Keeper of Secrets

A simple door, the paint chipped and surrounded by ancient anaglypta, the rusted letterbox marked only by a "No Junk Mail" sticker, faded with corners curling. Strange to think that my search led me here. Perhaps I expected something different but I could not say what. But no door had ever filled me with fear such as this.

For I knew that if I opened the door then there was no going back. I knew either I would become another victim, or a murderer.

A deep breath, a rusty creak, and I stepped inside.

***

I watched the young man enter. It always seemed to be the young men. They came alone, ill-prepared, and with no real plan beyond a vague goal they scarcely understood; drunk on perceived righteousness or liquid courage. So much had been lost to the rashness of young men.

His eyes darted around the room, his shock painted clearly. The unwashed sheets pilled high to keep me warm, the bin overflowing with empty bottles; both prescription and not. The only sounds were that of my own laboured breath, and the gentle thum psst of the respirator, its mask clutched in bony fingers, the skin yellow as ancient paper and just as thin.

My eyes did not dart as his, impatience was a trait of the young and I'd had many years to learn its folly. So many years. But the years went unremembered, and unmarked, choosing instead to remember the secrets. For, after all, I had far more secrets than I had years.

The would-be avenger stood motionless in my doorway, little knowing how foolish he looked. The kitchen knife he held would do away an invalid, but would be little use had he encountered a skilled or tenacious opponent. He hadn't even covered his face, but behind the innocence there was a queer determination; and a question.

Always the same question.

The first question.

Why?

"Who, was it?" I asked, wheezing and pulling the mask to my face for a breath from the O2 cylinder.

When he didn't answer I was forced to go on. "Brother? Father?"

No reaction, he just stared. "Lover?"

A flicker in the eyes gave me my answer.

"Ah." The croak became a cough, which became another, wrecking my xylophone chest with pain and spotting my vision with flashes.

On instinct he took a step forwards, a hand reached to offer help though he knew not how. Stopping, he looked from his hand to me, asking again the question.

The others said I'd left it too long, but they knew someone would come soon; it wouldn't surprise me if this man had been informed by my fellows. But I'd been smart, and forgone my medications. Along with the pain they also dulled my wits, which I needed now as I tried to remember which of my supposed "victims" he had come to avenge.

Memory stared as the coughing subsided, and the help from the mask did little to ease the ache left behind.

"The chef," I said slowly. He hadn't stepped back again. "Had, watery breathing. Dying, slowly. Painful."

No word did he speak, but the pain of that memory changed his face, a single tear beaded but would not fall. It had been at least two years since my last, or was it three? And yet it still pained him so. That told me all I needed to know. Young as he was, this was a man of obsession.

So I answered the question. "Could not, be saved. Secrets. Life's work. Could be."

His hand gripped the knife in white knuckles, his jaw set as he took a faltering step towards the bed.

"I sat with them," I continued, taking a pull from the mask. My eyes never left his. A knife held no threat when your own body seeks your end. "Sat with, them all. No one else, would."

That stopped his next step. Guilt flashed in his eyes.

"You were... Away."

Shame now. I knew that look well. I had seen it at every bedside and battlefield, every time I'd sat by the dying to hear their secrets, their unfinished work. Every time I vowed that I would not see thier work wasted, that the contribution of their life would not be lost.

And every time I gave them peace.

But the world had changed since our great work began. There were so few of us left, in a world that did not understand. A world that passed laws forbidding mercy, and rebranding it as murder. They drugged the dying beyond sense and sight, and called it kindness. Preserved life long after it ceased to have any meaning, not for the sake of the suffering, but for the false hope of others.

Sometimes we came close to the end and, knowing their secrets would not die, gave them the solace to stop fighting; to pass away peacefully without intervention. Sometimes their unfinished work was simple to complete; a few words to an estranged son that had never been spoken, an apology long overdue, or flowers on a wife's grave to say they'd soon be together again.

The last one had not been easy.

"Suffering," I croaked. "The doctors, would not, listen. The infection, would not, cure. They kept, giving, more drugs. Prolonging, life, not saving."

I saw the faltering in his eyes, he was almost there.

"I heard, your lover's, last words. Her secrets, are with, me. And others', secrets."

So many others, and so little time to save them.

My fellows were right, I left this too long.

"Sit," I said. Merely gesturing to the chair caused fresh pain, taking my breath away.

He did not move at first, but looked from me to his knife as though seeing it for the first time.

"Revenge. Not what, you, expected?" I asked. I dared not even chuckle, and barely managed a crooked smirk. "For, fifteen minutes, you have not, killed me. What is, a few, minutes, more? Don't you, want, their secrets?"

As he sat, I could only think that whatever gods ruled above or below, they had a sense of humour. Not two years past, or was it four? I sat, as he does now, by a bed in some declining hospital, the name of which being as unimportant as the town in which it resided. Now the shame of unfinished work was my own, and he the salvation that I had given to so many.

The last words that day had been meant for him, and would have been simple to deliver had my own flesh not rebelled against me.

"Listen to, my secrets. Carry them. Deliver them. Pass them, to, the worthy. Then, give mercy."

So I told him. Told them all. In fits and starts, pausing for bursts of coughing that left my lips bloody and my voice pained, but I told him. I told him recipes for novel foods that needed only the right mind to make them famous. I told him a cure that pharmaceutical companies had never allowed to see the light of day. I told him a snippet of a genius poem that could inspire an artistic soul to an epic that would stand the test of time.

I told him so many things, and he took them all in, I could see it. As I talked, he moved forwards in his seat. The knife was discarded without conscious thought as he leant forwards. The hours went by and he wrung water into my mouth when it grew dry, dabbed my bloody lips and held my mask when my arm grew too weak to lift it.

The words I had saved for him were the last words I ever spoke. Words that I had heard spoken in pain, as I spoke them, before I gave mercy to the love of his life.

Never did he say a word. But I knew, as sure as the sun rose behind my thick curtains, that he would continue the great work. The man that came to be my killer, would be my successor, and would bring peace and solace to so many.

***

Different door, different place and different me. A laminate fire door, scrubbed often with the frame recently painted, the only features being the little brass plate declaring it to be room 5A, and the hook for the clipboard. The hospital wing was quiet at this time of night, but I had to be careful not to attract attention, I didn't want to be disturbed.

I smile at the memory of my love's embrace, and knew now that they would be waiting for me.

But until then, I had a duty. Either I'd be called a murderer, or a savoir.

With a deep breath I stepped inside.