A Question of Madness

Time is running out for Jorg Schultz, but he doesn't know it, however, someone does know and waiting for that final hour.

A Question of Madness

Is the mad man born into the world? Or is the mad man made because of the world?

These are the sort of things I think about when I'm bored, waiting for a customer's expiration date. I already know that my customer is coming because every human being has a pattern. Jorg Schultz is eighty-six, so his schedule is a bit more reliable then someone who's in their twenties.

Jorg Schultz gets up from his tiny apartment in downtown Philadelphia at seven every morning, swallows twenty or more pills because of lung cancer, goes to his daughter's house to talk to his family at noon, gets lunch at a mom and pop place, goes to church at around three, walks to the graveyard to drop off flowers, eats dinner, and goes on a walk in a very pretty park with tall trees.

Even without following the old man, I would've known everything I needed to know because of the manila file in my backpack, but Frank never trusts me with too many jobs because he thinks I'm too young.

"You're only thirteen, Kira."

Frank is like most adults: dismissive, clueless, forgetful, and walks like the world is on his shoulders. Arguing with him is like arguing with a rock: little to no response and unmovable.

Today, however, would be my last day of following the old man, or at least that's what my file tells me. Today, the he decided to go to the grocery store before eating dinner as he grumbled about his wife and kids. Today, I decided to follow his routine myself and get an apple and some soda because I'm going to be waiting for Jorg Schultz for a while and I get hungry. Today, I decided to go to the tiny little park with the tall, tall trees that remind me of muscular arms of men in funny stiff outfits that I've seen once upon a time.

I sit on a bench on around eight o'clock at night and plug my ears with music, coming from an old and probably outdated CD player that I won't get rid of because Angel gave it to me. It's a bunch of happy stuff about love and guitars, something that makes me want to jump up and down. I place my backpack next to me as I look up, thinking I should've brought an umbrella because the grey clouds look like they might burst into tears at any moment.

Trees stand in the park with their green leafs blowing in the slight, warm wind as the sun begins to set and the sky begins to cry. The concrete walkway is stained and water fills up the cracks, drowning ants while leaves float like little boats. Rose bushes begin to droop like they were beginning to fall into a deep depression, or bowing down, ready to face some sort of "god". Only the dedicated come out tonight, even if it is summer and the rain feels almost warm. I knew that I needed to stay here and wait for him.

Pulling out a golden pocket watch from my jean pocket, I saw that it was almost eight thirty. He should be here any minute now.

Devouring the apple, I study the park and it looks like something from a fairytale, except without the castles and stupid things like that. The dedicated walkers look at me for a moment before looking away because I don't look that extraordinary, even if kids probably shouldn't be in the park alone. I've pulled my jet-black hair in a bun because I refuse to cut it. Someone shaved my head once a long, long time ago. I can't remember why, but I remember crying because I liked my hair, even if it gets in the way now. My skin constantly looks like I've lived in the sun for my whole life, but even with my dark skin, I still see a tattoo on my right forearm. It's not very pretty, like tattoos other people have, and it's only a mixture of numbers that don't make sense to me.

The grey light of a rainy day begins to dissolve and give way to the darkness as I pull my knees to my chest. The grey light reminds me of something...something sad, something bad.

I turn up my music.

The lyrics talk about unending love and usually I would want to smile and dance, but I can't. My boots are too heavy today.

My nose scrunches up as I smell a cigar. It's a nice one, I can tell. I don't know why I can tell, but I can. The rain stops soaking my hair and I look up to see a large umbrella before I yank the headphones and stare up at a shaking, wrinkled hand.

"What's a young girl doing out here at night without an umbrella?" A heavily accented voice asked me as I looked to see a thick man with his skin clinging to his bones in sags, in bags. He looks like the photograph that's in my file except older, heavier, thicker, and oddly kinder. He doesn't look like heʼs ever missed a meal.

And I hated him for it.

I shake my head; where did that thought come from? What this man did or didn't do is not my concern.

His big thick glasses rested on the bridge of his nose and his cigar hung from his free hand. Well, at least I know where the lung cancer came from.

Serves him right.

I shake my head again; these angry thoughts shouldn't be there. Angry thoughts aren't good. They lead to no pleasant places, but lately it seems I've become an angry person. I'm thirteen, so I shouldn't be this angry. I don't recognize this anger, to be honest. It tastes funny in my mouth and it sinks in my stomach, making me want my soda to calm it down. Bubbles make everything better.

"I was just thinking about some things," I explained.
"Shouldn't you be getting home?" he asked me as I shrugged my shoulders. 

"Probably, but if I go home then my thoughts will just bother everyone else. I think too much," I admitted. I don't have a home- I have multiples of homes. Lilith always opens her doors for me and she always gets me this fancy cheesecake with sweet, sweet coffee. Angel sometimes comes over and has the sweet coffee with me, trying to talk me into coming home with him because he thinks Lilith is a bad influence on me. He has a bad habit of thinking that I'm still a child, but I can't blame him. Adam even lets me stay at his place when he's not being a jerk and bragging about some girl. Frank lives in a house made for rich people, but he doesn't stay there much, to be honest. He lives in the houses of other women a lot. I think he's lonely.

"I doubt it, I'm sure your family will want you home even if your thoughts are heavy. They should be proud that you're thinking so much," he tells me with a smile as ash fell from his cigar.

Snow...is it snow? No, no, it's...ash?

A flash of memory and it's gone. "You should probably stop smoking," I tell him as he laughs, "it takes a lot of lives, I've seen it."

"I know, I know," he laughs, and I realize he probably hadn't caught the last part of my statement, or had decided to ignore it. Since he's an adult, I'm betting the latter. "My daughter tells me all the time."

"My friend smokes a lot, but he doesn't get the side effects," I tell him, thinking about Angel, who doesn't smoke in front of me because I stare at the ash and it creeps him out.

"Lucky boy."

"He's not a boy. He's almost thirty now," I say as I think about Angel; he died when he was twenty-eight, I think. "But he's in love with this girl and he's trying to stop to impress her, but I don't think he needs to do that because I'm pretty sure she likes him too."

"I'm sorry, but that seems very young to me," he says with a smile and a laugh. He tosses the cigar to the side and steps on it. A heavy boot stepping on glass, shattering something so precious to Mama. I shake my head. Where are these images coming from? Where is this burning feeling coming from in my stomach?

"What's your name?"

"Kira," I say. I don't remember my name. It could be my name, or it could've been something that I heard once. I don't know, I don't know. And I don't want to know. "And yours?"

"Elie," he lies to me. "You have a very pretty name, Kira. It means 'dark,' doesn't it?"

I nod as I repeat what Frank told me once. "It has a bunch of meanings because it's over seven hundred years old. In Hindi, it' means 'beam of light'. In Russia, it means 'leader' and in other places it can mean 'beloved.ʼ"

"You must be very beloved. Your parents must be proud to have such a smart child."

I shrug as I explain without missing a beat. "They're dead."
"Women to the left! Men to the right!"
"Forgive me, I didn't know," he apologizes.
Again, more shrugging as I tell him, comfort him, forgiving him in a way. "I don't

remember them, so you shouldn't apologize."
He smiled again. I don't think I've seen a man smile so much. Maybe he's faking it? I wished he'd look more like a man with a heavy burden on his shoulder and not like he had lived a good life with everything that anyone could ever want.

Sighing, what time was it? I pull out the pocket watch. It's almost nine; his expiration date is coming up.

I look at him to see him smiling still, holding the umbrella for me. "How can you still smile after everything you've done, Jorg Schultz?"

His jaw stiffens as his eyes widen, dropping his umbrella and taking a step from me. "H-H-How do you know that name?"

I smile as I get up, and he takes a few more steps back. "We wouldn't be very good grim reapers if we didn't know everything about our customers," I tell him as I put my CD player in my backpack and pull out a manila folder with pictures inside: the paper that told the story of Jorg Schultz. "You were an SS officer and to escape persecution, you took Elie's name and came to America. You even got his tattoo on your arm." I point to his right arm and his left hand automatically goes over to it. "You have cancer and decided not to go to the doctor because you hate doctors and hospitals. I bet I can even find in this file what your favorite drink is."

"What kind of sick joke is this? Did my wife put you up to this?" He asks as he grinds his teeth together and walks over to me.

"No, I don't think I pick up your wife. I bet Angel or someone else has to do that," I say, looking at the picture of the younger Jorg Schultz in his SS uniform with that smile that I've gotten used to. Suddenly, the papers scattered everywhere and flew around before landing on the wet concrete and grass, as Jorge Schultz slaps the folder out of my hand before grabbing my right arm.

My stomach twists as he slips into German and his grip tightens on my arm.

"How dare you! You know nothing of..." He looks at my arm and at the tattoo of numbers. "You're too young for this....you can't... you shouldn't..." He looks at me then, and his brown eyes dig into mine. "Blue eyes... I thought I was seeing things when I saw you. I thought you looked like that girl...no... no... you can't be...can't be her."

He throws me back and I land on my butt with his pictures and papers that told the truth about his life. He looks down at me, his mouth gaping and eyes widening as he takes a few steps that made his whole body shake, like I might become the monster from his nightmares. He steps back until his back meets with the tree, and he slides down until he reaches eye level with me as he whispers, "Ghost....Ghost...Ghost..."

I grind my teeth together before running a hand through my hair, getting the bangs out of my eyes. "I am not a damn ghost. I am here and real, you just touched me, remember? You pushed me, actually, which is rude by the way. I'm only doing my job." I get up and wipe my bottom as I glare at him. "And I don't want to do it, trust me, but I don't get to choose. I never get to choose."

Hands open up to catch cold snow flakes, but the snow flakes smear on our hands to reveal themselves to be ash, staining our hands, our clothes, our faces...Ash, ash, what could create so much ash?

My stomach churns so painfully that I bend over and gag, waiting for something to come up.

His mouth opens in what looks like a silent scream before putting his hands over his face and hiccuping. "You...you...you...."

Straightening up, I walk over to him before pulling out the pocket watch again. Sighing, I still have another five minutes before his expiration date comes up. He tilts his head back and his hat falls off into the mud and grass before he looks up at me. "I remember your pretty blue eyes and the soldier that jerked you away before the showers..."

He's a raving man about to die and he probably mistakes me for someone else.

A rough hand grabbing on my arm, yanking me away from Mama before the screaming started bouncing around in my skull.

"Didn't do s**t in the end," He gags for a moment and spits up blood onto the sidewalk before he laughs. "You still ended up in an unmarked grave like so many others."

Constantly running, constantly running. I didn't dare walk too slowly because those big men could shoot and no one would blink an eye. No one cared, no one cared.

Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't remember! I stand up straight and shut my eyes tightly to keep the screaming out of my head, the images of the corpses staring up at me with vacant eyes, the guns firing, piles among piles of bodies, and I place my hands over my ears. My tattoo begins to burn.

Follow the prints of others, so I don't have to drag my feet through the mud. Run, run, run...
Shut up!
The world feels solid before I open my eyes again.

He looks at the blood in his hands, his blood. "I hated your eyes." He looks at me before he asks, "Do you hate me?"

I pull out my pocket watch again. Another minute and he'll be gone and I'll have to yank his soul out. Without taking my eyes off the pocket watch, I tell him, "If you're asking me for forgiveness, that's not my job. Grim reapers leave that to God, angels, and demons, or whatever is on the other side."

"You don't know?" he asks me with wet eyes.

I shake my head and close the pocket watch. "No, and I don't really want to. I just sort of wished I had wings like those angels do."

"You've seen angels?" he asks me with a tiny smile.

I nod again. "Yup, they have large white wings. If I had wings like that then everything would be perfect to me."

He coughs more and more blood stains his fingers. "Do you believe in forgiveness?"

"I don't know, didn't I tell you that?" I repeat as he looks at me.

His hand reaches out for me. "Forgive-" He breaks out into a coughing fit where his whole body shakes before breaking. His hand falls limp, and his body reminds me of something I've seen before. I shake my head and reach down to touch his hand. An electric shock runs through my arm as the soul's threads to the body snap, and I yank the soul out. It's like pulling someone out of a deep hole. I throw my whole body into it and fall on my butt again, before looking up to see his soul already beginning to dissolve, going wherever souls go after they're yanked out.

"Kira!"

I quickly get up to see Frank. Frank has a bit of a gut that he tries to hide by wearing oversized shirts and jeans with fancy belts, but nothing could hide his receding hairline and the wrinkles that outline his face. I get up as he walks over to me with an umbrella in hand.

"Kira, what happened here? I thought he was supposed to die peacefully, it looks like a damn fight broke out here," Frank notes, looking around to see the file spread everywhere and its ink soaking into the ground, absorbing Schultz's life where no one else would ever find out.

I shrug my shoulders and pick up Schultz's photograph of him in his SS uniform, before ripping the picture in half.

"What did you do that for?" Frank asks. "And you're going to catch a cold if you keep standing in the rain like this."

No one will ever know.
And that's fine by me.
"Frank," I call out to him as I grab my backpack and look at him. "Do you think a

man is born mad? Or does the world make that man mad?"
"Christ, if I knew that then I'd have moved on a long time ago. Where do you

think of this s**t, Kira?"
I shrug my shoulders and follow Frank, as we leave Schultz's body to be found by someone else. 

Author's Note

Everyone that I've shown this story to says this is a beginning chapter to a novel, but I haven't made much of it so far. I am proud of this though.