![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Perfect World Fallacy - - Chapter 60
Chapter 60
No End to Evil
Max continued to recount every thing that had happened to him since their last outing, all the way up until his retirement.
Then came bedtime for the young one and he took his leave of her.
She sat in the living room area, desolate.
As bad as it all was, this waiting made it even worse. Action could make it, at least for the moment, go away.
If she did what she was going to do, then she would go to do something else hideous. How much worse could it be than this.
Wait a minute.
“That child is not my friend,” She thought very loud, “The ground rules of this thing said I was to kill only friends.”
The laughter made her double up in pain. It was like needles stabbing through her eyeballs and ears over and over.
She collapsed on the couch.
After a moment or week of agony it stopped.
Max was walking down the short stairway, saying “No, no, you promised to go to sleep,” up at the room behind him.
“What do you think the death of that child will do to him?” the evil chorus echoed in her head. “This is worse than killing.”
“But, I . . .” She began.
“This will kill his soul,” they went on, “A beloved, trusted comrade destroying that thing that is the most precious thing in his world.”
The man had stopped on the middle step, continuing his debate, and then turned to her saying, “I’ll be back. I’m not the negotiator that once I was.”
When he had gone she took out her gun, checked the cartridges, and put it back.
“You will not do what you are thinking,” they warned her, “If you kill him first you will negate your action and will have failed to save your world. You must perform the actions as we have prescribed.”
“Damn,” escaped her lips before she could stop it.
Max was singing something in Trish’s room, with the glorious sound of a child answering.
She got up slowly and walked deliberately toward the staircase. Each step was a battle.
When she stepped on the first step, she listened to the momentary silence, hoping that it hadn’t ended.
When the second chorus began she withdrew her sidearm and mounted the steps.
She had watched as Max had taken the child into the second door and knew where she would have to go. That didn’t make the journey any easier to be part of, nor easier to do.
Three steps further and she came upon the open door.
Shakespeare said something like, “If t’were done, best it were done quickly.”
She leapt in the door, greeted by faces that had no time to register their surprise.
The two shots came quick and true.
Neither of the targets knew it was coming, nor that the other had died.
There was no laughter in her head.
She doubted that she would ever laugh again herself.
© 2009 by C. Wayne Owens