Harm Be Done

The room is unfamiliar and I don’t know how I got here.  The wraiths we become as our skin sheds start to reflect the cracks in the mirror, and the shadows bleed into the streets.

My eyes gradually began to acclimate to the dim and eerie bulbs in the deserted hall of mirrors. The red fissures in my eyes matched the scarlet stains on the glass as I  pursued an uncanny ghoul across their haunting ground. A chilling fog had settled inside this long-abandoned structure. Every step I took reverberated through the cold, lifeless air, sending shivers, in an unforgiving environment that once celebrated amusement.

The ghostly reflections in the multitude of mirrors served to heighten the echos in the pit of my stomach. The distorted images stared back at me, challenging me to discern reality from illusion. Every missing person flyer turned into a candlelight vigil. The pretty faces on Flyers at least got a vigil anyway.

The high tide memories flooded back to me when I closed my eyes.

The intrusive thoughts and sleepless nights were cured (if you can call it that) when I put on the mask.  It became abundantly clear that I was no longer the hunter under the concrete wilderness The glimmers of light that managed to penetrate the room's dark corners were nothing more than sirens—the calm before an impending crash. 

My heart reached for my rib cage, almost as if it could sense the danger lying in wait behind each shattered reflection. The steam from the protection suit pushed against the cold glass like the high tide outside the Bay shores of Marin County.

Was I merely chasing ghosts or if there truly was a monster waiting at its center? The relentless screams of my fears seemed deafening in comparison to the silence which enveloped me.

The lights flickered, their rhythm syncing with my senses as particles of ash and lead-coated copper ignited against the reflective surfaces. 

The crimson shell casing spun out, bouncing across the cracked tile, its metallic clink the only sound in the silence that followed. It skittered to a stop near the broken shards of what used to be a two-way mirror, glinting in the low light like a drop of fresh blood. Black boots—thick, military-grade, made for kicking down doors or stomping out lives—crunched over the glass, grinding the pieces underfoot as they moved with a steady, unrelenting force.

The air was thick with gunpowder and something worse, a force so sour.  The metallic taste of fear clung to the back of your throat when you knew it was already too late.

The explosion reverberated through the fibers of my being and sent a malicious wave crashing into my eardrums. Stepping forth from the wreckage was a figure clad in olive green and brown camouflage—dozens of sinister red letters painted on their protective gear. Unidentifiable markings were hidden behind noise-canceling headphones and dark lens flares.

My frame prickled with fear as I realized that the electric darts hidden in my wrists would be useless against such heavily armored attire; there was no exposed flesh for them to penetrate.

Desperation coursed through me as I dropped a silvery orb in front of them. With their finger hovering outside the trigger guard, an unsettling pause ensued—I should have been mere moments away from requiring a closed casket. The split-second they hesitated was enough for the orb to unleash a powerful shockwave, disorienting them while providing me with an unexpected lifeline.

Delaying an evening stay on a medical slab depended on evading the lethal intentions of the hunt. This person had a mother too, and if I could get them help, even inside a cell they would see another birthday with a loved one.

Everyone matters to someone. 

My hands reached for the canister as an aerial wave of foam blinded the shooter. Pain compliance was unreliable so I’d have to step it up a notch. The cocktail of Black Belt bruises and back alley lessons caught the shooter as I popped off enough hand-fighting to trap the gun and smash it through another panel of glass. The silver snowflakes graced the body perfectly. 

The shotgun became a security blanket in my hands. A rescue line between this life and the next. I scanned the scene for the assailant to make a move. Any twitch of the finger to pull the trigger .self-defense pure and simple. But it wasn’t simple, an old mentor who taught me the benefits of a mean left hook explained when the bodies pile up, your mind becomes a haunted house.

I allowed a second capsule of goo to engulf the ejection port along with the barrel of the shotgun.

My hands raced to zip-tie the shooter. I checked for knives and backup pieces As the chemicals wore off I could make out the letters on the flak jacket. L. It was covered in L’s. My fingers traced the outlet, of the symbols.

 “Lechery or Lust?” A voice echoed through the rehabilitated speakers inside the fun house.

“Oh my, my.” The jagged laughter ripped through the static-filled microphones, the sound crackling like dry twigs under a heavy boot. 

The shoddy repairs on the recording equipment were no match for the raw emotion. I peeled away the headphones and lifted the visor. Before me stood a woman teetering on the edge of what society had unfairly labeled her 'prime'.

Her hair was a battlefield where time and vanity clashed. Silver strands, proud markers of experience and wisdom, were interspersed with brunette highlights, stubborn remnants of an artificial youth. The chemicals waged a relentless war against the inevitable march of time. The world's cruel standards of beauty were at play here, a harsh reality I wished we could rewrite.

"She clinched second place in the clay targets competition," he said, his voice oozing satisfaction. "I would have loved to set up your surprise in the shooting gallery, but it seemed a bit too on the nose." He relished the sound of his own voice, a symptom of the vanity that was sixth on the list of seven deadly sins. I wasn't raised in the Catholic faith, but I knew enough to recognize his arrogance.

I needed to buy time—just enough to pick up a signal strong enough to call in a couple of squad cars. No heroes here, just a deadline ticking down like a bomb in the back of my skull. I wasn’t exactly in love with the idea of relying on the Bay Area cops. These guys? They were a joke wrapped in a uniform.

Always having their service weapons end up on the open air markets or worse—getting caught in Late-night rendezvous with barely legal call girls, tips they’d gladly sell for a few bucks, and a whole lot of overtime wrapped up in a pension plan. Justice? It didn’t show up on their radar.

They were more interested in padding the hours, getting their cuts, and punching out at the end of the shift. The only unions in Uncle Sam's wasteland were Police Unions. But here I am rambling as Lady Death is looking to take me on a date.

"She thought she could conceal her affair with her student, using the information superhighway of all things. It only made things easier for us," he continued, oblivious to my internal struggle. I'd heard tales of educators like this, eliciting inappropriate comments from men who wished they'd had such teachers in their youth. The reality, however, was far from a fantasy.

"I offered her an exit, a chance to escape the mess if she stopped being a second string and got on to the field," he concluded, a burnt layer under the sweet cake undertone to his words. Each word, each second was a tiny calling card.

The thought of her face splashed across the digital 'wall of shame' in the search bar was enough to push her into cold-blooded action.

With each step I took, the eerie symphony of shattered glass crunching beneath my boots began to fade. The labyrinth, once familiar, seemed endless. I remembered the map, etched in my mind since childhood. It was the reason we ceased our explorations, the reason we stopped playing in this maze of mirrors. But now, my hands were desperate, searching for any indication of a way out—a hidden button, a secret lever, anything.

The lights flickered, casting a disorienting dance of shadows around me. My heart pounded against my ribs as the darkness welcomed me. Then, as suddenly as it had engulfed me, it retreated. A mirror slid away, revealing a path I hadn't seen before. A dart sprang from my wrist, its blue hue reflecting off the cold, polished mirrors as it led the way down the hidden corridor.

This was uncharted territory, an addition to the original blueprint of this maze. Organized asocial offenders didn’t just keep their rooms clean they applied that same need to overcome chaos in their minds.

In the old days, people kept their secrets locked away, hiding their dirty laundry from prying eyes. But now, in this digital age, our lives are open books, our secrets splashed across screens for the world to see. We’re all lost in this labyrinth, it is our own creation. It’s a chilling thought, one that sends a shiver down my spine as I continue down the uncharted path, into the heart of the maze, and into the unknown.

A disorganized wave of rage launched themselves from the halls of horror. 

“You think you can take everything from me?!” he pushed back hot tears. 

Red devils were etched onto his protective suit. The man broke rank and file, he couldn’t hold back the inferno inside. I didn’t need a doctorate to understand the man's sin, wrath. The flak jacket took the first hit from the crowbar in the man's hands. Kenpo blocks intercepted the second blow as he kicked the legs from out under him. 

“I see you found a second member of our enclave.” The roaring in my ear drowned out the psychobabble as I wrestled for control of the crowbar. He gave up the little game of tug of war and reached for a sidepiece.

Two shots rang out from an unsteady trigger finger. Amateurs were dangerous they had to make rationalizations and work themselves up to it before the hammer hit the firing pin. They hit the wrong areas which meant you felt everything on the way down.

The flash registered before the impact. A sensation is similar to the crack of a bat that was interrupted before it could get the right amount of a wind-up.

The second off-gold bullet spiraled like a Hail Mary pass in the fourth quarter. I fought through the hot friction between my ribs. The voice returned, this time there was a slower pace, almost a poetic justice to the tone in his throat. My forearms followed my fists as I used my limbs to punish and pummel the shooter.

“The man you are trying to keep on this plane of existence, you might think twice if you've seen what I have.”  He anonymously received evidence of his wife’s electronic affair. I stepped into the end result of the unraveling of marital bliss.

They really need to put a disclaimer under til death do us part. I placed the cuffs on them. We are going to have a long pow-wow after this is all over, I will be sending them a bill. The sick irony is they needed this. It probably saved their marriage. 

The masks they wore, were stripped down. I kept the weapons out of reach as the last mirror opened. Dots and bulbs of green, blue, and red hue scattered across my face, casting an eerie glow. The equipment room hummed inside my brain, a low, almost imperceptible drone that seemed to vibrate through my skull.

I stepped in cautiously, the air heavy with dust and disuse.

My eyes adjusted to the dim light, and I saw it standing there—a department store doll dressed in religious iconography. Altar boy robes hung off its plastic shoulders, the white fabric pristine against the mannequin's lifeless form.

This guy really hit it on the nose; show, not tell, was lost on him. The setup was almost too obvious, too theatrical, like a scene out of a twisted play.

As I moved closer, the flickering bulb overhead cast long, shifting shadows. The mannequin's eyes seemed to follow me, glassy and unblinking, reflecting the colored lights that danced around the room. A chill ran down my spine, the temperature dropping as if the very air had turned against me.

Around the base of the mannequin, candles were arranged in a semicircle, their wax melted and pooled as if they'd been lit and extinguished repeatedly. A rosary hung around its neck, the beads catching the light and casting tiny, sinister reflections on the walls. The scarlet stole draped over its shoulders added a splash of color, a reminder of the villain's twisted sense of irony.

In the corner, a small wooden confessional booth stood, its door slightly ajar. The booth seemed to pulse with a life of its own, whispering secrets from across the information superhigh. I approached it warily, each step echoing in the confined space.

As I neared the booth, a hidden mechanism clicked, and a voice recording began to play, echoing through the room with a hollow, haunting tone:

"It has been many years since my last confession. I am no longer an innocent server at altar, but the keeper of whispers."

I allowed the words to pierce my ears. I filtered for tone, sorrow, or sadness. Maybe a smug exterior.

I grew up on the fringes of Pentecostal congregations. Sundays were marked by fevered prayers, echoing cries, and the sight of worshippers dropping to their knees at the foot of a weathered wooden cross. They would collapse to the ground as if struck by some unseen force, claimed by the Holy Spirit in a chaotic blend of ecstasy and desperation.

The sounds of their fervor filled the air, thick with the weight of their convictions.

But the cold metal ball, swinging on its chain, exuding grey, choking vapors—those were the telltale scents of the incense of mass.

My encounters with cathedrals were few, reserved only for the most solemn of occasions, for death had a way of dragging us all to the altar, no matter our creed. The smell of frankincense and myrrh clung to me, bitter on my tongue, as I crossed the threshold of a space foreign to my upbringing.

Here, in the vaulted chambers of stone and stained glass, death felt both distant and too close, as if the very walls whispered the final prayers of those long gone.

A mannequin greeted me at the entrance, adorned in the familiar trappings of a faith I did not claim: a rosary draped around its stiff neck, cards bearing the faded likenesses of dead saints pinned to its chest. I approached it warily, my heart thudding in my ears.

It echoed the patterns of Moses stumbling toward the burning bush, trembling at the sight of something both sacred and terrible. And then, the unthinkable—just as I neared, it moved. A flicker, the twitch of a hand. My breath caught in my throat. Idle hands. That’s what they were called. Holy men with idle hands. But the things they did weren’t idle.

I wanted to move—run. My legs wouldn’t work. The air felt thick and heavy with the smell of incense and something much darker, something rotten. The walls themselves seemed to pulse, almost like they were alive, in tune with every crime committed under this roof.

Every sin is ignored.

And in that moment, I knew. This wasn’t a house of God. This was a mausoleum. A shrine was built to keep things buried, things people didn’t want to face.

The camera panned, jittering slightly, as though the machine on the other end exhaled, weary. The voice from the speaker was calm, almost too human for the sterile environment it spoke from.

“I couldn’t bring myself to end his life. Or anyone’s. I let them make that choice themselves. And they’ll stain their hands red before they ever ask for absolution in the light.”

There was a pause, a soft hum of static. “I thank him for putting me on this journey.”

My fingers moved, trembling slightly, as I loosened the man’s bindings. The cloth unraveled slowly, almost as if the layers were holding him together, keeping some hidden wound intact.

I didn’t know if the wrappings were securing punctures or if they were all that was holding his guts in. His body felt frail, hanging by threads, both figuratively and literally.

The mirrored walls outside the room shimmered, reflecting an endless sea of me and him—his hollow, half-living form. Each reflection rippled with the low hum of the fluorescent lights, the air cold and sterile, yet somehow claustrophobic. My own reflection is barely recognizable, distorted. Something inside me wondered how much of myself I’d lost.

The voice crackled back to life through the speaker, “We all make our choices. We all recognize the reflection we deserve.”

My red cracked eyes locked at the camera in front of me.

The dot blinked, but no sound reached my ears even after the ringing stopped. I understood. He wasn’t looking for salvation. He was already condemned, trapped in a labyrinth of his own making.

I turned to leave, the mirrored walls distorting the path ahead, twisting my armor and my cowl until I couldn’t tell where the shattered form ended and the splintered glass began. 

In the end, we were all just reflections.