Assassin by D.A.Sanford - HTML preview

This is her home?

We look around. This is an office and we see that we came through the front door which is now closed behind up. From a door on the opposite side, the woman enters the office. She looks like someone who was doing some last minute straightening. She forgot she had cleaning gloves on.

She quickly sits at the desk. We hear a drawer open and close quickly.

Now she is more composed and her hands are clasped, ungloved.

“Welcome to my home. This, as you can figure, is my office. This is where you will be working.” She goes through some of the features with us. Shows the computer records. All the basics of the running of the office.

“Thanks for coming.” And she tries to usher us out the front door..

Susan knows, as well as I, that something is up. “We weren’t here by our choice. You had to have done something to summon us. Why the bums rush? Are you hiding something from us?”

Susan does something that panics the woman. She gets up and walks to the inner door. This causes the woman to vanish. When Susan tries to open the door, she feels something holding the door closed.

The woman is now trying to have an angry voice but the panic is winning out.

“How dare you try to enter my house uninvited. Go away! I’ll have you back in a little while.” Then we hear tumbling and things crashing. You see, we assassins always have to carry some entry small tools. While the woman was holding the door knob on the other side to hold the door closed, She did not feel Susan unscrewing the screw on this side. Once loosened, The woman’s side knob and connecting rod came flying out.

With the same screw driver, she stuck it in the opening and the door started to open.

The woman tried to push with her feet but she just was a little to far away. The door now open, we see a hallway full of clutter. Some looked like it was organized but most was in disarray.

It was Susan that first looked at the woman sprawled on the clutter that was knocked over and then remarked one word, “Hoarder.”

I pick up some of the items. In amongst reports that should have been filed in a locked room, there are receipts for takeout. There are even chopsticks there that were used. We knew that because they were in the half eaten container.

There also was a distinct odor but we cannot identify what it is composed of. Neither of us really want to know.

I have to ask, “You said the we were going to have to live here. Am I right?” She tells me that it is required. I vanish and quickly return from my warehouse. I have a long industrial cleaning cart. We have a big box of garbage bags, cleaners and such.

“Where is your records room?” Susan asks while she and I don the rubber gloves that come up almost to the elbow. We also now have those industrial masks and goggles.

Meekly she points to a room. The locked room key is on a push pin stuck in the wall by the door and I find that it is not locked. It took some strength to push open the door. I need to ask in simple terms.

“Record retention, how long?” I am told that it is three years in an active file then another three in storage. Burn disposal. Picking up some of the ones preventing the door from opening. The newest date is at least twenty years old.

I just shake my head. “Susan, I’m going to mass transfer all the contents of this room to my warehouse. I have the incinerator there. I will take random samples of what each pile has but it appears than nothing in the room will be newer than these at the door.

When I go, just pile reports up again in here we will do the same sorting. I do think the ones that we need are in those file cabinets in the office.” I tell the woman that she needs to go into the office and start going through the file.

I get to the warehouse and lets just say that not a single paper in that room was anything close to being current. The newest was the twenty year old. That incinerator ate all. I had all in the papers from that room burnt up to the point that I could return and help Susan.

The woman was suffering. She was crying saying that all these were hers. She just needed the time to get them organized. Both of us could tell that this was because she had not let on that she was tired and vastly overwhelmed. I called a halt and had us transport to our house.

The woman is now sobbing. “I don’t know how or when it got out of control? I’m ashamed that you had to see that.”

Susan goes over to her but asks me if I would go to the warehouse and check on the incinerator. I knew that this was going to be something that she wanted private. Woman to woman. I left and knew enough that she wanted me not to come back until she was done.

Well, I did have a few things to do. I did have things to putter with that would probably take quite a few hours.

“Now that he is gone,” Susan says. “Can I ask you how can I help? Even if it is just an ear lent. I will listen to you but will not interrupt you. I will just listen until you are spent. Only then will I speak. Only then will I give advice if you request it.”

The woman is now full blown crying and Susan just hugs her. When she is spent, the woman tells Susan that it is the first time that she can remember that she has had physical contact, a hug from anyone.

I had a good friend when I was your age. I knew that I was immortal but she was not. We loved each other but time is the enemy of all mortals. Time caught her. I watched as she aged. I could tell that she thought she was a burden. You see, I was adjusting my appearance to match her age.

One morning I woke and she did not. Time got her. I looked at her, lying there and for the first time in a long time, I could see that she was at peace. I made all the arrangements, she wanted cremation but had requested that I hold her ashes until I went. She did not want to be alone in the grave.

After a few years, in a fit of rage that she left me, I buried her and only her names on the stone. No room for my name. Anger and grief made me buy that small stone. I threw myself into my work. Became top professional. I was offered this position the same way I did to you two.

I was the best ever to hold these offices. Always with the proper decorum. Always with authority. Always with that horrible terrible feeling of betrayal. Her leaving and me just throwing her into the cold grave. I did not get my way so I did not let her get her wish.

This has weighed terribly on me over this time. Can’t you see. I have buried myself in my own form of grave.”

She stops and can’t say anymore. I wait but realized she is not going any further.

“You regret, you hurt, you’re lonely and you are giving up. What are your plans after you leave this office?”

She shakes her head then says that she has plans to cross over to the final life.

Susan asks if she remembers where her lover is buried. She does but it is far away. She has not visited it since she buried the ashes. “It’s time for you and I to go there and you need to talk to her. Get this out in the open and say what you truly feel. Then ask her if she would come and get you when you decide that it is time.”

The woman looks at Susan and asks if Charles would come with us as the adjudicator. “I would like him to tell the workers there that he authorizes them to disinter her urn. I want to take it with me when I cross. That way we can both scatter them on the other side.”

I get the call and I am told that I needed the full uniform. I did and we transported to that grave. It was a heart ache for her to see that the stone had been almost completely covered with moss and weeds.

She frantically clears the stone while sobbing uncontrollable. The cemetery workers come running over at the sight of my uniform. I show them my identification and then tell them that this woman has been declared by me to be the true and only remaining relative of the deceased.

“It is her request, that I have granted, to have her relative disinterred so she can take her home to the family. Not alone here forgotten”

They go and find the record of the burial. The cement vault is on the center of the plot and around four foot deep . A back hoe is used until around three feet then they dig by hand. They locate the vault and raise it. They unseal it and step back.

The woman kneels and through the tears “I’m sorry that you had to lay here all alone. Now you are coming home with me.” She stands clutching the urn to her chest. I give each a rather large gratuity. Plus the shipping fee for shipping the head stone to the address of my home office.

We leave the cemetery and when they cannot see us, we transport back to the woman’s office. She still is hugging the urn as she says that she tells us, “I’m sorry for doing this to you but I want to leave as soon as possible. I should be able to finish all the formal paper work and name you both as my successors to both the offices. In two weeks I would like you to be here.”

Now she is talking to the urn. “Dedria, I’m sorry for the mean petty things that I said and did after you crossed over. If you can forgive me, would you come and get me when I open the door to where you are?”

Now she tells us that she will open that door in two weeks, ready or not.

It really is not complicated. She is basically the final word on disputes. She can take personal interest in cases or assign them to others. She authorizes assassinations of prominent or problem people. Judges members of both profession’s if they go to the wrong side of both professions.

Basically what we do now but on the top level. It is just now the requests come to us.

We had asked her, since it was hard on her, to leave the mess and we would clean it.

It came time and she called us to the office. We could tell that she had made her peace but there still was the unknown if Dedria is waiting for her on that other side. The door is opened and there she is. A very beautiful young woman steps through to our side. She hugs the woman. She takes the urn from her and asks us to dispose of it as we see fit. She looks at the woman.

“Before I take you across, I need to prepare you.” Pointing to the door, she says “Beyond that door is the land of no. There is no hurt, no regrets, no pain, no envy, no grief, and all those other no’s. When you cross, I will put you to bed. In the morning, when you wake, I will be lying next to you and officially greet you. You will be as young as I am. Are you ready?”

She thanks us for helping her to this point.

“Now you are mine forever.”

Hand in hand they cross and the door closes. We just stand there and glow. We have seen for ourselves. That belief that most have, we now know it is real. We have been given the next greatest gift anyone could receive. The knowledge of what is behind the door.

Once we got the house in order. Junk gone, out of date records burnt. Files in order. We were in business. All those office files are now on the other side of that door. In their place is two grave stones one from that cemetery and one new one. In between is the urn on a pedestal. Crossing both stones and above the urn is a simple piece of wood that has engraved just one work, remembered.