Reluctantly, he handed over the key. He’d considered refusing but he knew they
would kill him and take it anyway.
He’d made a promise to his creator when he accepted the job that
he’d take the key with him into the next life.
He’d keep it hidden from his boss at all costs and maybe save
someone. He believed in karma and knew
that he’d pay for what he’d done in the next existence. He had wanted to believe that when his last
breath escaped him, he would disappear into nothingness. But he’d seen things that made it impossible
for him to deny that there was a powerful fate that kept score. Good things happened to some people, and
others, like him, just couldn’t catch a break.
He’d worried that in his next life he’d come back as the
child of one of the men he preyed upon. The
men who were so desperate to find a way to be good that they turned to him,
believing that fate just had to hand them something good. Men who drank themselves mean and hated the
world for their inability to resist their addictions. Men who, when sober, felt so remorseful about
all that they had done, that they were too weak to even look at their children to
see what they had done. Instead, the men
turned to him, with their last dollars, and the silent wish that they would get lucky. They’d win this time,
they believed, and give their children something besides bruises and broken
bones. They wordlessly prayed that their
winnings would be enough to make their children forgive them. But that didn’t happen; fate forbade it, he
knew. Even if the men won once, they’d
lust for more, and bet again, with renewed faith that now their luck had
turned. But they’d lose again, and turn
to drink to dull the knowledge that they couldn’t be the men they wanted to be
or the fathers they needed to be.
The key unlocked his safe securing all his records. Records of the debts he’d collected, unofficial
records of men who had left this world with violence, some had taken their
children with them into death. Records
of outstanding debts too. He wanted to keep the key hidden, even now, so that his boss wouldn’t have those
records. With his death, he’d free the
men he couldn’t help in life. Maybe some
of the children would escape. Maybe fate
had something better planned for them.
But, as he was kneeling on the bridge, the gun was pressed
to his head, he accepted that fate wouldn’t give him this one thing – he
couldn’t die a hero.
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