Authors: Shawn Hopkins
The truth is not determined by what is popular and what isn’t. It’s determined by itself! It is absolute, unchanging, the knowledge of it available to all who are not too scared to seek it. To those who love God, for He is the truth! But for some reason, mostly due to that false reality we worship, Christians bought into the media doctrine and pledged their allegiance not to the truth, not to God, but to political agendas.
With tired eyes, Edward watched his son for a few minutes longer before flicking off the screen. “Be seeing you soon, son.” And then his voice drained into a whisper. “For whatever it’s worth now, I think you were right…”
A week after that sermon, Jack was assassinated. His head shot clean off his shoulders. The media had spun this whole story about the shooter being a homosexual intolerant of Jack’s “archaic and intolerable Christian position” on gays. It paved the way for the new hate-speech bill that had already been adopted by the EU. While the media falsified documents and even made up whole sermons portraying Jack’s “hatred” of homosexuals, giving him the position of ring-leader among Christian fundamentalism, the gay community rioted, calling it a war for their independence. The NAU’s ICSF (Inter Continental Security Force) began referring to the “one man and one woman” crowd as terrorists, and soon any pastor caught refusing to marry homosexuals or even teaching from “unauthorized” versions of the Bible (versions where God’s hate-speech had not been properly removed) had their churches seized and spent some time in prison.
Edward got up off the couch, and Calvin ran off to Washington and Jefferson, Edward’s own two German Shepherds. It was time to get the mail.
The sun broke through the clouds and warmed his tear-stained face as he walked down the stone path to the mailbox. Pulling it open, he retrieved its contents. Then, after a look up and down the empty street, he walked back to the house.
Tossing the mail onto the kitchen table, he began with the one on top. Junk. As if all the subliminal advertisements on the TV weren’t enough, they still went after certain mailboxes, targeting the elderly who may not have made the technological upgrades necessary to be victimized by the new marketing schemes.
The second and third were more of the same. But the last one he picked up was unusually heavy. He flipped it over so that he could see the front. It was addressed to Jack. No return address. Postmarked three days ago. From Maryland. Squinting curiously, he slid his forefinger into the envelope and drug it from one end to the other, not careful to prevent extended tearing to the body of the envelope. There was a lot of tissue paper inside. He turned the envelope upside-down, and whatever was inside the tissue fell to the table with a
clang
. His large hands moved fast to retrieve it.
“What in the world?” he asked himself.
All three dogs raised their ears.
He held the object up to what sunlight the clouds permitted through the kitchen window, staring in both awe and confusion.
A ring.
What it meant, or who it could be from, he had no idea. He used his fingers to move the ornament end-over-end under his thoughtful gaze. It was remarkably designed, and he was sure he had never seen anything like it before. Some kind of gem sat fixed to the band. It was large and shaped like a lens. The gold band wasn’t complete like most rings he was familiar with. The polished gem wasn’t fixed in a setting. Instead, it was clear, transparent, enabling him to see directly through it. The band came up and around and was somehow fashioned straight to the side of the gem. An artistic design on top of the band where it met the gem was fashioned on either side, slightly covering the two opposite corners and holding the gem in place.
His eyes were too old to make much sense of it, and his fingers were too big to wear the ring, but he was able to feel the underside of the gem. It wasn’t smooth and polished like the top, and without an enclosed band, it couldn’t be very comfortable.
A knock at the front door startled him and diverted his eyes from the mystery in his hands. With the ring left on the table and all the thoughts it aroused with it, Edward tried to hush the excited dogs, making his way to the front door. “Who could this be?” he wondered under his breath. Talking out loud to the dogs helped lessen the reality of loneliness that was ever-presently hovering over his tired existence. He looked out the peephole, his left hand reaching over and resting on the ancient shotgun that he kept leaning in the corner next to the front door — something else Jack had disapproved of. As did NAU gun laws.
He could make out a familiar face through the small hole and let go of the weapon, opening the door.
“Hey, Ed.” It was Matthew Scott. He pushed himself past Edward and entered the house.
“Hello, Matthew,” he answered, a smile warming his face. A friend’s company was always invited, and the redness around his eyes began to fade, a spark of life kindling.
“You know they’ll put you away for having that thing,” Scott said, blindly pointing behind him and to the shotgun as he walked into the kitchen. There he bent to one knee and received a warm and wet welcome from his three other friends. “Hey, boys,” he said while rubbing their heads and trying to avoid direct kisses. “When will pop get you a dame?”
“No dame.” The number of pets was strictly regulated.
Matthew looked up to his older friend as he came into the kitchen. “But you’ll keep the shotgun.”
“I pick and choose the battles I’m willing to fight and the means by which to fight them. Fifty puppies running around the house isn’t worth it. No dame.”
Standing, Matthew shrugged. “Well, boys, I tried.” He leaned back against the counter that stood alone as an island in the middle of the kitchen. “How you doing today, Ed?”
“Fine.”
Matthew Scott was someone both Edward and Jack met at the church just four months before Jack’s death and, despite him being “unsure about the whole born again thing,” the three of them had been able to establish a pretty good relationship. And then Jack was murdered. Since then, the two remaining men spent a lot of time together watching old movies, playing cards, and philosophizing about life — though Scott always seemed to let Edward do most of the talking. It was a friendship that was convenient for both of them, since they both valued the company and the suppressing of certain issues that company allowed.
“That’s good. You got any food?” Scott went to the refrigerator.
“You didn’t bring lunch with you?”
“Sorry, didn’t have any cash on me.”
Neither of them used the electronic means of payment, preferring to stay off that grid.
“There’s some of that new genetically altered corn on the cob and some cloned chicken.”
Scott chuckled as he pulled out a bowl of tomatoes. “These come from your back yard?” Anything unapproved by the FDA was illegal and on par with illegal drugs.
Edward leaned against the stove. “Don’t report me, okay?”
And then the ring sitting on the table caught Scott’s eye. “What’s that?”
Edward pushed himself off the stove and walked over to it. “Beats me. Came in the mail today. It was addressed to Jack.”
Scott raised his eyebrows. “Who’s it from?”
“Didn’t say.”
“May I?” Scott asked, his hand reaching for it.
“Sure.”
He picked up the ring, examined it. “What the heck is it?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. Never seen anything like it.”
“The band looks like solid gold.”
“What do you make of the stone?” Edward asked.
“Looks polished, almost transparent. It’s not a diamond. Glass?”
Edward shrugged.
Scott flipped it over, catching a glimpse of its underside. “That’s weird.”
“Yeah, I couldn’t think of why anyone would make something like that. It can’t be comfortable.”
“It looks like a lens, like you’re supposed to see something through it.” He was growing more intrigued. “No return address. And it was sent to Jack?”
Edward nodded.
Because Edward had moved into Jack’s house after he died, it wasn’t all that strange that something would come bearing Jack’s name. It was his house, and mail still showed up for him from time to time, though nothing ever like this.
“Postmark?”
“Three days ago. Maryland.”
“No letter, no nothing?”
Edward shook his head again.
The ring was indeed strange, but there was something else about it too… a kind of
feeling
. But it was a fleeting and illusive one they couldn’t seem to grasp.
Scott tore his gaze away from it, the effort it took to do so somewhat surprising to him, and set it on the open envelope. “Who would send something like this to Jack,” he moved his eyes up to Edward’s, finishing his thought, “that wouldn’t know he’d died?”
Edward thought about it for a second, his brain working hard to produce some kind of clue. “There was this one girl that he was corresponding with for a while. She was an archeologist or something. They met in Jerusalem, I believe. About three years ago, right after that thing with Syria. I always thought he liked her, thought he would finally settle down.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. She went off to Africa before anything could really develop. As far as I know, that was the last Jack heard from her.”
“And if she was gone for a few years, she may not have known that Jack was killed.”
Edward shook his head. “Yeah, but why send this with no note or return address or anything?”
“Maybe it’s something he would’ve understood, something between them.”
Scratching his face, Edward sighed. “Yeah, that makes the most sense, I suppose.”
Scott picked up the envelope, noticing something he’d missed. “Did you see this?”
“What?” he asked, the inflection in Scott’s voice moving his feet closer to the table.
“There’s something written here on the inside of the envelope.” He held it up, trying to make out the scribbled letters.
“What are you talking about?” Edward asked, now quick to get beside him.
“Look.”
Edward squinted, but it didn’t help. “My eyes. Just tell me.”
“It looks like ‘HELP — M.S.’”
“M.S…” Edward mused, his mind searching. He pulled out a chair from under the table and sat in it. “It’s got to be her.”
Scott dropped the envelope back onto the table. “Her, like as in the girl Jack liked,
her
?”
He nodded, his eyes not hiding the mystery his mind was trying to unravel. “Melissa Strauss.”
“You think she’s in trouble?”
Edward moved his left hand over his bald scalp again. “Well, I’m not sure,” he answered sarcastically, “why don’t you keep reading.”
“You know,” Scott replied, “you’re pretty crabby today.”
Four hours later, the afternoon having been spent pondering the mysterious ring over a game of chess, Scott made his way to the front door. As he passed by a small table that was home to a lamp, his hand brushed over a book that was resting beside it. The front cover was illustrated with a tombstone. The inscription on it read, “America.” The touch was cold, and he withdrew his hand. Opening the door, he turned and said to Edward, “Thanks for lunch. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Edward watched out the window as Matthew Scott drove away in his old 2013 Ford Bronco. “He won again, boys… Every stinking time.” He was speaking to the dogs, referring to the chess match. But that wasn’t what was really on his mind. After the three years of keeping his company, there was still something about Matthew Scott that Edward just couldn’t put his finger on, something that often had him wondering just who his mysterious friend really was.
4
M
atthew Scott leaned back and crossed his feet on the coffee table in front of him. The house was dark except for the multicolored light projecting from the TV. He was surfing through pages of thumbnail previews, the constant flickering only helping to express what his own world felt like. It was just after midnight, and, like most nights, he couldn’t sleep. He yawned, his eyes watering.
He was thirty-seven, but his body did a good job of hiding it. The shape that he was in was almost uncanny, always prompting people to stare. And not just women. It was inconsequential to him, the vanity of it. In fact, he despised the attention. That’s why he rarely went out in public without extra large clothing hiding his frame. Of course, there was a reason for his size and shape, and a reason he didn’t strut around trying to show it off. A reason no one could ever know. It was rare in these times for one to focus so much on his or her physical appearance. That’s why most people stared. Sights like him were so rare that most probably assumed he was a movie star or some other noteworthy hero. A model perhaps. Someone who had the luxury to spend hours in a gym, who
needed
to spend hours in a gym.
But if
only
they
knew.
Knew what he knew. And how he knew it. Though that was a knowledge he would be taking to the grave with him — the how. And while the grave was inevitable, the longer he was able to hide his past, the more time he would have before that appointment. Staying alive was all he cared about right now, and he tried not to think of the things that would someday surely condemn him. The things that had been asked of him —
ordered
of him. He tried to forget what he did. But to forget completely was impossible. All he had to do was select the news.
Which he did.
CNN. The wars in Russia, Turkey, and Iran. More terrorist cells found in Canada. The Vatican denouncing Islam again.
His bright blue eyes took in the sights and sounds as he brought every current news program up in thumbnails all at once. Waving his finger at the screen, he made the curser appear and directed it over one of the preview windows with the thimble-like remote, selecting it with an imaginary click of his finger. The station was announcing a developing story, the news anchor referring to an incident in Washington a few days ago.
“…and as if you couldn’t forget just how close the threat of terrorism actually is to us here in North America, we have a breaking story coming out of Washington DC, just blocks from the White House.”
A picture of a woman appeared behind the news anchor’s head, up in the right hand corner of the screen. Her NAU ID photo.
“A woman, who the CIA says has ties to terrorist organizations around the world, is in a coma today after attempting to evade capture by police.”
The scene switched to the White House press secretary, the date on the screen revealing it to be a recording from yesterday. He was speaking in response to a question one of the reporters had asked.