Justice for the Just

Justice for the Just1

It was raining. Rain which, of course, made the day a little darker. And in the dark the darkness hid, the rotten cores and the festering sores, lurking in the shadows, dwelling in the sewers, waiting for the water to fall and flush it out, slithering into the streets…2

Breck pulled his cheap leather jacket over his head and thought of fire. He kept the warmth in his mind. A fire in a fireplace was all he needed after a damp, disgusting day like this, and it was just a few more blocks until he was at the bus stop, on his way home. He splashed down the cracked sidewalk, past shadows which brushed quickly by, and then disappeared into the downpour. Dirty buildings rose high on either side of him, solemnly staring with darkened windows, and the glaring city lights melted into the streets. Breck hesitated in the beam of an oncoming car, and turned down a long, thin alley filled with rubbish thrown out of windows by the tenants of the run-down apartments on either side.3

“Damn filthy people,” he growled as he stepped over a rotting bit of unidentifiable mash. “No wonder their city’s such a mess if they’re gonna treat it like this, just throwing their trash everywhere. Jesus! You’d think they don’t even care.”4

Or maybe it’s not such a big deal, he thought. Maybe you’re just angry because of the rain. The rain and the fact that your old wreck of a car broke down and you have to walk a mile through alleys filled with piles of rotten slime just to ride the stinking bus.5

No, it wasn’t even that. It was Dennis. Or more specifically, Dennis’s defending lawyer. He was a slimeball, that one! Greasy hair, expensive suit, cheap smiles as he defended that piece of trash, Dennis Blair, an urchin accused of theft and murder in the first degree. He was so unmistakably guilty! But that lawyer, what was his name? Mitchell, Breck thought, I think it was Mitchell. Not worth knowing his damn name anyways. He sure knew how to play the emotion though. He used feeling over law, and had a sob story for each fact that Breck presented so nakedly before the jury. But the facts didn’t make a difference. The ragtag jury swayed to Mitchell’s every sinister tune; he captured them with his traps and entranced them like some sort of hypnotic snake tamer. 6

Not a snake tamer. No, he’s a snake. A wicked, deceiving snake.7

It was all Breck could do to keep from destroying him then and there, in the middle of the courtroom, right in front of the judge. As soon as the foreman offered the not guilty verdict, Breck could have taken them both down, the villain and his protector, and let true justice be served there, on that stand, next to that judge’s bench.8

But it couldn’t be done there. Self-control, that’s what he had to use, and he hated it. Justice shouldn’t have to wait. Justice should be swift and sure, right and pure; that’s what Breck had in mind when he had decided to become a prosecutor – to rid the world of the evil that lay beneath it, the evil that poisoned it from within. Not to hide it behind bars of safety for years and years, or else throw it back out into the streets to devour yet another unknowing, innocent soul.9

Not that there were any innocent souls, these days.10

But there was evil in the city, hiding in the gutters. Evil that needed to be flushed out and dealt with. Breck could see it; he could sense it muttering in his ears and laughing at him in the dark. It’s useless, he thought. Dealing justice to evil men is seen as its own evil to those in power. Those simple people who have no power beyond papers and titles – their justice is injustice and their morals are nothing but weak ideals. The streets laugh at them in their clean, oblivious offices and run toward whatever means they might desire.11

But I can fight it, Breck thought. I have the power that they don’t know, here, outside that white, stuffy room full of hypocrisy. Especially on a stormy night like this.12

Breck turned down one last alley, soaked beyond any thought of refuge now, and picked up his pace. Everything was just so wrong about it. About everything. The demons earned respect, the murderers were set free, and the jailers paid for an extra beer that night with money earned by opening the prison doors and wandering off to take an undeserved piss. And in the end, it was Breck who ended up trudging through a raging waterfall with rivers running down his sleeves and ruining his last white shirt. 13

As if reading his thoughts, the rain began to fall even more ferociously. Breck turned his face down to avoid its sting and ran headlong into a man hurrying the opposite way. The man was as solid as a wall! He sent Breck splashing down into a pool of water and pasty garbage with a slight yet firm push which could have been an accident. Could have been.14

Breck regained himself and looked up into the eyes of a snake.15

“Mr. Breck!” Mitchell exclaimed, regarding the man at his feet with the air of utmost and condescending surprise, “Of all people to find dodging down an alley in this weather! Shouldn’t you be at home? Or in your office trying to locate another innocent man to unsuccessfully put behind bars?” He stepped back to see Breck more fully, wet and pathetic on the dirty ground, and carefully neglected to extend a hand to help him up.16

Breck got slowly to his feet and made the completely useless gesture of wiping himself off. “Good evening Mitchell.” He said, with politeness that can only be mustered by an absolute loathing of another man. “What are you doing out here?”17

“Oh, business, business,” he chuckled, with his right hand deep in his coat pocket. “Been quite a tough day for you hasn’t it? What with the verdict going in my favor and all. Of course, after all of your floundering and gasping for air like a spineless fish, it wasn’t so surprising that the jury decided, kindly in my opinion, to take you out of your misery.”18

They stood inches apart, hot like hatred, as biting wet bullets filled the space between them and pounded their body heat back into their skulls.19

Breck glared. “How can you do it?”20

“Do what?”21

“Defend rubbish like that Dennis? Whether he was guilty or not, he’s a murderer; always will be. Probably always has been.” His voice rose with his anger. “God, the bastard’s probably killed twenty people! He’s got no soul; he’s the devil in a delinquent, and you’re unleashing him right back onto his next victim! It’s not right!”22

“Right?” Mitchell said, and laughed. “What is right? Right is what the majority says it is, and tonight the twelve people who mattered in that room found that I was right and that you, my friend, were dead wrong. Right has nothing to do with truth.”23

Realization hit Breck as he looked at Mitchell smiling through his pointed, white teeth. “You knew he was guilty, didn’t you?”24

Mitchell laughed again, the same hollow, dead, humorless laugh he had used in the courtroom. “Of course I did! Are you still such an idealistic moron to think that one only defends what he thinks is right? I’m on my own side, the side of my own prosperity. My morality is whatever the highest bidder says it is. What is an ideal without any power behind it? Nothing but a complaint, an annoyance that everyone wishes would go away. If pay would have been better in your position,” he eyed Breck’s jacket and shoes doubtfully, “then I would have attacked that piece of slime with everything in me. And probably a lot more effectively than you did, I might add.” He frowned slightly but did not cease smiling; that hellish smile was still plastered on his face, driving Breck mad.25

“Although,” his shifty eyes shifted all the more and he lowered his voice to a whisper, “Just between you and me, he was having trouble paying me towards the end of the ordeal. Said he didn’t have enough now, wouldn’t I give him a break? Well, sure, I told him. First, I said, I’d break my promise to keep everything he had told me forgotten to myself...and to everyone else. Somebody might find out about it. Somebody like you. And then, if I still wasn’t paid, I said I’d simply break his legs. Break indeed! When you play with the beast you’ve got to play like you mean it.”26

The beast stood in front of Breck, moving his mouth and inserting poison into Breck’s ears.27

“The upshot of it all,” Mitchell continued, “Is that I was paid in valuables. Stolen valuables – stolen from that poor sod who, according to the jury, was murdered by someone other than Dennis. Ha! Oh irony, how you make me rich!”28

“God,” Breck whispered, “I can’t…”29

“God?” Mitchell scoffed, “I thank God every day that men like Dennis exist, because if they didn’t, I wouldn’t own anything worth thanking God for. Well, Mr. Breck, I haven’t the time to stand here and chat with you in the rain all night long, so good day. Or, my apology, it’s probably too late for that.” 30

He tuned on a heel and walked down the alley, slowly, taunting Breck with every wicked step. Evil. This man was the real evil. Not Dennis, Dennis was simply wrong, bad. This man, this snake, this self-assured mocking beast was the one who tore the city apart with his sharpened teeth and his forked tongue. Now was the time and here was the man. If Breck ever wanted to see justice served, it would have to be done now, in the alleyway. No white walls of false sanctity trapping them in, no imbecilic judge passing improper sentences on faulty verdicts. On the street, Breck was the judge, and of all men, Mitchell was the one to be judged.31

And as if sensing the coming judgment, a gust of wind blew through the alleyway; the ceaseless rain peppered the broken asphalt all the more; the storm readied itself for a reckoning; thunder prepared to roll.32

It had been a long time, but Breck still remembered it perfectly. His power, the only power he still had when evil would not give in, when injustice was allowed to dance in the dark. He stared at Mitchell’s retreating back, just a man, just a simple man, but not for long. The wind gave another powerful blast and Breck called out, concentrating, to the storm…33

“Justice for the just, lest we do what we must!”34

The world froze. Everything but the sound of Breck’s voice stopped, and it carried through the air clearer than all other sounds, echoing off the buildings, ringing in the alleyway, shaking the unseen vibrancies of the night, enraging the stillness of the storm. His words rose, rose higher, flew up, up, up and alerted the heavens into violent action. And in the second before he died, Mitchell turned back, spinning around through raindrops hanging motionless in the air, with a defensive, confused look on his snakelike face and met Breck’s eyes with his own.35

Breck looked back into his wicked eyes and smiled.36

And then he shut them tight, as blinding light erupted from the clouds and dazzled the street with the brightness of a billion candles. It cracked and boomed; it split the sidewalk and rattled the bricks in their walls; it crushed Breck’s eardrums and knocked him, sprawling off his feet, back into the muck. And through his eyelids, Breck saw Mitchell, blasted by a bolt from the sky, whip into the air and incinerate like an old Christmas tree. 37

Then it was dark, and Breck could feel the rain again, relentlessly splattering his soaked-through jacket. His heart was pounding in an insane rhythm, and he struggled to his feet, shaking involuntarily all over his body. And the smell! It was all around, enveloping. The smell of heat and power and steaming, fresh death. Breck opened his eyes.38

Mitchell was dead. There was no question about it; there never was. Breck stepped forward and in seeing the body, twisted and looking more like a pile of loose, strewn about clothes than a man and stinking more and more with each step, began to doubt. He started to wonder, as he did every time, of what all this might come to, of what him having such a power might mean…39

No, Breck thought. No doubting this time. This devil earned every degree of the fire that destroyed him. He played with the beast, gloating of his control over it, and now look at him! Devoured, gone, not even an afterthought in the longest of history books. Now is not the time to wonder whether the deed done should have been. It is done, and it is good.40

The emotions were easier to subdue for the fact that Mitchell looked quite unlike himself. Unlike any man, for that matter. He was charcoal, blackened and horrific, with putrid steam floating out from the eyeless sockets as rainwater fell in. The pointed teeth and awful smile were all that remembered the foul worm which had inhabited the smoking corpse, and had so recently departed from it. Breck knelt beside it, averting his eyes and holding his breath, to rummage through the pockets of the mostly undamaged jacket. Wallet, keys, and...a gun? He grabbed them all and quickly ran off, to exhale his stale breath, and left Mitchell lying in tormented rest in the alleyway. 41

It had gotten colder outside than when Breck had started down that alleyway less than, what was it? Only five minutes before? He clambered thankfully onto the bus which pulled up just as he ran up to the stop. The splattering on the tin roof was a welcome sound, and the stink of the bus was better, at least, than the awful weather and that sickly stench in the alleyway.42

“What a day,” Breck breathed to the bus driver, “Nasty stuff out there to…” he looked up at the driver and down the aisles of tattered, brown seats. They were empty, every last one of them. It had an eerie aura, as if someone had warned everyone but Breck not to ride this bus. 43

“Um, tonight.”44

“Yessir.” Said the driver, an older black man with short gray-white hair and matching beard. He sat straight up in the driver’s seat; his two hands rested on the oversized steering wheel, and his large belly flowed onto his lap. “Seems like evr’yone but you is stayin’ inside tonight. Not many out wandering the streets in this horrible weather.” He looked intently up at Breck, with an almost knowing look in his small eyes.45

“Yeah, not many.” Breck muttered. One less, now.46

“So, where’re we headed to? Home?”47

“Yeah, Brunswick, Broadway and 75th street.”48

“Ooh, that’s a ways out there. It’ll be a bit of a ride.”49

“I know.”50

“Dollar seventy-five, please.” The driver said, holding out his hand. Breck took out his wallet, leafing through the papers, but there was nothing inside it to pay with.51

“I…just a second.” He found Mitchell’s black, leather wallet, and opened it. The leather was soft and smooth, expensive for sure, but inside was a mess of burnt papers and bills. Breck’s finger touched melted plastic from some sort of card, and he cursed under his breath at the burn; the plastic was still scolding hot.52

The driver looked at him with an interested look on his face. “Dollar seventy-five,” he reminded Breck.53

“I don’t have any money.”54

“I’m sorry then, sir. I can’t take you anywhere without fare.” The driver said, already prepared for Breck’s protest.55

Breck stared for a moment, working up a response. I don’t need this, he thought, not today. Not now.56

“Look,” he said. “I’ve had an awful day. I don’t have a car, or any other way to get home. I live twenty miles from here. It’s pissing rain outside. Can’t you let me ride on?”57

“Sorry, sir. Can’t do that.”58

Breck shook his head in anger. Unbelievable. “It’s a dollar and three quarters!” he argued. “Who the hell is gonna miss it? Just one time, today. That’s all I’m asking.”59

“I’m sorry,” the driver repeated. “But nobody gets a ride without paying. I could lose my job for letting you do that.”60

Christ, Breck thought as he gave the driver a look of disgust. A day like this could almost lead one to believe in fate. The debacle in court, the meeting in the alleyway, the bitter weather, and now this. It was as if someone was gunning for his sanity, wagering for the stoppage of his already weakened heart.61

When it rains, it pours, I suppose.62

So what now? Breck wondered as he took a step backwards down the steps as the unsympathetic bus driver stared him down with waiting eyes, waiting for him to leave. There’s nowhere to go, and…63

Breck‘s hand slipped into his pocket and it brushed against something cold and metal. The gun. His fingers jumped on their own, like an animal; they wanted it. Or maybe his spirit was weary of the chaos being thrown at it, the rain dampening it inside and out, and was ready to take matters into its own hands.64

Which turned out to be Breck’s hands.65

His fingers curled themselves around the handle of Mitchell’s gun and his right arm thrust itself within inches of the bus driver’s astonished face. Breck saw the bewilderment and hoped his own unbelief at what he had just done was not as obvious in his own eyes. What was he doing? But it didn’t matter now; it was too late to do anything else. And the more Breck thought, the more he realized it was the only way. Corner a wild animal, and it will bite back harder than ever before.66

“What-“ The driver began to object, but was silenced with a jerk of the barrel.67

“If I were you,” Breck growled in an unsettling octave; his voice guttered from his throat like a dog’s, “I would drive. 75th and Broadway. Don’t stop anywhere else.” The driver gaped, speechless, then shifted the bus into gear with resignation.68

It was a new experience. Breck had heard of this. They say that one feels a sense of unbelievable power when holding a weapon to another’s head. His senses are heightened and he feels invincible, ready to destroy anyone in his path. A man with a gun is the most powerful man alive.69

Breck felt none of that. He was scared. The rain splattering on the roof and the windshield sounded like shots ringing through the metal, and with each crack of thunder, Breck jumped inside himself, sure that he had mistakenly squeezed the trigger. The situation was surreal, colors blurred and sounds dulled; the bus slowly weaved through the streets, calmly passing stops filled with soggy people, as if it was simply being driven by a forgetful driver. And Breck’s hand vibrated along with the engine, terrified of itself.70

Necessity, Breck rationalized. This is necessity. Not a crime of greed or hate or disgusting, consuming pride; I’ve only done what was absolutely necessary. There’s nothing to worry about, no guilt involved. He looked at the driver, staring straight forward, not daring, it seemed, to take even a glance backwards. Old and hardened, the man probably hated everyone he had ever met. There’s no empathy in those eyes, only coldness. Cold, hard, and rank, just like his bus. This driver, Breck thought, is paying the penalty for his own lack of compassion. He’s the sort who leaves beggars on the street, grumbling at their laziness and cursing their existence.71

His hand steadied as they neared his stop. A half hour of silent, vicious conversation between their two minds stalled, and they simply sat, hating each other. There was a whirlwind outside of the bus, cars dashing by and leaving Breck’s face red with the glow of their taillights, but silence and the rumble of the big engine were the only noises inside. Almost there. Just pray for this to be over, forget about it, and it will never have happened.72

A turn, straight forward, then brake. Tires skidded on the wet pavement and the bus came to a rest, alone at the stop on dark 75th street. The driver moved his arm, making Breck nervous one last time, and a wet wind splattered over the two men as the door slid open. Finally. Down three steps and it was all finished, to leave the darkness in the city and the rain in the streets. Breck once again thought of fire, how liberating it would be to dry himself, finally alone, by a blazing fire in his own, safe home. 73

Breck caught the driver’s eye for one closing moment, they shared a quick glance of finality, the look of two people who had never wanted to meet, and now having met, could not wait to be rid of each other, and he rushed back into the storm. The night swallowed him, and he became a shadow, briskly floating down the street. Nothing but a shadow in the dark.74

The driver watched the man go, frowning. Such a pity, he thought. A sad reflection of this world that someone would be so degraded, so morally inept that he would be willing to threaten another man’s life for a simple ride worth seven quarters. This person walking away in the dark was nothing but darkness, he breathed it in; he exhaled it out and left it drifting behind him everywhere he went. The driver knew; he had met people like this before; they take more than they need and leave an ugly scar across everyone they use to get it. This one may have only stolen a ride, but he would, undoubtedly, steal, threaten, even kill again, without ever being brought to justice.75

There was only one way to stop it. Only one way to ensure that justice, indeed, would be carried out. After years and years of blackened souls crossing his path, the driver knew that the only cure for darkness was to shine a light. Light is the only thing in the world that can eradicate darkness, forever, and he was the only one in the world who had that power over the darkness. It must be done, he thought, once again.76

Through the rain, the driver could still make out the man’s retreating back. He sighed, regretting what needed to happen, then took a deep breath, fixed his eyes on that dark, departing soul, and cried out in a piercing voice.77

“Justice for the just, lest we do what we must!”78

The world froze…79