“John, John wake up! We’re late for the first mass.”
It was his wife tapping his back. After a few minutes he’s ready. They were holding hands while walking along the deserted street of San Jose City, capital of Rio Velacruz, heading to the church. It was a foggy, tranquil Sunday morning of April.
“Clouien,” he said after a very long silence, “where do you think I’ll go when I die?” his wife’s eyes grew wide.
“What made you ask that stupid question!” he didn’t respond, just kept on walking against the cold Siberian wind as his wife, as he knew her was, still wondering on his last words.
“Maybe, I will ask Him when we’re there.” He suddenly said looking and smiling at his young and pretty wife, “but as you said, He knows everything, maybe he knows where I will go since I was born” he continued.
“John, please stop, we’re here,” Clouien said, almost pleading, then they looked up at the sign at the peak of the church.
The vendors around were starting to settle their little business and the sidewalk crowd were also heading for the mass. In a second, the fog was gradually getting thin.
“And please don’t hate God.” She said in a mother and son talk. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and just smiled as a reply.
John met Clouien a year ago at the small village around fifteen miles west of the city. They got married then moved and resided at the city only a couple of months earlier.
John Cid Villanueva was his real name, a citizen of Salvadore, fourteen provinces away from the city of San Jose, was the most wanted person, a bane. He changed his name several times, from John to Stephen to Rex. In San Jose City, no one knew him or his “shadow of cruelness.”
He lived and grew alone not knowing his real parents. He learned all the earthly and evil doing from his stagnant environment which he always blamed for what he is now. In his hometown alone, he killed six policemen including a priest when he and his gang robbed the biggest bank in that city. It was the biggest robbery hold up in the history of Salvadore.
But before that, he served as a hired killer. He assassinated two sleazy governors and a leader of a labor union in the richest company in town. He was jailed two times but due to lack of evidence and frightened witness-to-be, he was freed.
After all the members of his gang died in a crossfire and encounter with the authorities, he moved and spread his venom in the nearby city, Socorro, and shifted his “business” into drug trafficking.
Like in Salvadore, he killed several people mostly his competitors. His face became a familiar scenery in every post, fence, in every corner of the fourteen provinces with growing amount on his head.
John, only twenty-seven and faithless, has only the goal to taste and experience aesthetics of life in an unusual way he knew and to worship money.
He moved again to San Marino City, the farthest city from his hometown, where he had his paper thick call. After high speed car chase and exchange of bullets with the police, John’s car fell on the bridge and plunged into the Ryazan River and was gone with the strong current.
After a month, the case was declared solved and closed and John was dead! The San Marino City Police Department received the $1.6 million bounty reward.
“Where am I?” he woke up finally after four days of sleep, fever and convulsion. Three shots wounded his body and several minor burns were all he got after the street Armageddon.
No one knew, even he himself didn’t know how he survived.
“You’re in our village, province of Rio Velacruz,” said the pretty, long-haired soft-spoken lady while fixing a bunch of herbal plants in the table. She was very glad of his progress. “I’m Clouien, you? “
“John,” then darkness fell again.
Time stopped, everyone turned around.There were screaming tires of two cars chasing. Policemen were behind and firing aimlessly and carelessly. People panicked and ran in an unknown direction, yelling, synchronizing the police siren. At the front of the church, John just hold his wife’s trembling hand as they watched the unusual event.
Suddenly, the chasing cars turned in the corner then into the then deserted 29th street, the street perpendicular to the church. At the door of the convenience store in the very front of the church, a woman pushing a baby stroller suddenly appeared unnoticing the danger of two cars.
“Look out!” John shouted but the woman didn’t hear. He shouted again but he thought it will be too late, he knew that no one was around to help except the two of them.
The cars criss-crossed along the street, John was released from his wife and run.
“John no!” his wife yelling.
John ignored it, he continued running, jumped before the woman then . . . the cars passed by.
He opened his eyes and saw the wrong angle of his world and he felt something extraordinary, there was a complete silence. He got up and dusted his pants and shirts with his both hands.
“What happened?” he thought, then he looked around but everything was blurred. He waited for a second then when his vision cleared, he saw the woman, the mother of the baby, lying on the street, lifeless. He felt very sorry for her and almost blamed himself.
The first car, which was the robbers’ getaway vehicle, was smashed in the grocery store at the end of the street after hitting the woman. The robbers also died.
The baby! He quickly scanned his environment, by this time with lots of people around, then he saw the stroller and the crying baby, he smiled and walked over him and was about to touch the baby’s face when he heard a much louder cry or rather a scream of a woman.
When he turned around, his surrounding slowly faded and changed its shape, warping.
He saw his beautiful wife running like crazy to the physique of a man lying on the 29th street, face down, just beside the corpse of a woman, with body full of blood.
His time permanently stopped . . .
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