Still Beating

Police lights were still flashing outside reflecting off the over-sized Victorian mirror in the entry way.  “So this is how those people feel on TV.” Jerry thought to himself.  For the past year he had become a fan of the crime shows on television, and now with police questioning him and searching through his house he felt like he was on one of those sets instead of in his own house.
“Mr. Shrauner do yo…”
“I prefer Pastor Shrauner; with all due respect officer.”  Jerry stated this in a tone that seemed a little more smug then he intended, but it didn’t seem to faze the cop.
“Pastor Shrauner.  Do you know anyone who would want to threaten your life?”  Honestly, having police here was semi-exciting at first even with the given circumstances, but now Jerry was starting to get annoyed with the man who identified himself as Officer Mackland.  For one he fit every stereotype you could associate with a cop.  He was a very short middle-aged man with more hair on his upper lip than his actual head, and it looked like he had made one too many visits to Dunkin Donuts recently.  Yet it wasn’t the physicality of Mackland that bothered him most; it was his uncanny ability to repeatedly ask the same question in multiple ways.  “Has anyone been acting strange lately?”, “Has anyone ever threatened you in the past?”, “Would anyone have any ill-will against you?”, and now finally; “Do you know anyone who would threaten your life?” 
“No, I’ve already told you I have no idea.  I haven’t noticed anyone acting strange, I haven’t had any confrontations, and I don’t have any idea who would want to threaten me.  If you can’t understand that please get me someone who can.”  As soon as he said this Jerry knew he shouldn’t have, but he had always had a habit of sticking his foot in his mouth.
“Sir, I’m just trying to do my j…”
“Well get me a cop who can do a better job.”  That one was really uncalled for he thought to himself.
“Mr. …Pastor Shrauner” Officer Mackland spoke these words with more authority than anything else he had said all night.  “Someone came into your house from your balcony, walked right past your daughter’s room, down the stairs, right past your room, and into your laundry room. In there he slit your dog’s throat and cut out its insides.  Then he walked into your bedroom and proceeded to write ‘YOU’RE NEXT’ over your head with your dog’s blood.  He did all this without waking anyone in the house.  No you can say I’m being over-cautious, but I don’t want to leave any loose ends here.”  Chills raced up Jerry’s spine as reality finally set in.  This wasn’t television.  There was no director waiting to yell cut if something went wrong and that was not corn starch smeared above his bed.  This was real life where someone really walked into his house and really murdered his dog.  The death of the dog, Bowser, isn’t what really bothered him.  What bothered him was the fact that whoever did this did it without waking anyone in the house and most likely could have killed them if that’s what he desired.
“Pastor Shrauner” Mackland spoke up again, but this time in a softer more direct voice.  The kind the main characters used on those TV shows when they finally pieced something together.  “What did you preach on this Sunday?”
“I taught on forgiving others and leaving revenge for the Lord.  I used the Michael Withers case.”  Everything clicked.  Michael Withers was an African American man who was standing trial for murdering a man suspected of raping his daughter.  The man, Louis James, had a rock solid alibi and a sort of charm that convinced the jury that he was innocent despite the Wither girl’s claim that it was him.  Two days after the trial was settled Withers confronted James outside a local bar and the rest was history and police records.  Rumor had it Withers initially attacked the man with a knife, but traded that for a more brutal weapon once James was subdued, his fist.  That was all rumor of course, but the fact that James was beat so badly his face was unrecognizable was confirmed by local papers.  No teeth, a broken nose, a fractured skull, and Michael Withers standing over him splattered in blood was sure to make a gruesome impression in anyone’s mind.
“Well Pastor Shrauner we are going to pursue that a little more.  Do you know anyone at your church who may be affiliated with Withers? Family, friends, co-workers, or anything else?”
“Sir” Jerry spoke up defensively “I know my sheep and I can spot a wolf from a mile away.  I guarantee that no one in my congregation would do this.”
“Alright, but if you think of anyone please let us know.  As for now we believe this to be nothing more than a threat, but we would still like to move your family into a saf…”
“No officer, we will be staying here.”
“Sir it’s only for your safety.”
“God didn’t give us a spirit of fear.” Jerry was sure he sounded like a religious nut by now, but that was ok.  There were too many half-baked preachers in the world, but he was the real deal.
“Well we will still patrol the area.  If you change your mind give me a call.” Officer Mackland handed him a business card.
“Mackland, the Lord is more powerful than our mightiest guns.” Confidence continued flowing from his mouth.
“Good night Pastor” and like that the scene was over.

The next night Jerry experienced the most life-like dream since his youth.  In his dream he walked downstairs after kissing his daughter goodnight and found Bowser gutted with his throat slit at the bottom of the stairs.  He could see the dogs insides disposed on the floor like bleeding worms, and they even seemed to move as if trying to find oxygen.  The only thing left inside the dog was a heart that was still beating and spraying out small amounts of blood with every thump.  It was then Jerry looked up to see a blood gore covered Michael Withers holding the hand of his 12 year old daughter.  The daughter stared at him with empty sockets and said softly, like a ghost,
“You’re next.”
Sweat rolled off Jerry’s face as he was still trying to pull himself out of the dream.  He thought he screamed himself awake, but his wife still slept soundly next to him so he dismissed the idea.  “The heart is still beating”.  No matter how hard he tried Jerry couldn’t get the image of the beating heart out of his head; A heart trying to pump life back into a lifeless body.  He got up to get some water; anything to clear his head.  “The heart is still beating.”  Maybe some Advil wouldn’t hurt.  “Still beating.  The heart is still beating.”  This throbbing headache would keep him up all night “STILL BEATING” and he had a sermon in the morning.  “The heart” He took the pills and tried to get some sleep.  “But it’s still beating.”

The fact that his heart was beating hard enough to break his ribcage bothered Jerry.  Nine years as a preacher and he couldn’t remember ever being this nervous in the pulpit.  Sweat trickled on his forehead and he notice for the first time that the sun shining through crimson stained glass cast an unsettling light.  Like blood from a heart; a heart that was still beating.  He was distracted and he secretly wondered if any of his sermon made sense.  “Matthew 10:28.  Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  I’m telling you that the Lord is mightier than whoever came into my house and tried to kill my body, and even if he would have succeeded he could not have killed my soul” 
“If he wanted to kill your body he could have killed it, and probably your soul too.”  Jerry tried to shake these thoughts from his head, but it wasn’t working.
“And through the persecution I will not change my message.  God tells us in Romans to bless those who persecute you.”
“But he killed your dog”
“And he tells us that ‘Vengeance is mine saith the Lord’ so I will still preach that Michael Withers needs to forgive and I will continue to forgive and leave the revenge for the Lord.”
“But he killed your dog and the heart was still beating.”  Jerry zoned out after that thought.  He vaguely remembers finishing his message and going through the tradition of shaking all the elderly members hands who would tell him to continue speaking the truth and to bring the fire and brimstone.  All he remembers clearly is driving home with the images of beating hearts and crimson stained glass vivid in his mind.
That  night he had the same dream as before, but this time instead of putting his daughter to bed he was painting all the upstairs windows crimson.  When he headed downstairs he saw his dog again, but this time in blood tinted light with that damned heart that still wouldn’t die.  Yet this time instead of the Withers standing above it he saw his own wife and daughter.  Both were in the same condition as the dog, throat slit and chest cut from the breastbone down, but neither were bleeding.  They looked like the cheap skeleton costumes kids wear on Halloween; perfectly white bones only contrasted by a beating heart behind the rib cages.  Jerry fell to his knees choking on tears.  The world turned quiet except for the sound of his throat closing and the bass beat of 3 hearts in unison.  It seemed he was there in the silence forever until his daughter broke the silence.  Her voice didn’t sound like hers, but instead a chorus of millions of children deceased as she told him in a resonating whisper.  “Revenge is calling.”

“Revenge is calling” a soft but powerful voice echoed through the darkness.  Jerry tried to locate the speaker, but his eyes had yet to adjust to the dark.  He reached for his wife but remember she slept downstairs with his daughter tonight.  “Revenge is calling.”  This time the voice was louder and certainly coming from the doorway.  He let his eyes drift to the open door and saw a silhouette of a man.  “And I’m here to kill your soul” as he was saying this he pulled something out of his pocket.  Jerry’s lungs tightened bracing themselves for what surely would be the ghostly silhouette of a pistol, but instead the man flicked a lighter to life and lit a cigarette.  It was from the flame of the lighter that Jerry saw the thing that terrified him even more than a gun.  In his right hand the flame was dancing off the shiny blade of a knife.  His eyes closed and he said something that came out
“Please God douuuhhh” but that was all his voice could get before his throat gave out on him. 
“No I’m not God.”  The voice seemed to snicker at this statement.  Like a child who heard someone say fart in class.  “I’m just a man.”  As soon as he said this Jerry was sure the shadowy figure was not a man, but Satan himself here to kill his soul as he had gently put it. 
“Get out of my house” Jerry’s voice cracked.  “God will protect me.”  At this statement the man busted out in a laugh reserved only for the clinically insane.  He laughed so hard his cigarette fell out of his mouth and after that he composed himself enough to put it out on the floor with his foot.
“No Pastor Shrauner he will not.  See there is no God.  If there was he would have saved your wife and daughter before I gutted them like your dog.”  Jerry’s eyes started to fill with tears and he thought his throat was going to close up and die, but if what this man said was true then there was no point in living, but there was no way to know this is true.  Yet Jerry knew deep in his heart that his wife and daughter were laying upstairs cut open like some sort of wild game.  “No God.  Only you and me and revenge, and revenge is calling reverend.”  With this he tossed the knife on the bed next to Jerry.  “Come on Jerry.  My heart is still beating!” he yelled.  Jerry looked at the knife and grabbed it and the rest was history and police reports.

The talk around town was that the man who killed Pastor Shrauner’s dog and made an attempt on the Pastor himself was unidentifiable.  No family, no records, and no paper trail.  He was a ghost or possibly a demon according to the gossip around the churches.  This “ghost demon” once again broke into the house from the upstairs balcony where he walked right by the room where Misty, the wife, and Laura, the daughter, were asleep and made his way to the main bedroom.  Once there the pastor woke up and attacked the man, only armed with a pack of Marlboro Reds and a Zippo lighter, with a knife he kept on his nightstand.  The man was probably dead after the third stab, but newspapers report that there were anywhere between 50 and 100 knife wounds in the man’s torso, neck, and face along with an incision from the bottom of the breast bone to the top of the pelvis.  Supposedly Misty found him the next morning sitting on the bed repeating “Still beating.  The heart is still beating” with his bible open on the floor.  She immediately called the police who came and arrested Jerry.  They say he will be placed in solitary confinement until his trial.  Officer Mackland found the bible on the scene and noted that it was open to Luke chapter 22 and part of a verse, verse 36, seemed to be highlighted in the intruder’s blood.  The highlighted part read “He who hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.”

Afterword
Jerry Shrauner was put in solitary confinement to await his trial.  The only statement he gave police was “the heart is still beating.”  Frank Mackland brought Jerry the family’s hard covered King James Version bible believing that maybe his religion would help him through this and possibly find his sanity.  He read it all night until the guard had to leave the room to relieve himself.  When he returned he found Jerry on the floor bleeding out of his neck.  He had used the corner of his bible to stab through his esophagus allowing him to bleed to death.  Above his body on the wall he wrote in his blood
“Still Bea”
Of course this is all rumor, but newspapers do confirm that Pastor Jerry Shrauner ended his own life while waiting for trial.