Soul Seeker

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For I have looked it in the eye and survived. There is nothing quite like gazing out across a sea of people and seeing stripes of black above their bodies. To walk among them and absorb their sickness, letting it invade your bones and seep through your pores. Until you too shine with the dullness of blackness.

         There are very few times I see a tinge of red or blue mixed with the darker hue of immorality and evil. In a city this size, where alcohol flows like water, and condoms are bought for a dime on the sidewalk outside, it might be days before a spot of color permeates the air around me. Since I buried myself in this world, it’s been years since I’ve seen a person wrapped in purest gold and white. I know such a brightness of spirit would blind my eyes. After trying on their habits, blending into their night, I’m not even sure what I would look like if I were to reveal what I am inside. Instead, afraid of what I’d see, I continue to hide.

         I continue to hide, even as I seek to change lives. A gift or a curse, I’ve never been sure. All I know is that by some happenstance, evil or pure, I can look and feel what a person has inside them. I know with a brief touch who’s free and who’s enslaved. With such knowledge in my possession, I break chains. I go amongst the prostitutes and pushers, searching, always searching for the smallest glimpse of light. They call it the red-light district, a city within a city that has no name. Where babies cry for mothers even as they’re taken away. Starvation runs through the streets. Demons mock the faithful. Happiness is sapped from the shacks lining the edges of dirt roads, until like now, there’s nothing left to live for and every chance to die.

         I agreed to come here, a quest my government said. A chance to seek redemption, a place to use the gift I had to make a better world. I bought every word; I swallowed their promises, only to puke them out on the sidewalk of the street when I stepped out of the tinted windowed car that dropped me off. It’s been years, but still I stay. It’s not just this place; this city is only one of many. They’re everywhere I’ve been taken in the world. In the depths of the best countries, the best towns, they lie in wait. Their tendrils of darkness stretch across time and place to capture the unsuspecting. The exposure to malevolence takes a toll on me. I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. Yet despite my skeletal frame, I cannot leave. I can’t leave, not when I know she’s still here, somewhere in this hell. Even if I can’t feel her anymore, I know she’s here.
         
         In dreams she comes to me. I see them push her through doorways, the cracked plaster of yellowing walls rearing up around me in the night. I wake up screaming, fighting demons that torture me in my mind. Pacing the rough boards of my dilapidated room I map out places I’ve yet to see, where maybe, just maybe she’s not yet been. I plan. All the while I see her. I watch her bleed and plead until the spirit dwindles and there’s nothing left but a darkening hue, blackness slowly swallowing her bright blue. I can’t stop looking now, not til I know.

         I walk the corridors of the downtown slum. Buildings crumble, held up by tarps and string. Children play in the muddy water, making ever-deepening puddles on the street. I hold the tears, swallow them down, even as I long to weep. It’s so dark around me; it’s getting harder to search out the bluish aura lights of the innocent abused. There are so few left. My eyes search for what others can’t feel or see, in darkness I seek.

         The littlest one, maybe six years old, blonde hair turned brown with dirt and burns, she shines a little in the dark. Her eyes glow in the shadows of the slum. A tiny flicker that reveals a spark of life, a struggling soul caught in a depraved world. They haven’t bothered to find her even a thread to use as clothes. Instead she’s naked in the hovel of her home. She shrinks back and glares as I approach.
         
          I know this drill; I’ve participated in it for far too long. The silk adorned madam makes her way from lounging against the painted entrance doors. I pause to inspect the child lingering in gloom. She looks me over with an eye to the extortion of money for flesh. I know what she sees. Bulky jeans, fresh buttoned up shirt, ball cap pulled low to hide the whites of my eyes. She sees what I choose to present and fawns as I jerk a finger at the dirty child crouching on the earthen floor.

         Cackling she grabs the child with bony fingers and shoves her over to stand for an inspection. I pretend an interest in her tiny body even as my stomach heaves, threatening to be sick. Flicking a finger down her cheek I feel my eyelid twitch. Information floods my system, AIDS again, but I won’t let her die like this.
         
         “How much?”

         I haggle over price, settling on the equivalent of a quarter. To do anything I want, as long as the child survives it. Here, everything’s about money in the end. You can do whatever you want, however you want; as long as you keep the merchandise fairly fit to sell again. That’s the only rule on this malicious road.
         
         I’m led inside what I’ve come to view as a beggar’s hut. Precariously attached by fraying cords to the side of a shed, the smell of decaying flesh rises from the ground. The slanted walls and dirty floors open enough to allow me to slip through. Rust trickles down the sides of mismatched metal, betraying where the rain seeps through. As I’m led through the mismatch building I glance around, taking in details to help me win this round. Four curtained cubicles, the sound of slapping flesh and moans. In places like this it’s almost impossible to tell how many girls the madam has in possession. Even if you took the time to inspect all her available wares, there are always a few hidden away. When we reach the end of her little flesh sale, she pulls back a dirty blanket and gestures me into a stale space. I see her wicked grin as she fingers the coin in her hand. The price of life and death is much too low; here, everyone sells their soul. With a flourish and bow she exits, dropping the molded curtain in place. Now, all I can do is wait.

         Three years ago I would’ve been too appalled to sit on mouse eaten blankets smelling of sweat and semen. My well-bred family had never known such a thing as poverty and depravity. All that changed from necessity. Experience bred the ability to feign indifference, a trait I needed. It gave me the ability to pretend that sitting upon damp bedding was normal. To pretend I was far too eager to indulge myself to worry about what I absorbed through my skin. The price for what I do, a price I’ve gladly paid over and over again.

         Impatient I wait as the rustle of the curtain heralds the entrance of the little girl. She’s much too thin. In the flicker of the candle I can count every rib, see the lice in her hair, and the mud coating her scrawny legs. I can feel my fingers burning as I gather power in my hands. Her lambent eyes glow at me, as though trying to read my mind. Not a strong possibility coming from one so deprived. Inside that tiny body I see the smaller ball of light, crouching from the darkness that has become her life. For the sake of the madam, who monitors the proceedings by listening at the curtain, I motion her forward with an imperious word.

         “You’re a scrawny, dirty thing aren’t you? That fat deli man said this was the best place in Zora. You’d better show me how much you’re worth.”

         Mutinously she shakes her head. Her light shines a little brighter as she aches to fight.

         I feel the dark tones of the madam slink away as she hears my praise. No doubt eager to share my words with the other establishments lining the sides of the hovel road.

         Those first moments when the owner of the brothel leaves and we’re left alone, those are the moments that are crucial to the saving of a drowning soul. There is little that can be done to reassure, nothing that can be said to gain trust. Only the participation in action can mitigate their unwavering belief that your presence lies solely in your disgusting need to rut.

         “Ruishana, they’re coming for you. Tonight.”
         
         Their eyes always blink once, then twice. Disbelief that a stranger knows their name is always evident in their young, young face. Sometimes a tongue flicks out, as though testing the air to see if you’re right. In her case, her head bent like a curious puppy to search the truth in my eyes. The thirst to believe is equaled only by the fear of what belief will mean. I take the choice away, there’s never enough time to pretend the soul hasn’t become brittle and sieved. Explanation can wait.

         Focusing from the inside out, I push power from my wrists to gather in the tips of fingers. The glow flares pink as I gently reach out. Catching a palm in my hand, I use the other to cover her mouth, to keep her from crying out from the searing. I burn my mark into her hand. It flares for an instant and blinks out. It’s hidden from the naked eye, but the men flying through the skies tonight will see it. Through the lenses of the night goggles fitted over their faces they’ll pick up the winking of my night-lights.
         I could leave it at the mark. It’d be easy to do, a single power blast to light up the night. It always ensures their presence on the rescue flight. I don’t leave, it seems I can’t help but cling when I feel the cells destroying themselves. The mutation of countless more, they eat her alive from the inside. She’s too young to have suffered so much. To escape this place, only to die in the arms of a care worker in a strange place, it’s too much. Like so many times before, I can’t slip away into the night.

         The first snap of power always stuns the recipient, it makes my job easier if they can’t move or jerk away. In the case of AIDS, it helps me concentrate on eradicating problem cells, and build new ones, through tiny shock waves. I have to multi-task as I judge my time. Staying too long causes suspicions. For a quarter, an hour is pushing my limit.

         When I’ve done all I can, I brush the scraggly hair from her forehead and lay her down upon the infested bed. Sweat is appropriate for what I’m supposed to have done; I leave it to run down my face as I finally pull away from the child in front of me. Ruishana, a pretty name, too pretty a name for her mother to sell her into disgrace. Trapping my wayward thoughts before they can get away, I make a show of adjusting my belt as I lift the flap on the little corner of the shed.
         
         I make two more stops before I stumble home. For seventy-five cents I’ve saved three women. Ruishana, six years old, sold to a brothel in Zora at three. Adrina, ten years old, two closet abortions before her eleventh birthday. Saria, sixteen, a debt slave in Jana to pay her father’s gambling vouchers, with three to five customers per night, at a quarter each, it will take fifteen years before she’s set free. Three women who should be children living a comfortable life at home. All broken, their spirits rubbed raw until all that’s left is the bareness of bone. Flickers of blue light danced above their heads, calling me to come before it darkened and faded, to save them before there was nothing left.

I shut the door to my own little room as the call comes in from the chopper.

         “Catcher to Seeker, over.”

         I grab the walkie from the rickety table as I slide to a heap on the floor.

         “This is Seeker go ahead.”

         “Out to see the lights tonight, wondering how they’re looking”

         “Try Zora, Janna, and Preens.”

         “Update Seeker.”

         “There’s not much blue in the night anymore. Everything’s going dark.”

         “Time to move on.” The radio crackles but I shake my head.
         “Not yet.”
         
         I rip the shaggy wig off my head. Stuffing it in the duffel hidden under the floorboards by the bed, I scratch the itchiness on my scalp. The dark strands of my long hair fall around my drawn face, impatiently I shove it back. Too often it’s a curse for its inability to hide my sex but I keep it long as a reminder to myself. A reminder of the ones I’ve found. Every time I touch one, mark one; another color adds itself to the strands in my hair. Tonight there’s a deeper blue an inch wide; it runs from the top of my head to behind my right ear. I can feel it, the essence of the child’s spirit etched in the strands. There colors stay, until their owners die. Then, in clumps the colors wilt and fall until only patches of hair remain. 

         I’m wracked by pain as I move about the room. Frozen fingers trail over my skin as a fever rises. I’ve used too much power again. Exhaustion begins to stake its claim. I pull worn wooden shades over the first glimpse of pink sunrise. I can’t stand to look at such a promising sight, not when so many others stand far from the circle of its warmth and light.

         As the images around me start to merge and dim, I crawl across the floor to the mattress pushed against the wall. Grabbing the bottle of pills tilted haphazardly on the wooden boards, I shuffle chalky capsules between my fingers. I know the directions for administering the medication. The prescription calls for two, I swallow four. Too many faces, too much darkness invades my life. Drifting, I collapse on the side of the mattress, praying to God for a merciful end from the everlasting night.

         Dreams beat at my temples as I sink in the memories floating in my mind. A fairy child running through emerald stalks of grass, yellow dress flitting about bare feet, laughter ringing through the sunlight. I sit upon a hill watching rainbow fish swimming in a stream, watching the little girl and laughing as she sings a rendition of “All the Pretty Little Horses.” I feel my stomach clench. I know what comes next. The darkness spreads slowly across the hills, covering the sapphire sky and spring grass. I stand upon my hill searching for her beloved face. But I’m too far away as the light begins to fade. The blackness creeps along the ground tainting the hem of her lemony gown. I always run. It doesn’t matter how often I dream, or how fast I run, it’s never fast enough. She disappears as I splash through the river. All I hear is my little girl’s voice as she screams.

         I pace the floor. It’s what I’ve done every night since I lost her. Since I turned my back, let her wander too far, and couldn’t find her. She’s more than a face on a milk carton, a time progressed picture in the Sunday ads. The tears run freely down my cheeks as I wonder what might have been. I play out the scene of that day over and over again in my head. Even with the ability to read an aura, the power to cure a child’s AIDS, the gift of marking and rescuing lost faces from early graves, I can’t find my own baby. It stings.

         The night begins to fall as I pull one of my regular costumes on. Short brown wig, mustache and hat, a loose cotton shirt over men’s charcoal slacks. The crackle of static sounds over the walkie-talkie, a preliminary sound before the voices. I stare at it from across the room before crouching near it on the floor.

         “Catcher to Seeker, over”

         I hesitate before catching it up from the floor, “This is Seeker, go ahead.”          

         “We found the light.”

         The words run like fire through my soul. My world narrows again to that girl running toward me so long ago.

         “Confirmation requested.”

         “Pending”

         I sweat as I wait. Three years in every hell in the world, boiled down to fifteen seconds in a ragged little hole.

         “Catcher to Seeker, over.”

         “This is Seeker go ahead”

         “Mommy?”
         
         With that single word my world explodes.

Word Count: 2918