Iggie's Place - or - Kharzai vs. Idiots

A short story by Kharzai Djinn

I do not believe that all humans are idiots, not even most of them. The vast majority of humans, whether educated or not, are equally intelligent, equally capable of smartness. Which is to say they mostly all have the capacity to act with wisdom. Nor do I assume most humans to be evil. People just want to be at peace and not have to deal with, or even see, evil and wickedness.

The problem is that the majority of that majority does not realize these facts about themselves and they tend to flow straight down to lowest common denominator (LCD) living. Letting themselves be led by the herd, following the groupthink for fear of standing out. They are afraid to judge, afraid to call out something they don’t feel comfortable with. All too often the narcissistic core of the political leaders and tenured faculties, ecclesial and institutional alike, are grabbed from that tiny portion of the population that actually are both idiots and evil. By employment of cunning displays of treachery, they connive and schemed to lead the willing LCD majority by their noses down paths to perdition.

Hrm...that’s an uncommon gathering of big multisyllabic words for me. I think this place and this case both have me a bit frazzled. But when your job is dealing with evil idiots of celestial proportions, you must do what you must do to save as many innocents as you possibly can, within the constraints of physics.

And that is why I found myself that lovely wet cold Wednesday morning standing in the shadows behind a dumptster in an alley two hours before ‘dawn’, waiting for a group of evil idiots to materialize through the thick northern fog. I do little finger quotes around ‘dawn’ like that because in this part of the world, at this time of year, the sun is an insomniac and only goes to bed for a couple of hours each night, dipping below the horizon around midnight and popping back up by oh-four-hundred, bathing the land in a flat light that renders the world almost like a two dimensional matte painting. Late spring clouds over the mountains to the east seemed to lock in a mass of moisture, hiding the city in a grey blanket until it later when it employs its best evaporative powers to dry things out for the summer, until the rain comes in earnest in August.

But my focus today is about idiots. Four of them in particular. Why these specific idiots chose to try their shenanigans here of all places I do not know, probably thought it would be less obvious way up in American’s northernmost metropolis, Anchorage, Alaska, population 376,000. Yes, yes. I hear you city slickers declaring that Anchorage is not really a major metropolis, it is only 1/40th the size of LA and 1/50th the size of the Big Apple. But that is like comparing apples and oranges to salmon and space aliens... i.e. completely different things. Anchorage, Alaska may not be the impressive sprawl of manmade structures folks from further south think of when they picture ‘the city’, but Anchorage absolutely is the world’s largest city above the 61^st parallel. Situated a three hundred sixty five miles below the Arctic Circle, on the coast near the top of Cook Inlet, a finger of the northern reaches of the Pacific Ocean once explored by the infamous James Cook a decade before his experience of mutiny on his ship The Bounty.

Now earlier when I said this place has me frazzled I did not mean Alaska as a whole, or the city of Anchorage. I actually love the place in general. The mountains, the oceans, the meeses. I’ve made friends with several of the latter. My befrazzlement comes from belief that Alaska is chock full, at least in the minds of a certain class of perpetrator, of places to hide and perform their nefarious deeds. In truth, Alaska is only good for hiding if you have the necessary skills to live completely off grid like in the pioneer days, surviving by hunting and fishing and actually hiding from other human beings...and maybe bears.

What that assortment of idiots fails to realize is that attempting to run certain types of criminal enterprise in Alaska, whether in semi-urban Anchorage, or any remote village anywhere in Alaska, quickly sticks out like a single tree on the tundra. Neighbors will report you, especially if they themselves are out there hiding from something and don’t want attention drawn their own direction. The Alaska State Troopers are no joke when it comes to finding and taking down bad guys. That said, some bad guys are beyond what the Troopers or the US Marshal Service or Delta Force, or even a really stern librarian have the capacity to take care of. And that is why I am telling you this whilst standing behind a dumpster in a fog shrouded alley in Anchorage, Alaska. Those kinds of idiots are my speciality.

You see, while most people try to pretend they don’t exist outside of novels and movies, there are beings that dwell in what my kind call ‘the true darkness’. The true darkness is a state of existence that is marked by the absence of that spiritual light that we call in this realm ‘life’. Those filled with this darkness are animated with movement and driven by conscious logic and thought and emotion, but the light of life has been extinguished in them. They have been rendered mortal, with an expiry date. I am not talking about men here, mortal humans, that is. Humans, while living in this realm, fallen as it is, still have that spark of the Creator’s essence that can be fanned to flame should they choose. Humans still have their chance to return to the light.

The darkness within those creatures that I pursue is complete. There is no possibility of redemption for any who have stood between the Pillars of Flame, who have eaten of the Great Tree and drunk from the Crystal River, and yet still chose to rebel, to attempt an actual coup. Idiots.

They willfully traded perfect lives in the light of the Creator’s domain for a temporary lifeless existence, their own spirits a black chasm incapable of ever again retaining that light they threw away. And worst of all for them, in my opinion at least, is that every one of them not only is fully aware of their doom, but they are all painfully cognizant that they stand condemned because they chose to believe a series of incredible lies. Everyone who joined the rebellion of the deceitful one, fully one third of the population of countless kinds, were cast out the Presence to await their judgment.

In the meantime, out of immortal spite, the fallen have made it their mission to bring ruin to creation and its inhabitants as much as possible before their final judgment comes to pass. They prompt (entice?) humanity into their shadowy realm with promises of secret knowledge that leads to riches and pleasures and power over other men, all using the same seductive lies they’d once believed. When persons, human or other, intent upon doing dastardly deeds ally themselves to the dark ones, wittingly or witlessly, my kind are often put on the case.

Oh my! Sorry, I just realized I am being kind of rude. I have not actually introduced myself.

Starting over, insert this paragraph at the beginning of the version in your head.

My name is Kharzai. I am of Persian descent, more specifically of much older Elamite stock. Looking at me you would see that I am just the right height, and just muscular enough to still be called skinny. I sport a luxuriously thick black beard and matching ebony mass of tight yet still jiggly curls on my head. My skin is the shade of dark coffee with enough milk to make someone think it is really tea, and I’ve been told my eyes sparkle even in the night and that I have the brightest smile you’ve ever seen. Hah...that was starting to sound like a Dating Game introduction. While all of those things really are true of my appearance, I must be honest. It is mostly an affectation to make me fit in a little better with humanity. Okay, I still don’t really fit in as well as some of my peers.

Truth is, as you have by now surmised I am not actually a homo sapiens at all.

My name is Kharzai and I am of a kind of being that some cultures call a Djinn.

Bap bap b’Daaadum, Badum!

(In my mind that plays out as the Shave and Haircut song, always like to end my introductions with that to set the tone of the relationship)

So, now that I have introductions out of the way, back to the present.

I was talking about idiots. Evil idiots. These evil idiots, chose a wrong place to attempt to enact their significantly criminal deeds. Counting the slap of expensive sounding leathery footfalls I could make out four humans, two male and two female, and a fifth person who was not as human as the others probably thought he was. They were making their way through a morning fog that was uncommonly thick, even for a coastal city like Anchorage. It made the surrounding twenty-five storey buildings completely vanish. Tightly packed two-storey strips of shops floated along a faded periphery as the group stayed in a bubble of visibility less than five yards on a side. They were, as I happened to know, searching for a particular business, one that plied its trade as out of sight as possible behind a secret entrance in a back alley. The alley in which I providentially happened to be hiding.

The place they sought was not, of course, the alley itself, but a tiny hovel in said alley that in a previous incarnation had acted as “Iggie’s Place”, an illegal speakeasy bar run by a man named Iggie Gunta. I have no idea the ethnicity of that name and think the guy probably made it up while stoned. Iggie’s Place had been a fairly successful underground establishment quietly selling drinks, drugs, and prostitutes for several years until a heroin addict expired while leaning against the entrance and a hyper-observant paramedic noticed the strange way some of the bricks in the wall were missing mortar. He pointed it out to the APD officers on scene and soon Iggie was in prison and Iggie’s was out of business. The place was locked up and, for all intents and purposes, lost and forgotten amongst stacks of bureaucratic bureaucraciafying. A few months later city inspectors and some officers who had enforced the shutdown at the time were unable to locate the entrance again. And without anyone realizing it, everyone simply forgot about the place. Someone, some being, had done a slickie-trick and hidden the door from view. But, as any Djinn can tell you, glamours and hidings don’t last. Particularly not when you are being hunted by the kind of being that can work the same powers against you.

I waited in the darkness of a shadow between the dumpster I mentioned and the wall of a kitchy craft store that stood mostly empty even during tourist season. I stared across the alley at the door to Iggie’s, a clever arrangement of bricks, electrical conduit, and disconnected gas pipes that blended in almost seamlessly with the surroundings. Whoever had laid the hiding over the entrance had not done a very good job of it, obviously only concerned with human eyes.

The rhythmic tap tap of hard soled city-slicker shoes on the wet concrete sidewalk echoed through the mist. Voices carried in that strange manner of foggy mornings, at once amplified and sharp yet muffled by the heavy moisture laden air. Like talking in a closet full of blankets.

“Why did we have to do this so early in the morning?” muttered one of the men. “Everything is damp and it’s freezing.”

It was indeed a little chilly, hence my choice of t-shirt base layer, button down shirt, and a lined wind breaker to keep the moisture off. But as these folks probably came from some place south of San Francisco they would not have considered the sub-arctic chill for their little business trip.

“I hate this place,” said a female with a voice that grated on the ears, even this environment. Her sound made me think of a character from one of those LSD twisted kid’s show back in the 1960’s, Puf’n Stuff’s arch nemesis Witchy Poo. “The fog is totally ruining my hair.”

“To win the prize you must be the most dedicated,” replied a deep, and to the human ear, smooth sounding voice, almost hypnotic. “Consider yourselves lucky you were not dispatched in winter.”

While affecting the tones of a large, deep chested adult man, to my ear it was neither male nor female. It very obvisouly came from one who was, like me, human only in appearance. Another Djinn. I could easily discern from his tone, the lack of musicality behind his voice, that he was devoid of light. His kind rings like a cracked bell if you know what to listen for.

“How many are we inspecting?” said a different female voice than the one with the apparently damaged coiffure. This was much more confident sounding. She had no doubt as to her authority with whatever their hierarchy.

“There are twenty,” said the dark Djinn.

“When will the lot be ready for the delivery team taking custody?” asked the second human male.

“Immediately after inspection and acceptance,” said the Djinn.

“The vans will come in as soon as I click send on my phone,” said Ms. Confidence.

Two beats later, they turned the corner into the alley, the rattle of gravel under leather soles reverberating the announcement of their arrival like a tin can full of stones being kicked into a concrete echo chamber. In spite of the fog I could easily identify who was who. The humans were all dressed in the kind of business attire that would blend in seamlessly on the streets of Los Angeles or Seattle. Black-suit with blue tie, blue-suit with red tie, green-pant-suit, grey-skirt-suit. Up here, any locals who saw them would immediately mark them as out-of-state oil company executives or federal agents fresh out of the academy, or possibly as cartel lawyers. The suits they wore were costumes fit for any of those jobs, and I was pretty certain these folks were not in the first two of those categories. The Djinn was both taller and thicker looking than either of the two human males, but what stood out to me even more was the grey wool suit of a cut that looked like it was taken right out of the 1978 USSR Covert Espionage Fashion Catalogue, right down to a rather spiffily matching KGB fedora. I guess retro is supposed to be the new look for this particular trade?

From my shadowy nook I watched them walk to the entrance, oblivious to my presence. Still I dematerialized my flesh to the point of being invisible to human eyes, even if they looked right at me. The Djinn could still see my form tucked back there if he looked hard enough, but his attention was fully on his current business. He was tall, several inches taller than me, which, if including the four inches of thick and shiny black curls I affectionately refer to as my Perfro (Persian-Afro), I am six feet tall. This guy looked bald beneath the hat but his bushy eyebrows were above my head.

The Djinn put his hand on an extension of a gas pipe that ran along the wall. He twisted it, then pulled a length of electrical conduit away from the bricks, releasing the nearly invisible seal, and opening the door with a whoosh like a sealed vault. Low light reflected out of the space, the five entered, one at a time.

I flashed across the width of the alley as blue suit entered last, silently sliding in unseen as he let the door fall closed on the power of the little piston thing at the top. He did not even bother to look behind himself to make sure they were being followed. Not that it would have made a difference when it came to me being there, but for what they were about to do, they sure had some poor security awareness. Even if they were confident in a supposedly concealed overwatch keeping an eye on them from across the street, two stories up, in apartment 3B.

The space inside was what one would expect of an illegal speakeasy bar that had been abandoned and locked up in situ years earlier. A dusty bar with a variety of dustier looking glass liquor bottles lined along the back wall, cobwebs strung between them in no sort of pattern, like they’d been colonized by a gang of drunken spiders. Along the front of the bar stood a row of standard cheap metal barstools, the kind bolted to the floor to prevent their use as a blunt weapon. Against the opposite wall were a number of two and four top tables with their chairs upside down on the table tops, as if simply awaiting business hours to resume.

Still invisible to the four humans, and unnoticed by the other Djinn, I followed the group to the back of the room, to a green door with the words ‘Office / Store Room’ stenciled in black letters at about eye level. At the door the giant abruptly turned around to address the four. As he opened his mouth to speak grey-skirt-suit woman interrupted.

“I do not hear anything from the other side,” she said.

Her voice was much more irritating in an enclosed space, like sour wine vinegar poured up the nose whilst listening to nails being dragged across a chalk board. It was a sound so harsh even the memory of Witchy Poo seemed beautifully melodious. I am certain listening to grey-skirt-suit speak for prolonged periods would cause chemical burns to your entire face from the inside.

“Why is it so quiet?” she said.

The Djinn’s face twisted ever so slightly, glaring at her and allowing the most minute thinning of the suit of flesh he wore, allowing her just enough of a glimpse of his true form to freeze green-pant-suit’s breath in her chest.

“The guards ensure they do not make noise,” he rumbled. Then, to the rest, “My masters will want the payment to appear in their account upon acceptance.”

“The same button that calls the vans sends the money,” said the fearless green-pant-suit.

“We will inspect the goods first,” said black-suit, nervously adjusting his blue tie as if about to enter an interview.

“Do you doubt me?” said the Djinn, a menacing edge to his voice.

“We have faith in you and your people,” blue-suit-red-tie said to the Djinn.

“Yes, Roger,” said green-pant-suit in what was likely a very sultry voice to the weak minded, “we have complete faith in you.”

“No doubt,” said black-suit.

“No doubt,” squeaked the still cowed grey-skirt-suit.

Roger? The Djinn with KGB style sensibilities called himself Roger?

Roger the Djinn turned back around, twisted the knob, and pulled open the door. Light from a fluorescent fixture inside flooded bright white into the dingy bar space as he stepped in. The others entered quickly behind him presumably wanting to hurry up and get the work done. They froze in place a few steps inside the doorway, brains unable to comprehend the scene as fast as their eyes took it in.

The space looked like the back room of an animal shelter, the right side of the room was lined with twelve metal cages stacked in a double row, six up, six down. The left side of the room was an open space with a few chairs around a folding table in the center. Two bodies lay flat on their backs, parallel to one another, arms at their sides, just beyond the table. Their weapons were still holstered on their hips, no visible sign of trauma, no blood, but cloudy eyes stared at the ceiling in the well documented manner that clearly indicates the lack of souls connected to those suits of flesh.

Not only were the cages of skin and bone empty, but the entire series of metal cages also stood empty. A lone child’s sneaker, red with a white rubber sole, stood in the middle of the folding table.

Suddenly breaking the confused silence, green-pant-suit stepped further in. Ignoring the bodies on the floor, she slowly walked the length of the room, low heels clicking with her steps as she inspected each cage. Only when she’d visually verified the emptiness of every little prison cell did she turn around and throw a disgusted look at the pair of corpses. It was not the kind of disgust displayed by a person who was afraid of dead bodies, or grossed out by them. It was the kind of disgust one shows to an objected of hatred, as if she wanted to curse them and spit on them, or fling even worse bodily substances in their faces, for daring to fail.

“What happened in here?” she turned on Roger the Djinn. “Where is the product? Who stole our product?”

“Product?” I said out loud from behind them, producing surprised shouts from all four humans and a startled grunt from Roger. “That seems like a very impersonal way to refer to children.”

Stepping through the door, I incrementally increased my opacity before their eyes until I was fully visible.

“I love the look on your faces,” I said.

Shock did not properly describe their wide-eyed, blood-drained, slack-jawed expressions. Once fully material again I added a tiny bit of glow to my body to enhance the effect, their eyes growing commensurately wider.

“You all look exactly like a group of people caught doing things they very well knew better than to do.”

Roger the Djinn on the other hand did not look surprised, really. He was a bit more, tactically considerational in his expression. Which is to say cold, hard, and dark. All signs of pending rage in his kind.

“What have you done with our product,” his voice rumbled, a metallic tinge at its edges. “This is not your realm, you have no claim here.”

“Ah,” I smiled at him, “but I do have a claim here. Big time permission. Orders even.”

“I know who you are,” said Roger, “You are Kharzai, the one who thinks he is funny.”

“Well, I must be making impressions somewhere if you know my name, Roger,” I grinned back at him, flashing the brightest white smile I could muster, until it reflected in the humans’ eyes. Of course, that supernaturally white smile did not reflect even the tiniest bit from Roger’s eyes. “I only learned your human name a couple minutes ago.”

“Again,” he said, “before I send you back without a body, tell me what you did with our product.”

“Come on Roger,” I said, “call them what they are. They are human children, they are not a product to be sold.”

“Where did you take them?” demanded blue-suit, recovering enough from his bewilderment at my appearance to at least attempt to look like a forceful and confident cartel lackey with a law degree. He gave it his best try, but standing in a room where he was intent on committing a capital crime, with two already dead bodies at his feet like double exclamation marks pointing to his guilt lent his voice a slight but noticeable quiver. “That was was several million dollars worth of product.”

A child sold as a sex slave earns their pimp/owner as much as $200,000 per year, and if managed correctly, can survive to be exploited well into early adulthood continuing to earn money in exchange for their degradation until they died.

“The children, you mean,” I said, loudly emphasizing the word. They were five to seven year old kids, stolen from their lives. A couple were local, most were not. Some did not even speak English. All were forcibly taken from their families, terrified of the evil that surrounded them. No way was I going to refer to them as a piece of inventory. “I took them away from here. The children are safe, protected, being fed and medically cared for.”

Roger the Djinn’s demeanor really did change this time. Oooooh, he was not happy. Of course his kind was never happy, especially with the whole irreversible eternal damnation thing hanging over their heads. Suddenly black-suit, blue-suit, and green-pant-suit produced pistols retrieved from various locations beneath their garments and pointed them at me.

“You need to bring them back,” said black-suit. “Or you need to pay us for them.”

I stuffed my hands into my pants pockets, then patted up and down the front of my jacket.

“Oh man!” I declared. “I forgot my wallet. Sorry, no credit cards, but I do have, like, seven dollars cash.”

“We’ll get replacement inventory locally,” said green-pant-suit, “but first we are going to kill you.”

“That’s what those guys said,” I said, pointing to the two dead bodies. “But you can certainly make an attempt.”

Green-pant-suit followed through on her threat rather faster than I expected, pulling her trigger twice. Blue-suit and black-suit copied her actions an instant later. The bullets exited their weapons very fast. And as bullets are wont to do in windowless cinder block rooms lined with metal cages, very, very loudly. The shooters recoiled as the shock wave reverberated off the unyielding surfaces, bouncing back like a barrage of massive thunder claps. The sound had a physicality to it they obviously had not been expecting. Grey-skirt-suit-crazy-hair-lady slapped her hands over her ears, her mouth stretched wide, lungs forcing out a screech that overcame even the pounding echoes. And, as a note to her earlier concerns, that fog really had ruined her hair, probably much worse than she even imagined, I grimaced as an image suddenly appeared in my head of her as some kind of nightmare imagery of Witchie Poo actually being the crazy teacher Miss Frizzle’s psychologically unhinged twin sister.

As I made that observation, the bullets themselves crossed the space between us at over twelve-hundred feet per second. I tightened the muscles in my chest and belly, grimacing as the rounds struck my body in several places. I may be immortal but this is still a fleshly body and that stuff hurts! The bullets made of regular lead flattened on impact, dropping to the floor in front of me like a handful of coins.

One of the shooters, my money was on blue-suit, as people who wear blue-suits with red ties tend to be over achievers, had some kind of frangible ammunition, basically ‘explosive’ bullets. Made of a copper shell filled with epoxy and buckshot. When such rounds strike their target, they ‘explode’ into it, sending the sharp edges of the exploded copper metal jacket and the half dozen tiny little BBs in a dozen different directions inside the victim. Problem is that if the victim is wearing layers, like a light jacket over a loose button down shirt with a tightie-whitey-T-shirt as a base layer, the combinations of fabric can cause the round to explode prematurely before hitting the skin, which it did. Still the bits and pieces stung pretty sharply as they impacted, ricocheting at odd angles. One piece of buckshot winged off me, pinged against the cinder block wall and wanged across the room to hit grey-skirt-suit squarely in her forehead. The piece of buckshot had lost most of its potentially lethal velocity with all the winging and pinging and wanging but it still hit her hard enough to put an instant stop to the screeching. She let out a yelp of pain and fell silent, wavering on her feet slightly as a thin stream of blood dribbled between her eyes and over the bridge of her nose, down her cheek to drip off her chin.

The noise fell away and the room was weirdly silent. I stood quietly for several seconds, letting them absorb the fact that I was still standing. I patted my body, inspecting myself, then glanced up at them and smiled.

“As I said,” I said, “you can make an attempt.”

The gun wielding slavers must have thought they’d just been bad shots and decided to try again as if I were some fairgrounds arcade game. This time grey-skirt-suit, her crazy screech internalized and converted into rage stepped forward into the firing line with the others. As she pulled her own weapon from a holster behind her back, her face assumed the unmistakable telltale signs of a switch having been flipped to initiate a crazy train psychotic break. Those trips on the magic bus apparently messed her up pretty badly.

Four pistols opened fire. Only Roger Djinn did not shoot. He did not even produce a weapon as he watched the scene. The humans though, they kept firing until they ran dry. Which was pretty fast for both grey-skirt-suit and green-pant-suit who carried smaller pistols with only seven rounds each. Black-suit did not last much longer, his Glock having ten rounds. Blue-suit though was apparently compensating for some perceived inadequacies, the man had a twenty round magazine. He just kept blasting and blasting until even the others were like, ‘Dude, seriously?’

It was a miracle none of them were killed by the ricochets that whined around the room.

Weapons emptied, the floor littered with flattened rounds, and bits of fancy schmancy explodey ammo, the quartet of would be rapists and pimps once again stood in open mouthed shock, apparently very surprised that I was not only still standing but not bleeding, even a little bit.

“Well,” I said, visually examining my jacket and the shirt beneath it. I ran my hands across the dozens of tears and stuck my fingers through several holes. They’d practically shredded my clothes from shoulders to knees “you have certainly ruined this outfit.”

As that last word came out of my mouth, the context of the battle abruptly changed. In the blink of an eye, Roger’s KGB blue light special suit fell into a pile on the ground as his body morphed from physical human form to his broken celestial form. He transformed into a taller and more muscular version of himself, but now with clawed hands more like talons, and eyes blazing with darkness. His skin was a pale shade of lifeless blue. He roared a threat and reached down to grab me by my shoulders. The moment he touched me I too grew to my true form, which was very similar to his in most ways. Similarly tall, with powerful hands that, without proper manicuring could certainly appear claw like to some. Also muscular, but with a healthier less ‘several days dead’ look to my skin.

Roger dug his clawed hands into my shoulders. I put a hand on his face and shoved him back against the wall so hard the building shook like a little earthquake. If you were wondering how spirit beings can be physically grappling with each other and not just falling right through each other’s ethereal vapory bodies, that is because we do not actually have ethereal vapory bodies of steam, or ectoplasm, or phlegm or whatever. We have flesh and bones, but of a different kind than humans. Brawls between immortal beings of the rebellion and the faithful, literally the darkness versus the light, are somewhat similar but very different from human fights. Humans tend to pummel one another until one or the other either surrenders or is rendered unable to fight anymore (i.e. knocked unconscious or straight up dead). Fights between immortal pan-dimensional types, though, are, as mentioned two sentences ago, different, and yes, we do have wars. Major wars even, that often decide the course of history, albeit usually invisible to humans.

In referring to our kinds I use the term ‘immortals’ because although I could use the term ‘angel’ which describes the whole plethora of spiritual species, for most humans that word conjures only one specific type of angelic being, the winged ones with the white robes, which are actually not the most common kind. As you can tell, neither I nor Roger resemble those. We are immortal, which means that we do not reach our end in the expirational sense of mortality, there is no dying of old age for our kind. There is, though, a kind of death that is like banishment or exile but to places so extremely remote the human mind cannot comprehend it. Seriously, your minds cannot wrap around it because space is so incredibly big. Look at the images of those modern space telescopes. Do you see all the far away spinning galaxies in the distance? Some of those galaxies contain the some of the prisons I refer to. By the way, as a side note, as much as I love me a good sci-fi space opera, no human, or any other mortal creature for that matter, can ever expect to one day travel to the stars in the flesh. There will be no colonizing new worlds. There will never be mechanical space travel beyond a planet or two. Travel to those places takes more than ships and faster than light jump drive doohickies. It takes bodies that are not made of flesh. Mortal bodies simply cannot survive the distances and radiations, and there are no imaginary wormholes to fling you and your ship through to those places. That journey is not available for flesh and blood.

Back in the earthbound mortal world, though Roger grabbed me, I shoved his face, and we crashed into the wall. He stomped on one of the dead guards and crushed the corpse’s chest flat with a sickening sound.

As we struggled, I opened my true nature and released that which I keep hidden in this realm. It was as if a sun had burst into the room. The flash was so bright it knocked the humans to the ground with a physical force. I pushed it so bright that it blinded them and Roger, their evil hearts unable to withstand the pure light. The room became more than a room, transitioning between dimensions, light and shadow, fire and flame, empty void and icy water. Our battle transcended worlds, realities clashed like armies. Four thunders called their warnings as the abyss opened.

The humans had nearly gotten back on their feet when Roger roared a cry so loud, so filled with anguish that black-suit-blue-tie and green-pant-suit collapsed dead at the sound. The others, blue-suit-red-tie and grey-skirt-suit skittered under the table and curled into fetal positions. Grey-skirt-suit’s eyes trembled with madness. Blue-suit’s trousers were soaked around his middle. The child’s red shoe stood unmoved from its place above them.

I raised my voice in the ‘Language That Cannot Bear Lies’, a tongue understood by all living things, one that can never bear a deceptive word and only every speaks the truth. I declared the sentence laid upon Roger Djinn, and with a roar of impotent defiance Roger went ‘POOF’ and vanished from this realm. Between blinks to pair under the table saw me return to my human appearance, tucking my light inside and reshaping to that perfectly normal bearded, brownish complexioned, six-foot (including magnificent Perfro) tall guy I started out as.

“Where is Roger?” said grey-skirt-suit, “What did you do to him?”

Her voice had the quality of a warped vinyl record, pitch and volume modulating in unexpected intervals. Eyes shining with panic-strewn insanity, she stared up at me, her fog frizzled hair a jutting mess on one side, a matted mess on the other. The right half of her face streaked with the blood that persistently dribbled from the tiny divot in her forehead.

“Yeah,” muttered blue-suit, “What happened to Roger?”

“He was sent to prison,” I replied.

“Prison?” she attempted to shout it as a demand but it came out as a terrified squeek. “What prison? You just killed him!”

“I guess you could think of it that way,” I said. “But not really. There is no need for me to explain it though. You will be seeing for yourself pretty soon.”

“Bring him back!” said blue-suit. He sat up too fast and banged his head on the underside of the table, bouncing it up an inch. As it crashed back to the floor the red sneaker bounced in such a way that it looked to me like it was stomping the man back down in the name of its previous owner. Blue-suit’s voice sounded like a petulant toddler on the edge of a tantrum. “He has our money!”

A widening puddle had developed beneath him and as he seemed to be unable to stop the continuing flow it was slowly inching toward grey-skirt-suit where she still lay.

“Don’t worry, um...I’m sorry, I never caught your names,” I said, giving them that look that invites folks to give up their names without thinking.

“Dan,” said blue-suit-red-tie-pee-puddle man.

“Eliza,” said grey-skirt-suit-crazy-psycho-eyes lady.

“Well, Dan and Eliza,” I said. “You should not be too concerned about the money. You will not need it where you are going.”

“People do get out of prison you know,” screeched Eliza.

“You have no proof of anything,” declared Dan, regaining as much of his lawyerly persona as possible for a guy sitting beneath a table in a puddle of his own piddle. “There is no death penalty for this. We will be back and come after you!”

“Yes, I do. Yes, there is. And, no, you won’t.”

As they sat under the table staring up at me, defiance still burning in their eyes I wondered what drove them to be such vile humans. Was it some horrible abuse in their past that led them to pursue a life of wickedness? Or was it just plain old greed and avarice? ‘The devil made me do it’ is not ever true. The ‘devil’, be it a low level lackey like Roger or the Satan himself, does not make anyone do anything, they only whisper suggestions. They give nods, and nudges toward the broad paths. The people themselves choose to take the path that is their own actions. And these people chose to travel the road to dissipation and ruin by torturing children. As the boss once said:

“If anyone causes a child to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea.”

So without another word I opened my light in a single powerful flash, like a burst of lightning without the electric pop, just as quickly stuffing it back inside. That was all it took.

Dan in his blue-suit and red tie, and Eliza in her grey-skirt-suit and frizzy hair lay still beneath the table, mouths fallen open, eyes wide, sightlessly staring at the underside of the table. Their livers and kidneys and hearts and brains ceased all function. Their spirits had vacated their bodies, and were right then entering the human equivalent of Roger’s present abode, to await the judgment.

I wish I could do more of these kinds of cases, to save more children on this side of the river. But alas, there is only one of me, and there are many idiots.

-Kharzai Djinn