Sometimes Salvation

There was no beginning, there was no end, it was simply existence, a long complicated existence. The emptiness was biting; the loneliness was like a dark expanse never filled.

Once Kyle had dreams, once he had felt like a real person, but it had been so long since he knew what it was like to feel; to feel anything good at least. Now the anger consumed him, turned and twisted his world into those all consuming feelings of hot rage and cold vengeance. Even if at first those feelings clung to him like a sickness, it was better than feeling nothing at all and in doing so he felt a sort of clinical detachment from his life in way.

For a while, making others pay for whatever small thing they had done, bad or not, was enough. Not anymore, now it had ceased to matter to him, it was all the same, it held little interest. It was fate that intervened so that they would cross his path. Nothing short of fate, for he did not believe in faith anymore. It felt sometimes like someone had taken a knife and plunged it into his soul tearing and ripping out the faith he once had.

He had held onto that small light of hope tethered inside his conscious in that dark, dark place where all that evil happened. He held on when he had heard Jarod’s voice through the wall, but then there came a day when that voice was no longer there and the darkness began to consume him, making him forget who he was, making hope seem like it had been gone a lifetime dying away like a faint echo. 

And so down there in that dank sub–level cell, he became what they wanted him to be all along. He let all that was good in him wither and die and oh how they rejoiced when that happened. Even the torture he had endured for so long was to a lesser degree than before, but he hardly noticed that anymore.

That was a human emotion, a sentiment that he no longer felt connected to. When they let him hold his first gun, he felt the excitement run hot through his veins, but when he asked to use it he was beaten. He was told never to speak out of turn and never to speak his mind, he was to do only what they told him to do nothing more. He learned that lesson in a painfully harsh way, but he had learned it none the less.

Four weeks went by before they returned for him, he was on his bunk staring at the ceiling, his stomach was rumbling from the lack of food they had withheld as part of the punishment. He did not complain he simply stared back at them through the narrow glass strip. They asked if he was hungry, he simply shrugged his shoulders in reply. They thought they had broken him that time.

So he was given the standard provisions plus a little extra, he ate it without question, he never said thank you, for that was weakness and that was not tolerated. He shoved the metal plate and cup back through the slot and stared at them. There was no sign of contempt or gratitude behind his green eyes, they looked empty now. The Centre liked that. The food merely kept him alive for he found no appeasement in what they fed him. Sometimes he felt like an animal in a cage, fed only to keep them alive but never to make them happy only kept for the amusement of others.

The next day he was taken to another room where he again was able to hold the gun in his young hands. He made no attempt to move, he didn’t even think about turning the gun on his handler, those thoughts would come much later. Today he would do as he was told. He just felt its weight, it's power and potential.

“Kyle, would you like to try and shoot that weapon?” The voice wheezed out.

He nodded his head slightly. “Gooood” The disturbing voice responded. “Then take it and aim at the target boy, aim for the kill shots, you must know what those are don’t you boy?”

He didn’t really, but it wasn’t an option for him to say so. He closed his eyes and let the primal instinct inside of him take over. The head shot was obvious by then and he fired twice, hitting the target once square in the head but missing the second time. He looked down at his feet feeling ashamed that he had missed. He didn’t even notice the other man in the room until he felt him whack his legs so hard with a stick that they seemed to turn into jelly before he fell to his knees. “Never take your eyes off of your target!” The voice said coldly. “You must be the one to make the kill, or you are of no use to us understood!”

He understood. He climbed back to his feet even though his legs were burning and aching terribly. He held the pistol in his hands and aimed again at the cardboard cut-out of a human being. He lined up the sights and fired two shots straight into the head, but he didn’t’ stop there, he lowered the gun slightly and fired off the rest of the magazine into the heart of the target. It felt like an extension of his hand, natural, the recoil shuddering through his body, making him feel alive.

He felt such a surge of empowerment when he watched the bullets rip through the place where a human heart would have been. He felt like a God at that moment, like life and death was in his hands and he alone had the choice to spare it or take it. For the first time in a very long time he felt like somebody again, like he was worthy of living after all. That experience would stay with him for the rest of his life, that litany would become his mantra over time, he held in his hand that day the power to take a life or not to, it was his decision and he liked that. He never told that to his handler, Mr Raines, because he wasn’t supposed to think for himself after all, but secretly that feeling belonged to him and it was a feeling that made him feel good inside. It felt like the fiery rage that boiled inside him was temporarily cooled when he relived that moment over and over in his solitary cell, long after lights out.

It was that feeling that began to shape his psyche; it was the words that he wrote down in his journal that would ultimately define him. I decide who lives or dies.

A trained psychoanalyst studying such a young boy with those feelings might have diagnosed him as a sociopath or a budding psychopath and they probably would have been right. But no one like that ever came to the Centre. He was just a boy back then and he was growing up to be everything that they wanted him to be. A killer devoid of a passion, a killer that could never be reasoned with, bargained with or even bribed if there was a hit out on someone. He would do his job and that was all there was to it or so the Centre believed for the longest time. Kyle; Jarod’s little brother was nothing more to the Centre than a weapon to be used at will. They never saw the boy who sat in his cell day in and day out, a boy who was missing out on everything a normal kid had.

As he grew older they trained him intensely, when he grew tired someone would arrive and give him some sort of shot, and the adrenaline would flow through his veins like liquid energy. Soon enough he didn’t even require that much sleep. He became better and better at everything, he was exceedingly bright and learned everything faster than expected which pleased his handler. Once they had his I.Q tested and he scored so high that he was put in the genius range of intellect. Kyle was in that rare population who had an eidetic memory.

Everything came so easy to him that he just took it for granted. He never really understood the meaning of such a rarity until he was out in the real world. He could speak fluently in a number of languages, the words just rolled off his tongue with ease, but the best part was the ability to blend himself into any situation, any world he choose fit to try out.

Even though he was doing everything they wanted him to do, he still was put through rigorous cycles of torture to keep him strong or so they told him. The pain was always white hot and he never adapted to it as he had done with other things, mostly because they increased the force and the voltage each time they strapped him into the chair. Kyle feared almost nothing in his life but that chair filled him with dread even though he fought hard to never let it show.

Sometimes he wished so badly that he could just black out and send his mind somewhere else but the way his brain was wired and his intellect kept him from finding that haven, He endured though, through it all he endured.

But each time they put him in that chair he began to harden his hatred of humanity more and more. If the people who were monitoring him ever noticed they never let on, because he made sure that his eyes betrayed nothing of what he was feeling inside.

One day he dared ask one question, knowing what the consequences would be, but he didn’t care this time. After the beating he was simply told “He’s dead.” That was when the small visage of humanity drained from his body and he became exactly what he was made to be.

There were many assignments, they all seemed to blur together now in a black haze of hatred and sickness. All the things that he had done to other people without hesitation without question he tried to push back deep into his mind and for a long time he had managed to do just that. He managed to never give it a second thought, never to care who he hurt or even why he did the things he did.

His life was linear during those years; there were no shades of grey to contend with, nothing to get in his way until one day a variable in his life turned up alive and well. And he was totally unprepared for it. He was meticulous in all things, careful and extremely patient when he had to be, this rocked him to his very foundation and he suddenly felt his life crumbling around him. Everything that he thought he knew as truths became lies.

He had never so much as doubted himself before and now he doubted everything. It was unnerving and more than unsettling to find out that your whole life was a one big lie and all shrouded in conspiracy and cruelty on such a large scale that no normal human being could ever handle.

But Kyle had long ago shed himself of his humanity and although he was only with Jarod for a small time he felt a tiny crack forming in that wall in his mind. All those years, wasted with the Centre. All those years he was forced to do what they wanted him to do and all the times that he enjoyed it came closing in on him little by little.

How could his brother ever even know who he really was inside when he himself didn’t know anymore? He felt very little to no remorse for the horrible acts that he committed; he couldn’t deny that sometimes it felt so good to be the one dealing out the pain and not the one receiving it.

Since he escaped the Centre he had not quit what came naturally to him, he still felt the need to hurt others and he was still cautious when it came to getting close to anybody. All people ever did to him his entire life was hurt and betray him.

It wasn’t something that could be changed overnight, maybe it could never be changed but perhaps it could be altered just a bit. And to Kyle these new and strange thoughts were persistent and powerful but also very confusing. He felt conflicted and no matter how hard he tried to push back those feelings he always seemed to fail for they continued to haunt him.

How could he ever explain to his brother what he had become? What he still was. Maybe Jarod was better off without him in his life, even though he still felt that connection to him. A piece of his real home, his real family. It would be so easy just to turn around and never let his brother see him ever again. Let him believe that he died in that crash. It would be so much easier than facing up to this dingy existence of reality.

When he let his mind linger on the thought of meeting up with Jarod again he was fearful that he would be rejected, because that was what his whole life had been about. He had researched Jarod during this time and read about all the things that his older brother had done just to help people, people he never even knew. Kyle never bothered to think of others in such a way, he didn’t care like Jarod obviously did, he did what he needed to do to survive. Where he took lives, Jarod saved lives. Could such polar opposites ever form some semblance of a family he wondered. He worried that such a thing would be impossible and that his brother would turn away from, in fact he pretty much expected that, but decided to try anyway.

 

Because somewhere inside him, there was a small spark that he thought burned out a long time ago and had only reawakened when he learned the truth behind all the lies of the Centre. He could tell that Jarod was hurting as much as he was, perhaps in different ways but they shared a commonality, a bloodline. No more was he alone in the world, he had a someone out there who actually cared for him and didn’t want to use him they way the Centre had used him for so long. He didn’t know how different their upbringings had been at the Centre nor did he even know the similarities, but he was sure that some of the things that had been done to him had indeed been done to his brother as well. And that was enough; he had enough hatred built up for the both of them now. And just maybe Jarod might understand in a way nobody else ever could.

What was living really about? That was the question that surfaced in his dark moments, like now, sitting here on the edge of the bed, in a motel room off some long dusty highway.

The fading daylight began to dim casting its long shadows against the dingy walls through the sun bleached orange curtains that hung from the cast iron rods. So close, he thought, so close to finding them all and making them pay for what they have done.

“I will make them pay, pay for all they have done to us.” Kyle spoke softly to the empty room. “You may not

be able to do to them, what I plan on doing to them slowly and painfully, they owe us their blood and their lives.”

Kyle leaned back on the bed; sleep was never easy even now that he was away from the centre. No matter how hard he tried to drift off into that realm of dreams, he couldn't find that peace he craved. He wished for the millionth time that he could sleep without the nightmares, just once, just once not to be taken back there, to that place of despair, the prison his mind just could not let go of.

He tossed and turned restlessly in the small bed, finally grabbing the pillow and smothering it against his face yelling into it furiously. Nothing helped, he had even tried to drink it away at first but that never did anything but fuel the fire inside of him, besides he didn't like the loss of control that drinking alcohol induced.

Better to be sharp, then off his game he had concluded after a very unwise bar patron had decided to offend him and he had to teach the man a lesson in manners. He didn't even think that they ever found that guy’s remains, but they did find a couple of fingers on the front seat of his dirty red truck later. Teach him to flip me off again Kyle thought when he left the bloodied digits for the redneck’s buddies to find.

Finally he got up out of the bed in disgust and stalked into the small bathroom. The smell of the motel room was musty, like old mothballs, but the bathroom reeked of some sort of cleaning detergent and bleach. He flicked on the light, muttering to himself when it flickered for a good ten seconds before finally lighting the tiny green and white room with its dull yellow glow.

The porcelain around the sink was cracked and chipping and the mirror had a large crack running down the side of it. He stared at his reflection, the image of a young man with an angry scowl looked back at him, he dropped the scowl and tried to smile but it didn't feel right, nothing about any of this felt right...yet.

He pulled out his razor from a small black bag and started to shave. Half way through he nicked his cheek and watched with mild fascination as droplets of bright crimson blood dripped down his face and dropped into the white porcelain sink. Blood was such a common sight to him that he rarely took notice of it anymore, except for today, some reason the sight of watching his own blood run red along with the water swirling down the drain gave him a bleak and ominous feeling.

Maybe he was just too tired and too tense; he had been running on empty for what seemed liked weeks now. He reached into the shower stall, brushed back the curtain with a flick of his hand and pulled the handle all the way over to the hot end.

He pulled off the grey long-sleeved shirt he was wearing and dropped it onto the dingy floor. He kicked off his boots and pulled his socks offs before unbuckling his belt and letting his dusty jeans fall into the crumpled pile of discarded clothing. He could still feel the grains of sand that clung to his body from the bike ride out to this place. It was gritty and uncomfortable between his toes and the sandy dust trickled down his bare back as he removed his once white t-shirt.

Stripping off his boxer briefs, he stepped into the small shower stall and let the hot water flow over his body that was already beginning to relax him. At least this particular motel had good water pressure and not that weak spray that was so prominent in these shoddy out of the way places.

The hot spray of water felt so good running over his body that he actually closed his eyes for a moment and tried once more to shut out the world. The moment sadly did not last very long. For soon, he was going over his plan in his head for the umpteenth time.

He had been tracking their movements for months and at long last it had led him closer than ever to finding his brother and the person that was gunning after him too. He hated to even think of the man’s name, it sounded like a curse word in some vulgar language to him, a much hated curse word that carried such deep feelings of rage to languish in his mind.

Trying to dismiss this thought he rested his forehead against the wall of the shower stall, mildly amused that the wall was not overtly slimy, the maid whoever she was had scrubbed it haphazardly with bleach or some other cleaner that smelled of chlorine.

He relaxed a bit more and relished in the hot water as it ran over the length of his body, ridding him of all the grains of sandy road dust.

He had spent so much time under that steaming array of water that he barely realized it when the water began to turn cooler. He shook his head under the stream of now lukewarm water and lathered up his hair with the small bottle of shampoo that he had taken out beforehand from his small black bag.

Grabbing the small bar of Irish Spring soap, he thoroughly washed himself off, making sure to get all the grit off his body from the week long ride through the desert. He had just finished rinsing off as the shower water began to stream out ice cold.

Stepping out of the shower stall, he grabbed one of the hotel towels and slung it around his waist then flopped back onto the double size bed letting the old red quilt on top soak up the water that was dripping off of the rest of his body and his damp hair.

He closed his eyes remembering his brother's face and smiled slightly when he thought of Jarod and this time he knew that this smile was genuine. Family, I have a family when for so long I had thought I was alone. Someday Jarod, I will make them suffer long and hard for what they did to you and me. Those bastards, all of them, they will know what hurt really feels like and someday is closer than you could ever imagine big brother.

It seemed that the hot shower had done the trick because his eyelids grew heavy and soon he had altogether closed his eyes and drifted off finally into a dark sleep. This night, unlike so many others he lay in a dreamless sleep.

By the time he awoke more than a few hours had passed and surprisingly he felt refreshed and energized for the first time in months maybe even years.

He pulled back the yellowed curtain, which had indeed seem better days and peeked outside his first floor window, always careful not to be seen by anyone or anything for that matter.

Daylight was just appearing on the horizon and although it seemed like a really short night, he knew that if he was right in his assumptions; it would be an extremely long day.

He sighed, back tracked to the small bathroom and reached down for his pile of dirty clothes, they were still dusty from the trip out to the godforsaken place and he knew without even lifting the clothing that the smell was a mixture of sweat and desert filth. He wrinkled his nose out of habit and detested the thought of putting back on any of the clothing that lay crumpled on the dingy tile floor.

I really need to get some new clothes because these are shit. He thought to himself but then he remembered the go-bag he brought with him on every mission. It mostly contained various weapons of sorts; guns and knives and few other specialty items but it also contained a much needed change of clothing.

His sour mood faded as he pulled out a fresh black t-shirt and black jeans along with a rolled up pair of heavy duty socks and clean boxers. Everything was folded up perfectly and he shook them free before laying them all out on the bedspread. He dressed slowly and meticulously, savoring the ritual as one who rarely got a chance to do as he pleased without anyone monitoring and timing his every move. He threaded his belt through the loops on his new pants before pulling them on and fastening the buckle. He finished by throwing on his navy blue jacket.

Almost always he was on a time-table that was set by someone else, now he did as he pleased and he took a brief sort of pleasure from being on his own schedule and not someone else’s. It was like a tasty morsel of his own free will that he savored in a way that he imagined a prisoner who had just been released from a long stint in a prison isolation ward would have enjoyed just a small taste of such a simplistic freedom as dressing ones self without being watched at all times by the guards.

It may sound strange to anyone else but that momentary feeling of unbidden freedom he experienced just now, satisfied him to the core. He was no longer anyone’s property and even though he had been on his own for quite awhile now he still appreciated these rare moments that really made it seem real for him that he was now his own person, answering now to no one but himself.

He tousled his hair with his towel on his hair, before throwing it haphazardly towards the general direction of the bathroom, then rummaged through his black bag again finding his comb and running it through his still slightly damp hair. After a quick trek to the bathroom to brush his teeth, he was almost ready.

Kyle picked up his knife that he had placed inside the small desk, right next to the complimentary bible. Does anyone ever read these when they stay in these places? He mused tracing a finger down the black and gold embossed cover. Doesn't make any difference anyway he thought putting his knife in its sheath against his side and shutting the drawer. If there is a God out there I doubt I'll ever meet him, Heaven was not meant for people like me.

The morning was already roiling in the desert heat that rose from the cracked pavement in waves.

Making sure no traces of himself were left in that place and that all his belongings were tucked safely away in his black bag, he tossed the room key back on the bed and wondered briefly to himself what it would be like to actually have a real place to live of his very own. One that he didn't have to leave behind him every time he had to run. Burning those bridges beyond any hope of repair. As a rule he never stayed in the same place twice let alone for more than a few days when things seemed to have slowed down a bit.

Still he longed for a place he could call his own, someplace where he was just Kyle and nothing more than that.

What a ridicules thought, Jarod even told you, your life is nothing but running and it would always be that way.

He chastised himself for even thinking such unrealistic thoughts and instead shut the motel room door in disgust not even turning to look back, that place no longer existed to him anymore as it had to be.

Kyle found his motorcycle amongst a couple of stray beat up looking sedans; and one black fiat with bleached sun marks on the hood who had obviously seen better days. These were the crude and well worn vehicles obviously belonging to the other wonderful guests of the circle 7 motor lodge no doubt known in these parts as one of those no-tell motels.

Off to the side nearest his bike he spotted a very old looking beat-up brown colored pickup truck with oversized tires and a faded bumper sticker on it's bent tailgate that read "Kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out". He chuckled to himself as he read the words on the tailgate sticker, he interpreted the sentiment to be a joke of sorts in his mind and he was mildly amused when he saw a peeling NRA sticker in the trucks rear window.

Rednecks probably own more guns than gang members he thought, too bad they were both equally stupid in his opinion. Although he would liked to have picked the brain of the driver who most likely always wore some sort of truckers hat perched upon his head as he headed for the nearest bar to preach gun rights to anyone who would lend him their ear.

Kyle wondered just what kind of person the owner of the truck really was like when he wasn’t being flanked by more rednecks and drinking endless boilermakers; no doubt leering at any pretty girl who had the unfortunate task of being their bartender.

He also wondered what the man’s brain would look like dissected on a platter. How different would it be in comparison to his own superior brain. Perhaps another time he would make the time to find out for himself, but as it was he had someone else to seek out that would prove to be quite psychotic in his own right.

Again the name popped egregiously into his thoughts and he wasted no more time on trivial musings as he straddled his motorcycle, slipping his key into the ignition and firing up the roaring engine.

Revving up his cycle, he reached behind him and grabbed his helmet which he slid onto his head, masking his identity from the rest of the free world once again and peeled out of the parking lot and out onto the highway. As the wind rushed against him, so did his thoughts.

I'm on my way now; it's time to end this once and for all. It’s gonna be alright this time, we’ll be together again soon and if I have to; I’ll kill the whole lot of them, just for you brother, only for you.