Guardians in Black

I am always fascinated by how low the birds fly considering the danger of the busy city down here on the ground. For birds, there are lingering threats like the tall trucks, with their diesel engines roaring and cherry pickers stretching as high into the sky as the pigeons that fly over-head, spreading and constricting in perfect sync, avoiding the imminent peril of splatting into the machinery. If I were a bird, I would much rather stay in the middle of the city in the safety of the trees in Central Park. Certainly, those trees have stood there and lived through more days than everyone currently hustling about in New York City. But maybe they like the chaos. Either way, they give me something to watch on my way to work at the plant.

People pass me viciously going about their day, but who really knows what they’re getting themselves in to. There is as much a chance that it could be something sinister as it is innocent. Every day on my walk, I instinctively find myself writing the story of each person I see in the short time it takes for them to brush past me. This man is headed to the office early just to get away from his wife and get closer to that new secretary. That woman told her husband she is visiting a girlfriend, but really, she has his credit card heading to the shops.

They scurry in all different directions, some stopping for nothing, but others for their usual morning breakfast and coffee, like the man I see every day at the “World’s Best Cup of Coffee” stand on 32nd. He always sports his designer pea coat that reaches all the way down to his ankles, paired with, what I presume to be an expensive fedora. The fabric looks like suede, I think. Judging by the subtle wrinkles forming a labyrinth around his U-shaped mustache and slightly drooping mouth, a mouth that has told many stories of wisdom gained through past mistakes, I’d say he is in his late 50’s. And by the color of his caffeinated delight, steaming up against the cold, tainted city air, I’d say he takes it black. No sugars and no milk or cream.

The next block ahead is where the small businesses try to attract the day’s hard-earned pay, shouting to potential buyers about how great their services are, or how affordable they are compared to the others. There are shops of all kinds, from fresh produce to antiques from the city’s strangest collectors, and even a good ole fashioned shoeshine. Of course, now I think they call it a shoe cleaning to keep up with the pulse of the modern world. I’ve never paid attention to what this street was called. I have made this walk well over 100 times but never look up to find out what the name is. I’m always so distracted by the hard-working entrepreneurs being ignored by most of the pedestrians.

Landmarks are the key to finding my way. After 32nd street there is precisely one block to the shops. After the shops, I cross the street in front of me, checking both ways as I go and walking half a block to cut-through the alley in between some abandoned buildings. They used to be apartments resting on top of small offices, and the only reason I know that is because they still had some of the letters stuck to the window. I always try to read them, but they are so sun dried and decrepit, the only purpose they serve is a faded warning of what most businesses in this area will be.

This time turning right down the alley, there was a moderate blanket of fog from the heat of the city, hovering near the sides of the old buildings and everything was still. It’s like the moment where adrenaline kicks in just before colliding with another car. I had realized after a few strides down the alley that I unknowingly had slowed my stride down to a soft walking pace. I was sensing something was brewing that I didn’t want to be around for, but as any rationalist would do, I reminded myself that I have walked down this alley many times without encountering a single person, or any danger at that. I would be surprised if anyone besides myself ever came down this way.

“Where’s the money?!”

My heart instantly started to pound through my chest as my train of thought and the unsettling silence was broken violently with a thunderous voice bouncing from wall to wall in both directions. I instantly froze and squatted just slightly, glancing behind me first and then in front of me, expecting an attacker to strike. But I saw nothing. Nor could I see the other side of the alley.

Another, much quieter and shaky voice started to plead. “I…tuh…told…you.”

It was clearly a male voice and he sounded much more exasperated than the other voice. He sounded like he was in a tremendous amount of pain and horrified and begging that he makes it out of this situation alive. For any decent human being, the sound of another person begging in fear to live another day can make you sick to your stomach.

Still cautiously frozen to where I stood, keeping myself completely still from making any noise, I could hear someone take a deep breath in and exhale heavily in disgust. That clearly wasn’t the answer he was looking for. His heavy sigh was followed by a rattling sound, like keys jingling away in someone’s pocket. But it had a different tone to it, deeper and solid. I could tell it was something metal and being tapped against something sturdy, like they were contemplating on what to do next.

There were a few footsteps and I instantly snapped back to where I was in comparison to the commotion in front of me somewhere in the dark. From the sound that the man’s shoes made against the pavement, I could tell they were dress shoes. The rubber soles sounding like wood blocks smacking together. I looked to my left finding the large green dumpster that had remained full of trash and untouched since who knows when. I knew I did not want to get in the way or line of sight of whoever or whatever was happening here.

“I don’t see any other choice,” the thunderous voice reasoned with himself. The voice was deep and seemed to swallow the space around me.

“No…NO!” The weaker voice suddenly saturated with frustration and fear as a loud slide of metal sounded backwards and forwards. It’s a gun. This was all the confirmation I needed to know that this man, the man with the weaker voice, was in grave danger. So many thoughts started to swell in my mind. I had to save this guy, or did I? Do I run away now? Will I get shot if I move?

A loud explosion broke my distraction of thoughts leaving my ears ringing, followed by another loud explosion, followed by another, along with quick footsteps that diminished as they increased in number. I fell to the ground, curling up in a ball, wishing that this were a terrible dream, and now would be the moment where I wake up having never left my bed this morning. Unfortunately, none of that was the case. I turned myself over slowly to avoid giving my position away and peeked around the left side of the dumpster towards the middle of the alley. Some of the fog had dispersed from the pressure of the gun fire, revealing a lifeless body maybe 20 yards ahead of me. I could see the man was maybe middle aged with a bright yellow jacket that had a Nike emblem on the hood, and partially tucked underneath his head. His hands were pointed straight up with his elbows fixed to the ground and his chin was stuck tilted up towards the sky, fixing his eyes right towards me, glazed and motionless.

I turned back around as fast as possible to my side of the dumpster, rolled over onto my right side, and hurled as quietly as I could. Once I had finished, I laid there completely silent, or so I thought. One can never be too quiet after being sick without having to catch their breath. After what seemed like an eternity, I rolled back to my left and peered once again around the left side of the dumpster. He was still there in the same position. I can’t say I expected to see anything other than a corpse, but in the back of my mind I wanted that man’s body to be upright and breathing; alive and well. Because of someone else deciding Nike man’s time was up, me and the low-level rise and fall of highway traffic in the distance were the only life around. I was alone and utterly afraid.

I decided that I had to be as brave as possible and inspect the body, and after a brief pep talk and stabilization of my legs from what I just witnessed, I crept myself over to him and knelt down beside him. I was right about his age. He was middle aged and had an average look about him other than how fit he was. He was wearing a white shirt and gray shorts with running shoes that were dashed here and there with lime green stitching and black rubber soles. “Not exactly the finish line you had in mind today, huh?” I was joking out loud only to make myself feel better about sitting here with a man’s cadaver, trying to make sense of a non-sensible situation, but it didn’t work. As soon as I finished my statement, there was a few light footsteps from behind me sounding oddly familiar like wooden blocks slapping together, and a metal sliding sound, back and forth. I turned fast enough to make my eyes have to catch up and was looking directly at a man with a long pea coat and expensive fedora, and wrinkles around his U-shaped mustache.

“Get up.” It was the same voice I heard earlier that demanded respect and expected all its instructions performed.

I was shaken with any emotion possible, aside from the positive ones, and it drove me to foolishly mutter, “You killed this man.” Foolish. Why would anyone accuse a suspected murderer of a crime he is completely aware he carried out? Especially one with the murder weapon still in his hand and now pointed in my direction, aching to silence one more terrified victim.

“No, he’s just getting some shut-eye.”

“But his eyes are open.” I wanted to punch my self in the mouth at this point. This was unlike me. I did not laugh in the face of danger and I was not someone who could fight the biggest, toughest guy in the room. At this point in my life, getting the job that I was on my way to clock in and out for had been my boldest achievement.

The mustache man cocked his head to the left only slightly. His facial expression behind his designer sunglasses remained as cold and detached as I felt on the inside. The suspense from only guessing how he would react brought everything in motion around us to complete stillness. He appeared to be in a deep trance or deliberation, but neither one mattered to me at this point. And to my surprise, he brought his hand down to his side bringing the pistol with it, so slowly I was able to glance the logo laser etched into the side of the metal slide, Glock.

Finally, after what felt like an entire day had passed by, he broke the painful silence.

“Do you know why that gentleman right there is dead?”

I started to open my mouth to respond, realizing that I had tried to snap back with something far too quickly not to be taken as a smart-ass remark, regardless of the content. I quickly closed my mouth putting my tongue back in its place and simply shook my head, no.

“I knew him for quite some time. We had a mutual understanding that If I loaned him money, he’d have a given amount of time to pay me back. That’s fair right?” He paused. I was now faced with a difficult decision to make, because I had no idea if he was waiting for my response or meant this as a rhetorical question.

“That’s typically how it works ye…”

He interrupted loudly, “But I don’t know who the hell you are or why you are here! And that makes me uncomfortable.” The Glock rose back to its original direction, my direction, but this time, right towards my head. My hands instinctively rose next to my ears with my eyes wincing, waiting for the moment when my inner thoughts would suddenly stop as death takes me.

I remained in this position for what felt like a lifetime, pleading in my mind not for this to be my last day alive. I had so much more going for me than I did in previous years. Not that anything I had managed to do was overly exceptional, but the fact is and will remain, death was not on my list of things to do. Instead I wanted to gain that position at my new job that they told me about when I began working there. I wanted to give my apartment a complete makeover that it needed to feel like the space was my own. I wanted to finally start going out on the town again since I could afford it and maybe even fall in love. But these thoughts will always be just that, wishes that never come true, only to float away in the wind, as I am on my knees next to a corpse. He was once a person and so was I.

I looked down at the lifeless man who I was soon to be joining in the afterlife with his chin still up towards the sky, when I happened to notice something that had not been there before. A shadow on the ground, disappearing and reappearing. It would materialize at his knees on the opposite side of him that I was on, and then move in a half-moon pattern up towards his head and vanish. I watched the dancing shadow for a couple repetitions before realizing that this shadow was casted from above me. I quickly snapped my head upwards and must have caught the mustache man off guard, because he too, whipped his head upwards, pistol still pointed at me.

“Hm…,” he reacted, as if we were having a conversation as old friends, dismantling the awkward silence as we ran out of things to say to each other.

“Buzzards,” I replied. Strangely, I had responded in the same fashion. It was like we had forgotten that I witnessed him kill someone and now would die because of it.

Three of the largest buzzards I had ever seen were circling directly above us, dancing in and out of sight above the rooftop of the building next to us. It was unusual to see buzzards congregating in the city. There were plenty of other birds in every direction you turned your head, but buzzards were rare to come across, alongside any scavenger-type bird. They were simply good at not being seen.

All three birds had a wingspan so wide that a full-grown human could be completely engulfed by their embrace, and as high up as they were, it looked like they would stand about 4 feet tall from head to toe if on the ground. They were remarkably large for their species, which in my mind meant that they were excellent at staying out of the way of harm and had been doing so for a long time. One of the creatures had streaks of red against his black feathered stomach, like veins of yellow highlighter against white manuscript. They appeared to be large scars where he had been wounded at one point, and from what I could tell by the pattern of the scars, he was probably attacked by another animal, a stray dog, perhaps. All I know is that he is still alive and must have fought his attacker off.

I was puzzled by their arrival, at first, and then realized the grotesque truth. There is only one explanation as to why they would show themselves now at this very moment. I looked down at the corpse again with horror on my face. Could they already smell Nike man lying next to me?

My epiphany and the mustache man’s bewildered gaze was disrupted when the scarred one let out the loudest, shrill screech. It was loud enough to break the sound barrier, scaring both me and him, sending me down to the ground with my knees pulled to my chest and my face pressed against the pavement. In front of me, I heard an explosion exactly like the one that erupted earlier, and then a metallic impact behind me, followed by what sounded like a person falling to the blood-stained asphalt. I was certain that I should have been feeling pain from a bullet out of the mustache man’s pistol since I had heard it go off. I remained still waiting for it to set in so I could scream in agony, but after several minutes and the ringing in my ears had passed, I felt no pain.

I lifted my head slightly, looking around me, seeing none of my blood abstractly splattered across the ground. But as I slowly rose and looked in front of me, expecting to see the emotionless, disgruntled face of the man responsible for all of this, he was no longer there. Instead, he was sprawled out onto the concrete, with his head facing up to the sky, and a bullet hole in his forehead. I turned around remembering the sound I had heard behind me. There was now a dent in the middle of the metal dumpster that I had hidden behind earlier, and where the frightened discharge of the mustache man’s Glock had ricocheted. Putting the events together, I looked up towards the sky to find the birds were no longer there, deeply grateful that today, the birds were not at the park in the middle of the city.