Retribution

I’ve made a life killing monsters. 

It started when I was a cop in Fort Worth, my hometown. I had fallen in love with a woman whose husband had been beating her. I found out about it when she came to work (she was a waitress at a diner I frequented) and she had a black eye. “What happened, hon?” I asked. She just looked at me and smiled. “Oh, I bumped into a door.” I had heard that excuse before. I knew the truth of what happened to her. I was a good cop. Tough, lenient when I had to be, and I could spot a victim a mile away. After a few more times of seeing her with bruises and black eyes, I couldn’t take it. I followed her home in my own car. I returned the next day after she left for work, kicked down the door, and shot her surprised husband. Turned in my badge the next day. Back then, I cared about breaking oaths. I returned to the diner where she smoked a cigarette in the alleyway behind it. She was crying. And I told her what I did. “You mean…Dean’s dead?” When I confirmed it, she bowed her head and I swore I saw her smile. I begged her to run away with me. “I won’t run away with you but if you take me home, I’ll forever be thankful to you.” I said I would. “Bitterroot valley, in Montana. Take me back there.”

And I did just that. Learned her name was Maeve and that her favorite band was Siouxsie and the Banshees. Every fact about herself that she told me made me fall in love with her even more. She was beautiful; Tanned skin, topaz-colored eyes, raven black hair, and round lips. She was Native and grew up on the Flathead Indian Reservation. She liked reading books, with her favorite writers being Toni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Fyodor Doestrevsky. She spoke her native tongue as well as Spanish and a little bit of French. Her father was a carpenter and her mother was a teacher and they were divorced. Her mother named her Maeve after Maeve Brennan. Her favorite color was blue and she loved to swim and hike.

Once we got to Bitterroot valley, I dropped her off at her mother’s house. She looked at me, her eyes big and round, and she leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered. I nodded, not knowing what to say, and watched her as she entered her mother’s home. 

Instead of returning to Texas, I stayed in Montana. It was beautiful there, and I felt a freedom being away from home. And whenever I heard a story about a child being abused or a woman being hit, I found the bastard and I struck him down. I was a cop, I knew how to cover my tracks. I made their deaths look like a suicide, A clever bullet to the temple or a rope around their neck. I don’t know how many men I killed. I didn’t see the point in keeping track. People assuming a stressful upcoming trial led to their death or the investigation into their missing wife was too much. Just like I could spot a victim, I could spot a monster, too. 

I did various jobs; janitor, bartender, landscaper, things like that. I kept my eye out for my next target. 

But killing monsters takes a toll on a person. Each victory, once a source of pride, becomes a haunting reminder of the lives lost and the darkness endured. The weight of every battle scars the soul, leaving behind a lingering dread that even the sharpest blade cannot cut through. The relentless pursuit of these beasts, while noble in intention, erodes the very humanity of the hunter. Their nights are plagued by restless dreams of grotesque figures and anguished screams, and their days are shadowed by a pervasive emptiness. The monsters may fall, but the cost is a heavy price paid in fragments of one's sanity and pieces of a heart that once beat with hope.

And what weighed heaviest on my soul was whether or not I was doing any good by ridding the world of these monsters. Each victory seemed hollow when I faced the truth that killing these creatures might not truly heal the wounds they had inflicted. Did my actions really alleviate the suffering of their victims, or was I simply replacing one form of darkness with another? The anguish of those I sought to protect lingered in my thoughts, making me question if my relentless pursuit of monsters did more than just push their pain into the shadows. Despite the bloodshed and the apparent triumphs, I was tormented by the fear that my efforts might be little more than a fleeting salve for a deeper, more insidious sorrow that no amount of killing could ever truly mend.

Then I slipped up. Forgot to put my gloves on when I went to visit a monster and my fingerprints were all over the crime scene. One minute I’m watching a baseball game and the next, the cops are knocking at my door and arresting me for murder. 

And as I sat across from my attorney in a cold, steel room in a prison, my whole life seemed to flash before my eyes. Every event that led up to this very moment in time. My mother’s death, my father’s angry hands, Maeve, and every man that I killed. 

My attorney pulled a file out from their briefcase. He huffed and sniffed. He was a big guy, my attorney. Round belly and short, stubby legs. “Alright, Mr. Sawyer,” he began. “You’ve been charged with first degree murder. Your victim was Colton Michaels-”

“I know the details,” I said. I’ve grown weary of people explaining to me why I was locked up. I knew the reason. 

“Okay. Well, Mr. Sawyer, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to argue your innocence-”

“They have my fingerprints.”

“We can say something like, oh I don’t know, you and Michaels were acquaintances.”

“My fingerprints were on the gun.”

“We could say that he showed it to you.”

I rolled my eyes. “It wasn’t his gun. It was mine. Serial number scratched off.”

“Well why’d you leave it behind?”

“Wouldn’t look like a suicide without a gun present.”

The attorney's gaze was sharp, but it felt as though it pierced through me with an unsettling emptiness. Behind those eyes, there was a void—an absence of insight or intelligence, as if his mind were entirely disengaged. It was infuriating to realize that, in a situation as critical as this, the state had assigned me such a lackluster defense. But what could I have possibly expected? That the state would give me their best and brightest? 

“Right,” he said slowly. “Well…you could always plead to a lesser charge. Make a deal with the prosecution. Or we could claim there was an argument and a gun was pulled, it was self defense. The guy had a history of assault. I bet we could make that stick.”

I rolled my eyes. This attorney was going to get me nowhere. 

After I met with him, and was being escorted back to my cell, we passed the chapel. The priest was inside. “Wait,” I said to the guard. “I want to talk to him.”

The guard mumbled something I barely registered as I pushed open the door and stepped into the chapel. Though it was just another room within the prison's cold, austere walls, it was set apart by its rows of pews and a solitary cross hanging solemnly on the wall. The atmosphere, while still permeated by the same grim reality of incarceration, carried a quiet solemnity that contrasted sharply with the surrounding harshness. The Priest turned and saw me. He gave me a friendly smile. “Well, hello there,” he said as he stood, Bible in hand. “What’s your name?”

“Wyatt,” I said quietly. I felt odd being in a chapel. My relationship with religion was strenuous at best. My father was a man of faith and dragged me to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday evening. I grew to hate religion due to the hypocrisy I witnessed with my father. 

“Hello, Wyatt. What can I help you with?” He set the Bible down on the pew and put his hands in his pockets. He was a kindly looking old man. White hair and blue eyes, wrinkled skin. He looked like a grandfather. 

I looked back at the guard. The Priest took note and shooed him away. He motioned for me to sit in a pew and I did, and he sat in the one in front of me. “Do you know why I'm here?” I asked. 

He nodded. “Only because I saw your story on the news.”

“What do you think of what I did?”

“It’s not my place to pass judgment.”

“Okay well what does God think?”

The Priest tilted his head. “God…Well, he says a lot about murder and revenge in the Bible. ‘Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay.’ That’s from Romans.”

“What does it mean?”

“This passage is a demand against one seeking personal revenge when they are wronged. It’s supposed to encourage believers in trusting God with justice and the time of justice. Revenge and judgment is ultimately God’s realm and it is He who will address the wrongdoing on His own terms. It urges people to let go of their desire for retribution and rely on God’s divine justice.”

“So what I did…Was it wrong?”

“Samson took revenge. King Jehu took revenge. In the Book of Esther, Queen Esther and her cousin Mordecai seek justice against Haman, who had plotted to annihilate the Jewish people. And, of course, while the act is more about justice and protection rather than personal revenge, it involves orchestrating the downfall of Haman and his sons, leading to their execution, ultimately. I would say it’s Esther’s case that connects more closely to yours. Revenge on the behalf of another, an act based upon the construct of protecting somebody.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

The Priest shifted in his seat. “Murder is a sin, yes. It’s a violation of the Ten Commandments. The Bible speaks extensively about murder being a sin. And it speaks extensively that revenge is up to God, not man.”

“Am I going to Hell?”

The Priest smiled softly. “Well, that depends on what you do with the rest of your life, son.”

“And if I get stuck in here, what could I possibly do to save myself?” I scoffed. I found myself torn between skepticism and curiosity about his words. Religion had long been something I dismissed, a realm I had consciously avoided. Whether the Bible held any truth was a question I had never seriously entertained. Yet now, in the midst of my turmoil, I felt a strong urge to hear what a man of God had to say about my actions and my choices. And what will happen to me now that I’ve done it. 

“You could atone for your sins. Pay your debt to society. Commit yourself to Jesus and His teachings.”

“And if I do all that, I’ll get into Heaven?”

“That’s up to God.”

I pondered what he was saying. And I grappled with why, at this moment, I was suddenly concerned with the consequences of my actions. Throughout, I had always believed my decisions were justified, that I was acting to protect the innocent, and I still stand by that conviction. Yet now, I couldn’t shake the question: Would God share my perspective? Would divine judgment align with my own sense of righteousness?

I stood up, nodding in thanks, and left the old man in the chapel. And I walked back to my cell. And all night, I laid awake, wondering if my soul-if I was to have one-could be saved.