating me very badly and I’m going to dump him. They’ll provide the support I need until I can find someone else. She finally did the dump, and Bert blew apart like a cheap firecracker. I’d prepared Sylvie for that as well and she simply eliminated him from her electronic life. Sylvie was still a ditz, but, as I said, likable. Just as she hit it off with Ralph, I was involuntarily swooshed over next to Phil. Phil only had two problems, but they were chokers. He was a seminarian who wasn’t sure about the strength of his faith, nor the nature of his sexuality. He laughed at blasphemous jokes and was strongly attracted to both men and women. His confessor could only echo the church’s party lines. His doubts and guilts were slime globules choking up his life. His prayers were compulsively repetitious. Dear God, help me. Expose my doubts to your light. Cleanse me of my carnality. Show me how to discipline myself. Being intimate with Phil gave me emotional distress as well, and I agonized with him. The sleep sermons didn’t register with him and I was desperate enough to try a Voice Of God approach. During his next private prayer session, I softly interjected: First be at peace with yourself. Then approach me. Phil swung around and stared, owl-eyed, but in a cubicle without much more than a kneeler, there was little to see. His breathing was ragged, but he resumed prayer. Decide who you are and live that life in me. “Shut up!” he moaned. But the darts had struck, and he began to wonder if maybe his vocation was elsewhere. It took many more gentle nudges before he accommodated my inner voice. The day he told the chancellor that he was leaving was also my departure from him. My ensuing partners, almost innumerable, were neither damned nor candidates for sainthood, just meat-hooked on decisions that would move them toward one or the other. Every bad decision they made I took as my failure. There were relatively few but always stung. And then it was my turn. You have done yeoman work, for which we are thankful. Now you must decide. I was alarmed but had concluded there must be a Deus ex Machina. “Decide what?” You may return to receive that kiss, or continue your service to us. “Karen, is she all right? So much time has passed.” Time is a measuring tape used only when needed. You will be back exactly as you were, with no memory of your service. “But if I stay, what happens with her?” She exercises free will, perhaps wisely, perhaps not. “Would I be able to work with her as I have been with others?” No, but another might. All depends on her actions. “Can I think about it?” You already have. “I have questions.” You would not yet understand the answers. I nodded, although I didn’t know who or what to. “In some fashion or other I loved each of them, didn’t I?” There was silence. I felt what would have been a wry smile. “And I am to exist only through others.” |
Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over 600 stories and poems published so far, and twelve books. He works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he squats on the review board, and at Scribes Micro, where he’s the idle figurehead.
|