The Guardian

“For the headache,” my assistant Liz handed me two small pills.

“I'm going to need something stronger than this.”

“First, you have to write the press release. Let the stockholders know the company is gone.” Her voice trailed off. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing, my headache is affecting my vision. I thought I saw someone out on the ledge.”

“Out there? We're like twenty stories up. He would have to be like one of those superheroes or maybe a window washer who had stock and now is coming to hunt you down.”

“What the hell? You didn't see that?”

“What? See what?”

“I'm telling you there is someone out there on the ledge.”

“The stress must be getting to you. Take the pills, drink some water and rest a bit. It's been a long hard day.”

“Sure, maybe five minutes of quiet or so, just enough time to recharge the batteries as they say.”

She shook her head.

“What?”

“You start to dissolve in to clichés when your mind isn't working.”

“Damn, you didn't see that? We have to do something. We have to save the poor guy.”

“Nothing is there. It's just the light of the setting sun playing tricks with reflections.”

“Science was never my strong point.”

“Stay away from the window, okay?”

“Sure. Five, no ten minutes.”

Liz switched off the lights as she closed the door. I watched as the neon glow of the many signs that lined the streets below started to come alive and walked to the window. Placing my hands against the glass, it felt cold reflecting the temperature from outside. Nothing on the ledge, nothing but reflections and the creeping darkness as afternoon was turning in to evening.

I barely noticed it as it crept along the ledge until it stood up in front of me. A short figure pressing his hands against the glass, long spindly hands with elongated finger nails. Its breath fogged up the window hiding yellow eyes and wisps of hair, the few stands combed over his gray scaly scalp.

“Don't move. I will save you.” I yelled through the glass, he nodded as if he understood me.

“The windows don’t open. I will have to find another way to get you off the ledge.” I spoke slow and deliberate as if he was deaf, not a prisoner behind a glass wall. I felt helpless. I had been feeling helpless all day as my family's business dribbled away to nothing while what was left was bought up by foreign investors. At least for now there were no more calls, no more screams from stockholder, ex-stockholders now. I was not going to have this man's soul on my conscience as well.

The sound of what I thought were gunshots from the outer office brought me back to reality. I ran to open the door only to meet a man waving around a gun, firing random shots while screaming my name. I shut the door and locked it as he fired two shots in to the thick antique oak panels.

“It's Haberschal, from Accounting. I knew your father and your grandfather. They would not have screwed up like you did. I'm here to collect my money, you bastard or to take out my pound of flesh. You know where that's from you illiterate fraud?” He fired another shot, I heard Liz scream.

The figure on the ledge began to beat on the glass, “Hurry, hurry. I don't know how much longer I can stay.”

Mr. Haberschal was pounding on my doors, any minute they would give and I would be facing whatever amount of bullets he had left. He was an odd portly balding gentleman that had been with the firm for years. Haberschal was head of collections and known for reciting strange incantations while burning candles. He would have been fired, but he got results. He told me in confidence that his entire 401k was in our stock. Now all that was gone, yesterday he was a potential millionaire and this afternoon he was broke.

The chairs in my office were either too heavy to lift or too light to do any significant damage. I reached for a heavy metal retro ashtray that my staff bought me for last Christmas. It stood on a high thin pedestal and weighed a ton, perfect to break through the safety glass. The first swing at the glass the thing just bounced off and almost crashed through my skull. I could have sworn the guy on the ledge laughed. I lifted it up to swing it baseball bat fashion and as I did Haberschal broke through the doors firing. The bullets hit the window shattering it, as the ashtray slipped from hands and went flying out in to the darkness.

In that brief instant there was a kind of peace. I bent down to offer my hand to the ledge walker who grabbed hold fast and pulled me through the window in to the open air. Looking up Mr. Haberschal was firing wildly through the window at my falling body. I watched the bullets slide past me in slow motion as if they had been fired in to water.

As I fell, my specter of the ledge flew alongside me and offered condolences mumbling something about this being his job and it wasn't personal. He handed me his card, which I read in the light of the windows that I was rushing past: "Guardian. Untimely deaths, Suicides a specialty".

“Mr. Haberschal hired me to get his pound of flesh. I am afraid he did not realize the price.”

My body crashed in to the hood of a waiting taxi causing serious damage to the yellow cab. Several bullets whizzed by and bit in to the sidewalk and pavement followed by the deadening thud of a screaming Mr. Haberschal.