little punk with no training, limited to running one girl at a time. Without the trappings to compete with professionals, he couldn’t enter the same clubs frequented by serious pimps without being laughed out the door.
He didn’t even try to pull a girl already in The Life—no working girl would go near a nothing like him. He did his recruiting on Facebook.
His product lasted only until a better offer—or a degenerate with a knife—came along and took it away from him. All he could do then was restock his empty cupboard.
He would have kept that up until … Well, an amateur like him never thought more than a few hours ahead.
I atoned for the killing I’d done for money by killing for free. I disposed of him quickly, and left his body to rot under a couch—an eventual message to anyone experienced enough to read it.
The girl never saw it happen. I told her some lies to get her to come with me. Once the car was moving, I told her that her father wanted her. More than anything in the world. She didn’tbelieve me, but she came along without a struggle or even a protest. As she would have with anyone who took her, for any reason.
I told the man that the vermin who had taken his daughter would never call out to her again. And if he made the story I’d told the girl into the truth, none of his kind ever would.
His atonement was to be a father. He had a lot of ground to make up, but his commitment was strong enough so he could go the distance.
When I refused his money, the man was puzzled. When I wouldn’t take a higher offer, he was mystified. Then he told me, if I ever needed anything, I had only to call, but I shook my head. The only way to make sure he accepted his own burden was to put what I’d promised into his hands, and leave with nothing in my own.
Maybe I could have explained that leaving without payment was my only path to what no amount of money could buy. But I didn’t even try to explain. My debt was to others, not to him.
That man did become a father. The baby girl he never wanted became the most precious thing in his life. I never told Dolly how I’d made that happen—in truth, only given it a
chance
to happen. I told her I had found a way to atone for lives I’d taken. And I had done that. She accepted what I said, and never mentioned the subject again.
No invader can claim he killed with justification—only to protect himself, as if he’d had no other option. But I could claim—
now
I could claim—that I had killed to create an option. An option for a life. For
two
new lives.
A couple of years ago, a girl who’d been the high school’s most prized athlete—“Mighty Mary” in the sports pages throughoutthe state—gunned down a popular boy, killing him with a pistol she’d stolen from her drunken father.
Dolly knew this was wrong. Not the killing itself, but the way everyone was looking at it. Even though it seemed a day couldn’t go by without the national news reporting another “school shooting,” Dolly knew this wasn’t any such thing.
When I say I know something, Dolly never questions it. I never question her, either. Not because of trust—that is a permanency between us—but because we know where the other’s knowledge came from. And what we learned was embedded so deeply that it has become part of who we are.
Love came to us much later, arcing like an electric current over the chasm between life-taker and life-saver. Since then, whatever we are now, that’s how we’ll always be.
I guess I could have passed. Maybe if I had, I never would have learned what a foul human sewer ran beneath this pretty little town. It wasn’t that Dolly asked me to try—it was her absolute faith that I
could
do something that drove me back to where she’d first found me.
Not to that life itself, but to what that life had taught me.
Not all jungles have canopies. But they can still have land mines, and they all have enemy patrols. There’s only one thing you can always be
He didn’t even try to pull a girl already in The Life—no working girl would go near a nothing like him. He did his recruiting on Facebook.
His product lasted only until a better offer—or a degenerate with a knife—came along and took it away from him. All he could do then was restock his empty cupboard.
He would have kept that up until … Well, an amateur like him never thought more than a few hours ahead.
I atoned for the killing I’d done for money by killing for free. I disposed of him quickly, and left his body to rot under a couch—an eventual message to anyone experienced enough to read it.
The girl never saw it happen. I told her some lies to get her to come with me. Once the car was moving, I told her that her father wanted her. More than anything in the world. She didn’tbelieve me, but she came along without a struggle or even a protest. As she would have with anyone who took her, for any reason.
I told the man that the vermin who had taken his daughter would never call out to her again. And if he made the story I’d told the girl into the truth, none of his kind ever would.
His atonement was to be a father. He had a lot of ground to make up, but his commitment was strong enough so he could go the distance.
When I refused his money, the man was puzzled. When I wouldn’t take a higher offer, he was mystified. Then he told me, if I ever needed anything, I had only to call, but I shook my head. The only way to make sure he accepted his own burden was to put what I’d promised into his hands, and leave with nothing in my own.
Maybe I could have explained that leaving without payment was my only path to what no amount of money could buy. But I didn’t even try to explain. My debt was to others, not to him.
That man did become a father. The baby girl he never wanted became the most precious thing in his life. I never told Dolly how I’d made that happen—in truth, only given it a
chance
to happen. I told her I had found a way to atone for lives I’d taken. And I had done that. She accepted what I said, and never mentioned the subject again.
No invader can claim he killed with justification—only to protect himself, as if he’d had no other option. But I could claim—
now
I could claim—that I had killed to create an option. An option for a life. For
two
new lives.
A couple of years ago, a girl who’d been the high school’s most prized athlete—“Mighty Mary” in the sports pages throughoutthe state—gunned down a popular boy, killing him with a pistol she’d stolen from her drunken father.
Dolly knew this was wrong. Not the killing itself, but the way everyone was looking at it. Even though it seemed a day couldn’t go by without the national news reporting another “school shooting,” Dolly knew this wasn’t any such thing.
When I say I know something, Dolly never questions it. I never question her, either. Not because of trust—that is a permanency between us—but because we know where the other’s knowledge came from. And what we learned was embedded so deeply that it has become part of who we are.
Love came to us much later, arcing like an electric current over the chasm between life-taker and life-saver. Since then, whatever we are now, that’s how we’ll always be.
I guess I could have passed. Maybe if I had, I never would have learned what a foul human sewer ran beneath this pretty little town. It wasn’t that Dolly asked me to try—it was her absolute faith that I
could
do something that drove me back to where she’d first found me.
Not to that life itself, but to what that life had taught me.
Not all jungles have canopies. But they can still have land mines, and they all have enemy patrols. There’s only one thing you can always be
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