Whispers

Whisperers

Lucius sat sprawled on his reading chair in tattered jeans andnothing else. He hiked up a leg on its rounded armrest then rested his chin ona clenched fist. His sable hair fell past knotted eyebrows, messy and stilldamp from the recent shower he’d taken to wash away the filth he believed clungto his skin after every job—even if the last one had been two days ago. A girlwho had been repeatedly molested by her mother. Convincing her had been child’splay the moment the thought of taking her life had entered her mind.

It wasn’t her death but the depravityshe’d had to live through that continued to disturb Lucius. Sometimes the fileshe received for a job were a little too thorough. He didn’t need to know whather mother had used long-necked beer bottles for after she had finishedemptying them down her daughter’s throat. What some humans did to their ownflesh and blood disgusted him to his very core. Why vermin like her mother wasallowed to live out their lives was beyond him.

He stared into the large maw of afireplace, willing the images of s****l deviating to fade away. The undulationof red, orange, and white tongues of flame helped clear his mind off the noiseand chatter. He’d been writing reports all day, and upon pressing send,exhaustion invaded every pore of his body. But what haunted him most were thevoices of people long gone. They kept him from completely surrendering to therelaxation the fire usually brought. Even the smell of oak from the burningwood failed to sooth him.

Lately, the voices grew louder, moreincessant. He refused to listen to them, to give them the time of day, butignoring them seemed to make them noisier. It was like he had a picket lineinside his head that refused to disperse. Were the voices in his head proof ofhis pending break from sanity? Could his kind even go insane?

He’d read nothing in the histories thatcould corroborate any forms of insanity plaguing those like him. But based onexperience, just because it wasn’t in the books, it didn’t mean it wasn’tpossible. Maybe he would be the first. The one to claim distinction over losinghis mind. What did they do to unhinged whisperers?

The fingers of his free hand tapped abeat on his thigh as he let his gaze scan the tall shelves that made up amajority of the walls in his master’s suit. His collection of history,mythology, and biographies sang to him, urging him to curl his long, elegantfingers over their thick spines and pull them out of their confines likeconcubines in a harem. He had memorized every title, arranged by genre and inalphabetical order by author’s last name. He’d spent years collecting the heavytomes. No matter where he went, they went with him. They’d been his refuge ondays when the job sapped his energy. When things got a little harder to bear.

That night he ignored their call—nolonger interested in leafing through their pages. Tales of the underworld;accounts of countless deaths; memories of lives gone by couldn’t hold his attentionany longer. They bored him to death. The pun wasn’t even funny anymore.

The snap, pop, and crackle of burningwood broke through the white noise between his ears, pulling him back to thepresent. The dark furnishings hugged him, bringing a measure of comfort andpeace. He glanced away from the shelves and settled his gaze on the crystalvase filled with white roses on the mantel. It sat just below a painting byKratzenstein of Orpheus grabbing for Eurydice just as she was pulled back intothe underworld. The look of disappointment on Eurydice’s face played out as aperfect counterpoint to Orpheus’ dismay at not having the fortitude to maintainfacing forward until they reached the outside world.

Lucius snapped his fingers and the roseswilted. Their dried leaves and desiccated petals matched the emotion thepainting portrayed. And deep down, they mirrored the rot slowly growing withinhim, eating him alive from the inside out.

When had been the last time he’d taken inresidual energy? Lucius closed his eyes and scanned through his personalsupply. He felt the energy zinging through his veins like heated blood.Satisfied that he had enough to last him for a couple more jobs, he reopenedhis eyes and continued his seemingly useless contemplation of the fireplace.

He reached out toward the flames,watching shadows creep along his fingers. He wondered what it would feel liketo burn. Sticking his hand into the fire wouldn’t produce any results. Nothingbut his peers could harm him, and not that they had any reason to. Jealousy andanimosity didn’t run within the Brotherhood of Suicide Whisperers.

Sometimes, just to break the monotony, hewished someone would attack him. But no one had the spine. They all liked himtoo much. No matter how aloof he tried to be, they still sought out his companylike he was the most charming whisperer in their organization.

Lucius shook his head at their absurdity.

Then he lowered his eyelids and waited. Aprickle ran across his bare arms and torso. In his periphery an amorphousfigure manifested itself. First as smoke. Then as a watermark image.

His solitude vanished with every secondit took for his caretaker to take shape. Shamus arriving after a long day meantonly one thing: another job. The voices urged Lucius to run away. To snap hisfingers and leave. He could certainly do that, but why would he? What benefitwould come from running away from his responsibilities?

The worst consequence: He’d taint hisreputation. Dee wouldn’t mind. At least until the jobs piled up. Lucius lethimself wonder how long it would take before his boss sent someone after him.An infinitesimal smile cracked his brooding exterior. He immediately buried itin a frown.

He’d worked too damn hard to succumb to afew voices in his head.

“Master?”

Lucius studied the flickering flames amoment longer before he dropped his hand and faced the lanky, pale apparitionin a tux with slick-backed white hair and barely a wrinkle on its face. Hefloated legless before him.

“What is it, Shamus?”

“Forgive the presumption, but I worry foryou, sir,” he said.

“And why is that?”

Shamus gestured to indicate the room andits dark furnishings, which turned his hand to smoke. “This state of ennui hasgot to end. At least let me open the curtains. Maybe even air out the room.”

“Ennui?” Lucius’ eyebrows moved up afraction. “Stop being so melodramatic.”

“You have been spending more and moretime in your room, sir.”

“As you can see, I’ve just showered.”

“You have been ignoring the invitationsof your colleagues,” Shamus continued. “When was the last time you had attendeda function?”

“Just because I haven’t RSVP-ed toJanika’s party doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the invitation.”

“And you insist on neglecting yourduties.”

Seeing no use in arguing, Lucius plantedboth feet on the carpeted floor and leaned forward until his elbows reached hisknees, tenting his fingers before him. He narrowed his eyes at Shamus.

“I appreciate the concern,” he said.“But, I would appreciate it more if you kept out of my business.”

“Sir—”

Lucius made a fist and Shamus’ mouthdisappeared. The caretaker’s eyes bulged.

Master and servant stared at one another.Both unmoving. Both silent. One against his will. The other intentionally.

Time ticked by. No matter how long itwould take, seconds meant nothing to Lucius. He’d learned patience in his firstcentury of life, and that had been long ago. The test of will ended with hisservant bowing in shame.

“I’m glad you understand.” Luciusunclenched his fist and Shamus’ lips returned.

“Your latest assignment has arrived,sir.”

“This early in the day?”

“I believe so.”

Lucius stood up and cracked his knuckles.“Very well. Fetch my shirt.”

***

Lucius stood silently in the corner of abedroom filled with baseball paraphernalia. He stared at the room’s occupantwho’d been woken up by the blaring of a baseball mitt digital clock. He snappedhis fingers and a clipboard thick with notes appeared in his hand. He flippedthe front page.

Tommy Humphrey,sixteen-years-old, blonde, blue eyes, had nut allergies. He had Atlanta Braves posters all over his walls. A bat signed byDale Murphy—given to him by his father for his tenth birthday—lay on a stand onthe top shelf of his bookcase. And his most prized possession—a baseball signedby Phil Niekro—sat on his bedside table next to his tomahawk lamp. He’d spentthree years’ worth of birthday and Christmas money bidding on it on EBay.

Tommy tapped thetop of the mitt and the annoying beeping stopped, much to Lucius’ relief. Hisears may never get damaged by mere mortal sounds, but it didn’t mean he wasimmune to alarm clock noises. He hated the animal wake-up calls the most.Roosters. Cows. Ducks. Hated them all.

The file disappeared when he crossed hisarms. He watched the boy rub his face awake, the strain evident in his gauntappearance.

Then Tommy staredout his open window and sighed. The sun looked too bright from the way hefrowned at it like he wished for cloudy, dark skies instead of sapphire blue.His shoulders slumped when he said, “I don’t want to go to school today.”

Despite his words,Tommy heaved himself out of bed and stumbled his way to the bathroom, his legsstill half asleep. Lucius followed and reached Tommy the second the boy flickedup a wall switch. Why he needed the light on baffled Lucius. The morning sunshining through his bathroom window provided enough illumination.

The harsh florescent on the medicinecabinet lifted a healing shiner on Tommy’s left eye. Lucius wasn’t surprised.According to his file, Tommy had been the target of schoolyard bullying sincethe seventh grade. He’d been punched, kicked, teased, shoved into lockers,given swirlies, and every other unimaginative bullying tactic known to humans.Lucius had seen it all. It became like a game to him over time to guess whichbullying combinations he’d get in any given file. And apparently, Tommy hadexperienced them all. Even the cyber kind. Lucius almost felt sorry for him.

When Lucius startedas a whisperer, he specifically asked for the high school beat. He figured itwould be the easiest due to all the hormonal teens running around trying tofigure out who they were and what they wanted to do in life. It took Luciusbarely a year to realize he was good at his job. In fact, he killed—pun notintended—and the higher ups took notice.

The number of souls he’d brought in wasenough to name him employee of the month if they did that sort of thing.Unfortunately, being good at his job only meant tougher assignments. He’d beensent to whisper to kids who hadn’t even fit the profile. Not bullied. Notdepressed in any way. Just regular kids who lived out their regular lives. Someof them were even happy.

Lucius didn’t question these assignments.He’d carried them out like the good little whisperer that he was withoutemotion or attachment to the life he knew would end at his suggestion.Thankfully, the unorthodox cases came few and far between as years passed. But,eventually, the whispering took its toll. No one had told him.

He'd lost a taste for the job. It got tooeasy. Like that morning, with Tommy, the classic Bullied Kid in School or BKS.He fit the profile perfectly like he'd been taken from a mold. It wasn’t even achallenge.

Tommy washed his facewith cold water and winced as he dabbed a towel over his bruise. Lucius stoodbehind him, unseen. Except for the occasional oddly powerful psychic,whisperers remained invisible to the naked eye. They moved about in societyunnoticed, and Lucius preferred it that way. Less contact made his jobuncomplicated. He went in, he whispered, he watched, gathered the souls, and hewent home to find a new stack of files for him to start all over again. AndTommy was just the latest assignment. Nothing more, and certainly, nothingless.

Lucius thought ofblowing the whole thing off and teleporting off to a beach somewhere. Tahitiwas beautiful this time of year. The voices in his head liked that. In fact,they cheered since he actually took a moment to consider the option.

He shrugged as Tommy unbuttoned hisbaseball-printed pajama top, revealing a very thin frame peppered by acollection of bruises. Some fresh. Others were healing like his black eye. IfLucius didn’t accomplish this assignment, it would be given to someone else andhe’d lose his ranking. Either way, Tommy would succumb. And Lucius would ratherhave it by his hand than anyone else’s. The case was given to him for a reason,and he fully intended to see it through.

Did he really careabout his rank?

He thought about it for a moment whileTommy’s pajama bottoms joined its matching counterpart in the hamper. Morebruises on his legs. Did his parents even know the boy was being bullied?

Lucius shook his head. Of course, theydidn't. Most cases of bullying went unnoticed by the parents, and the childrenhardly snitched for fear of worsening their already deplorable situation. Whowould believe them anyway?

Most of the bullies were the poplar onesin school who usually had the ear of the teachers and close to flawlessreputations. Who would be brave enough to go against the head cheerleader orthe class president or the captain of the football team? The years may change,but the stereotypes remained the same. For once, Lucius wished a geek wouldgrow a pair and bully the point guard.

To make matters worse, the bullying wasso covert nowadays. It was like someone made up the rule that if the adultsdidn’t see anything then they didn’t know anything. Lucius sometimes suspectedmost adults turned a blind eye to bullying, chalking it up to characterbuilding. They’d been bullied and they turned out fine, so why wouldn’t thenext generation? It was an endless cycle that continued to get worse, andnobody did anything about it.

Based on experience, Lucius had seenbullies get savvier with their torture. With the advent of technology, bullyinghad gone digital fast. The internet crawled with cyber bullies. At times, thebullies didn’t even need to know who they were bullying to spam someone’s virtualwall with hate-filled words, hurtful messages. Damn the consequences.

Lucius hated theinternet and anything connected to cyberbullying not because the act wasdeplorable, but because it was another reason why his job became so easy. Hemissed the days when it took a lot of coaxing to get someone to do what hewanted. Whispering then took days, even months to accomplish. Now, barelythirty minutes and it was done. A razor blade here. A bottle of pills there.Still the same methods, just too freaking effortless to accomplish. No one haddoubts anymore when he whispered. And based on what he’d read from Tommy’sfile, and from what he’d been observing since he’d materialized into the boy’sroom that morning, Lucius wouldn’t have a hard time with this one either. Itwasn’t the when anymore. It became the how.

After pulling onhis slacks and buttoning his shirt, Tommy faced the full-length mirror thathung on his closet door. He had his hands at his sides, opening and closing hisfists as if testing his grip.

Seeing hisopportunity, Lucius came closer and rested his hands on Tommy’s shoulders. Hesaw his reflection with Tommy. He could be the other boy’s age, he looked soyoung. His kind never aged. They chose a look they wanted to portray and stayedthat way until they grew tired of gazing at the same thing in the mirror dayafter day. Then they’d give themselves a makeover. Lucius was satisfied withthe combination of features he’d chosen for himself. Tommy didn’t notice. Hisgaze locked on to his own face. Lucius leaned in until his lips were besideTommy’s right ear.

It was time.

In a soft, alluringvoice, he whispered, “You’re tired. You haven’t been sleeping well. Life’s beena total b***h to you and you can’t take it anymore. You wake up, go to school,get hurt, go home, go to sleep, and press repeat. You think to yourself: howmuch suffering can one person take?”

Hearing Lucius, butnot reacting to the strangeness of a bodiless voice speaking to him, Tommynodded.

“You don’t evenwant to go to school anymore,” Lucius continued. “For years, you had to enduretheir taunts and abuse. They point. They laugh. They whisper to one anotherabout you. Baseball retard, they would say. Virgin boy.”

“Stumpy Humphrey,” Tommy added.

“That’s right. Nick started calling youthat when you finally mustered the courage to shower with the guys after gymclass. Worst day of your life. He pushed you up against the tiled wall whileJeffry whipped you with a towel. You couldn’t sit properly for a week afterthat. And yet, years later, they still haven’t thought up a better insult foryou.”

“They’re idiots that’s why.”

Even if Tommy couldn’t see him, Luciusstill nodded, keeping his eyes on the other boy’s face. The hook was in.

“Yes,” he said. “A bunch of idiots whoknow nothing about you. But still, they push you into lockers; they beat youfor no reason. Why is that you think? Why are they determined to make your lifemiserable? What did you ever do to them?”

Tommy grimaced. “Because I’m weak.Because they’re bigger than me. And more popular than me.”

With each word that came out of hismouth, he got redder and redder. His nostrils flared and his knuckled turnedwhite. His fists shook.

“Sucks to be you, Tommy. Remember thattime you asked Sheila Cummings to the Spring Formal and she laughed in yourface?”

"She spits on my new sneakers,"Tommy replied through gritted teeth. His breathing had gotten significantlyfaster, heavier.

“You just walked away without doinganything about it. Why is that?” Lucius tilted his head slightly. “Why do youlet them torture you every living day of your life?”

“I can’t stand up to them. I’m just oneperson.”

“Oh, but you can. You certainly can.”

Lucius stared at Tommy, stone-faced. Thiswas usually the time he’d be grinning from ear to ear. The opening he wantedhad come. The grand finale. The climax. And all he had to do was plant thesuggestion and it would be over. Checkmate. The end. Job done. That was then.Now a part of him loathed what came next.

He wasn’t sure when that part of himstarted getting bigger and louder. It was as if he had his own invisiblewhisperer telling him things. Nasty things about himself. Recounting everylittle decision he’d made regarding an assignment, which led to the finaloutcome. The voices caused guilt and remorse to boil in his stomach. He couldbarely hear himself think anymore because of them. He closed his eyes andbreathed in deep, mentally pushing away thoughts of leaving Tommy. He had a jobto do, and he wouldn’t be the best at what he did if he bailed because stupidvoices told him to. What else was there in his life but his job?

Thankfully, Tommy’s question allowed himto focus. “How?”

And there it was. One word. Said eagerly.With a hint of anticipation and excitement, as if he was opening giftsChristmas morning instead of standing in front of a mirror listening to a voiceinside his head. One syllable opened Tommy up enough for Lucius to suggestanything and the other boy would comply.

Lucius opened his eyes and met Tommy’sdetermined stare. The whispering had barely begun and already Tommy had movedfrom self-pity to hate to determination to a sense of purpose.

The power of his words brought Tommy tothe place he needed to be to perform what Lucius had in mind. Why settle forone soul when Tommy could bring others with him? Maybe even rid a school of acouple of bullies? He smiled then.

“It’s very easy, Tommy.” Lucius tightenedhis grip on the boy’s shoulders. “You know that gun your father keeps in hiscloset?”