I sat behind the warehouse beneath the broken overhead light. My cruiser was running but the lights were off as they had been the first two times I was told to meet here. It felt weird to be in my cruiser in my street clothes. I shifted in the seat. It felt too big without my belt on. My gun, my taser, my cuffs, and pouches all missing from the divots they had formed in the seat. I heard the back door open in the dark behind the warehouse. I popped my trunk so the gangsters could drop in the drugs. Something much heavier dropped in than usual and I nearly opened the door.

A tap-tap from a pistol tapping on the passenger window startled me. I looked over to see the man with the tattoos on his throat ducked down looking in at me. I rolled the window down, and cleared my throat, “same drop-off as last time?”

“Naw, just get rid of this for me.” He threw in a roll of bills hitting my leg and rolling down into my lap. “Thursday, back here. Time to give you a promotion, Five-O.” He sniffed. “You smell that?”

I twitched. “The engine is burning oil.” I said, “I need to take it in for a tune-up just been really busy.”

“That ain’t it.” He sniffed again, “smells like.” His brows knit together, and his brown eyes looked to the right as he tried to remember where he had smelled it before. “Smells like,” he leaned into my car, “crooked copper.” He smiled and winked puckering his lips and kissing the air. “I’m just playing with you don’t get your tail in a twist.” He laughed and stood up patting my cruiser on the door. “Get rid of that for me and be back here Thursday night I want to have a talk with you.”

There was a flash of light at the back of the car and the trunk slammed shut with a double pat to let me know I could go. I rolled up the window and gritted my teeth. I put the car in drive, pulled out from behind the warehouse, across the empty lot, and back out onto the road.

I turned down a country road and pulled over. Popping my trunk again I walked around to the back of my cruiser and lifted the lid. Then I fell back from the car landing on my butt in the gravel. There was a man with slicked-back black hair, eyes wide, looking up at me when I looked down into the trunk. His mouth was hanging open and a long bloody gash was bleeding out into my trunk.

Were they setting me up? I pulled the cash out of my pocket and looked at it. Five grand. Had they called in an anonymous tip? They could have called in my cruiser number and claimed to have seen something. They even knew what direction I had gone with the car. There was only one highway at the end of the road. Only one way to go with a trunk full of what I would have presumed to be drugs.

I would be caught as soon as I pulled out onto the highway. Or was this a test of loyalty? Couldn’t be. I was only doing the work out of compulsion. They had to know I would find a way off the hook soon. I hadn’t spent a dime of the money yet. I couldn’t. I just hid the rolls in my sock drawer and tried not to look at them. When I did, I felt sick to my stomach. The rolls were accusing me. They knew I was a liar. They knew I was a coward.

Now I had a body in my trunk and blood was running out as I sat in the gravel. I was cooked. When my apartment was searched, they would find the money in my sock drawer even if I tossed this wad. Elizabeth would never believe me. She would think I was whatever the news concocted that I had become. It wasn’t entirely untrue. I wasn’t this man because I wanted to be though. I had no choice. Why couldn’t she understand I was trying to protect our daughter? Because I’m a liar, and she knew it already. Nothing I said could be trusted. Nothing could take back what I had done to her. Nothing I said could ever be true to her again.

She would never bring Stella to see me in prison. I would be a leper in my own cell. If ever I went out of my cell I would be hunted by the predators of the yard. No comfort, never again would I know peace. I would become everything she already thought I was. A monster. Stella would grow up resenting me, despising me. I started to cry and began to wish I had taken my pistol with me. Maybe I could just eat a bullet and not even have to face what was coming.

As I sat there on the dark gravel road in the woods I thought of my daughter again. I thought of spinning her. Holding her by her tiny hands and spinning until her feet kicked out behind her. She would make me do it over and over until I thought I would be sick from the spinning. I would stagger away. I clenched my jaw and swallowed my tears remembering the tattooed man’s threat against my daughter. He wouldn’t take her from me. He wouldn’t ruin her chances. Maybe she would grow up and miss the pain. Maybe she would be a happy woman. Find a good husband. I could teach her to find a man better than I was. She could be happy. Safe. Fulfilled in life. She could avoid the mistakes I made in life. Elizabeth wouldn’t keep her from me while I rotted in prison either. Not if I had anything left to do about it.

I had to do something with the body and now. I looked around the forest. They would catch me on the highway. I had to have the trunk cleaned out before I left the warehouse road. They wouldn’t draw the law that close to their operation. I had to make sure the body wasn’t found for a long time either. Most searches are only the first couple hundred yards on each side of roadways. I would drag the body through a mile and a half of swamp and briar. I stood to my feet and looked back into the eyes of the dead man in my trunk. Then I grabbed his hands and pulled him up out of my trunk. I let his body flop into the gravel then pulled my toolbox over the blood in the trunk.

I shut the car off then began the relentless desperate trek through the dark woods. I carried that nameless man tripping and falling through pitch black. I smacked face-first into trees and tore through brambles. I tumbled down dark hills and nearly cracked my head on a stone. I waded out into the nothing and all I had for company was a corpse and my own madness. I walked out of that forest hours later a different kind of man. A harder man. A darker man. I would never again forget about the body in the woods. I would see him when I looked at my daughter. I would see him when I sat alone at night in my apartment. His gaping face was sown to my mind.

I hated that man with tattoos with a new kind of passion at that moment. Hate boiled up in my blood I never knew I was capable of. No one pulled me over that night and I didn’t sleep either. Every time I closed my eyes I thought of that face in the trunk. Every time I thought of that face I imagined gruesome things I wanted to do to slime ball the walking tattoo. Then I thought why not? If I was capable of dragging a body a mile and a half through the woods what else was I capable of? I could get out of this too. It would take time. I leaned back in my bed and looked at the ceiling. I would take my time. Let him think he had won. Then I would take my time with him.

“You dream at night,” Mia said when I opened my eyes.

“Sometimes, don’t you?” I answered.

“I can’t remember when I dreamed last.” Mia braided her blue hair as she spoke. “What do you dream about?”

“Past lives in another realm.” I exaggerated my tone like I was telling ghost stories.

“Well are you about ready to head out, the sun is going down?”

“I need to spend some time in meditation first then we can find a way across.”

“Sounds fair.” She hummed and stepped out of the tent.

“Interesting dream.” Tootsie sat on my knee. “Was it real?”

“Just a nightmare,” I said. “You can see my dreams?” I crossed my legs and sat in the pose Tootsie had taught me.

“I can. I am linked to you until you ascend.”

“Well good thing you can’t talk to the others then,” I muttered to myself.

“I could if I wanted.” Tootsie answered.

“And you let them think I’m crazy talking to myself?”

“It’s more fun that way.”

“I hate you Tootsie.”

“I love you too, Pig Face.”

After a few more minutes I was standing in the fog again looking up the hill at the barren tree. Only it was no longer barren. There were now seventeen leaves growing on the branches. A cool stream of water flowed out from the trunk about as wide as a spigot flow. I walked up and drank from the water. It was so soothing and cold. It felt electric as it traveled to my stomach.

Soul Points 23

I gasped. The water had given me a soul point. I drank again. Nothing happened. I gulped and gulped but the sensation did not return. I looked up at the tree and the seventeen leaves. Had it grown the leaves from sharing my memories? Was I bringing the tree back to life? Perhaps it fed on the memories. Was I the only one that came to this tree? I would share more memories and see what happened. I couldn’t share the nightmare. The darkness inside me when I remembered it might kill the tree at this stage but the nightmare had reminded me of another memory.

So I meditated under the tree remembering what it felt like to spin with my daughter. Remembering her legs kicking up behind her. Remembering her begging for more. I felt the spirit of the tree reach into me. I felt the heaviness leaving me. I had only the joy of the moment. Only the laughter and the smell of spring.

Mana 14

I opened my eyes back in the tent. The tree had given me four points all at once. That place was mine alone. My escape from both worlds. From both lives. I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to savor the moment a little while longer but the familiar bull legs of Goar were standing in the opening just outside my tent. It was time to go.