Crown of Vengeance Read online

  Mershad began walking with his eyes down, going to classes very early, and staying a few minutes afterwards to let the room empty out. He did not linger anywhere in public longer than he had to. He found himself spending most of his time either at the campus mosque, within the solemn refuge of his dorm room, or at the job that he held in the student cafeteria, washing dishes and doing some after hours custodial work.

  He could not focus on his studies, his mind racing with a multitude of thoughts. His prayers had suffered in earnestness, as he had trouble reconciling how God could allow the traumatic, devastating attacks to fall so mercilessly upon the millions of innocents trapped within Iraq.

  Sapped in mind, sapped in body, and sapped in spirit, Mershad had quickly lost the passionate and curious approach that he had always taken to life. His only relief was that his parents were safe, though their agonies were great as they had not been able to contact any of their relatives by phone or other means. Communications had been among the very first things taken out by the attacking coalition forces.

  With the fate of the majority of his family shrouded in the ominous unknown, he and his parents had been given an arduous and sorrowful path to endure.

  A few times, he had allowed himself to consider just quitting the university and moving back home. It seemed logical at times to weather the storm by just staying out of it. Each time, he had checked himself from giving in to the tempting urge. He knew that he had to continue forward and live his life, or the forces of ignorance would truly prevail.

  In some ways, he found that his will to continue was in itself a shouted defiance at the organization and attitude of the world at large. While it gave him scant relief, it did harden his resolve just enough to keep the world from becoming overwhelming.

  ERIN

  The alarm clock continued to buzz annoyingly, while still failing to arouse Erin from the slumber that she had become so well accustomed to in recent years.

  Over the years, Erin had developed a personal art form whenever it came to matters of comfort and ease. At the present moment, she had attained a virtual mastery of that art.

  A few classes at the local community college and a part time job were now her only true responsibilities. Through the use of a shrewd form of diplomatic maneuvering, which required congeniality at times, and a display of hot temper at others, she had managed to achieve a state of existence where she received little resistance from family or friends for her choice of lifestyle.

  Her routine held a few principal elements.

  After the obligatory class or two, she headed to her restaurant job that lasted well into the evening. Following her shift, she patronized one of the local nightclubs or coffee shops.

  Her network of haunts was largely nocturnal, such that she usually trudged back home just a few short hours before dawn.

  Rolling over in bed, Erin reached across and smacked the alarm clock. She succeeded in silencing the irritating tone, her blow coming close to crippling the clock itself. Her mind caught somewhere in the nebulous area between the conscious and the subconscious, her thoughts slowly started to orient upon the new day.

  The only class that had been scheduled for the day had already ended an hour ago. There was no test or papers due, and she had gotten home very late the previous evening, so she felt little guilt at having set the day’s alarm well past the end of her scheduled class.

  There was no work shift to worry about either, as it was her cherished day off from the drudgery of restaurant work.

  She was aware that her friends Uli and Razor were going to have a little gathering later that evening at their apartment. Her closest friend, Lynn, had informed her of the fact the previous day.

  There was still plenty of time left to go online and piddle around with a few friends within her electronic world, perhaps enjoy a new movie through the video on demand service, or watch some satellite television.

  She knew that she possessed a luxurious buffer of time before she had to leave for Uli’s apartment. With a satisfied purr, she rolled back over on the bed and let the subconscious win out for a little while longer.

  LOGAN

  Logan’s ample black locks were tossed randomly about in the gusts of unseasonably chilly winds that swept down upon him as he continued walking down the street.

  The night would fall soon enough, and for most persons that would be a signal for rest or for recreation.

  For Logan, day, night, and hour were of little overall significance.

  In fact, he had already felt a small pang of anxiety at having taken the long, late-afternoon walk through the old neighborhood by the university campus.

  His early morning to late afternoon period had been entirely devoured by programming endeavors, as he worked feverishly on his latest digital magic. Piling up caffeinated beverages and hours alike, Logan finally found himself at the edge of exhaustion. His eyes were about to cross from constantly being chained to his monitors, poring over every element of code and pixel.

  The three separate projects that he was currently laboring on were still not remotely close to the finish line. A consummate perfectionist, Logan had actually raised the ire of some clients by incurring a few short delays to bring projects in at a level that exceeded their original requests.

  More often than not, though, he had endured a litany of revisions. Some clients requested things to be taken out that they themselves had demanded in the beginning. Others added things that they had at first declared that they absolutely did not want.

  There were many moments where he just needed to walk away from it all, and this late afternoon jaunt was one such time.

  His stomach needing some sustenance, he had first gone to the little Chinese restaurant perched on the edge of the university campus. He had always admired the sheer drive of the restaurant’s owner, who labored with a kindred orientation upon his craft of Chinese cuisine and restaurant management.

  After downing a quart-sized plate of pork-fried rice and a ginger ale, Logan had decided to extend his break and go for a walk on the outskirts of the campus.

  The campus itself, on which he had attended four semesters of classes before transferring to another college to finish his degree, was just across the road.

  The street that bordered the western edge of the campus, near the block that held the Chinese restaurant, led straight downtown.

  There was often an eclectic mix of individuals wandering about the collection of unique little shops adjacent to the campus area.

  It was the sort of environment where nobody really stood out, where one could decide to sink into the background or shout out their presence proudly on a street corner. Logan was far more inclined towards the former, though he was sometimes amused when he witnessed the latter.

  Glancing up the street, he could see a few garishly-dressed young individuals heading into a specialty bookstore. Just passing them, a scruffy man in a long overcoat was walking down his side of the street.

  He was a tall man, with a mop of lengthy, tangled hair, and a long, unkempt beard, both whitened with advanced age. Logan surmised that he was one of the many homeless individuals that often lingered in the area.

  While Logan did not have a lot of money on him, he opted to browse in a few of the music shops and art galleries.

  Briskly, Logan walked up the street, passing a popular eatery that was open all hours and served as a hangout for many of the university students. Already, it held a substantial crowd inside.

  Looking ahead, Logan saw that his path was about to directly cross with the homeless individual.

  At a closer vantage, the man appeared to move a little easier than Logan would have guessed by the years that the man’s appearance suggested. Logan attributed his overestimation of the man’s age to his very weathered skin, making him look much older than he truly was.

  His thick beard covered his mouth, and his uneven hair splayed over his shoulders, cascading down his back and chest. He looked to be almost six and a half feet tall
, a full six inches taller than Logan.

  The man had one particularly striking feature that caused Logan to nearly stop in his tracks. The man’s eyes were like nothing that Logan had ever seen before.

  They were a deep, rich blue that seemed to exude a tranquility and ease that Logan had never seen on the pained, troubled expressions on most of the homeless in the area.

  “Can you help me get something to eat?” the man asked him in a calm, gentle voice.

  The question caught Logan off guard, and he found himself staring into the man’s striking eyes.

  Recomposing himself, he replied, “No problem, let me check… see what I have … just a second.”

  Digging into his pockets, he found a few bills and a little change. Without counting it, knowing that it was not that much to begin with, he gave it all over to the older man.

  The man accepted the money, folding his long fingers over it. He nodded slowly towards Logan, with an approving look.

  “Thank you,” the old man said in the gentle voice. “I have seen far fewer generous people these days. I do desire to repay you.”

  “It’s no problem at all,” Logan replied. “Call it a gift. No need for any repayment. We all need a break once in a while. I’ve had days I’ve been short too.”

  A slight grin came to the man’s face, barely perceptible through his thick mass of facial hair.

  “Thank you again, and have a nice day,” the man replied, nodding again to Logan as he headed onward, right in the direction of the all-hours eatery.

  Abruptly, as if he had forgotten to mention something important, the man paused and turned back towards Logan. He looked directly into Logan’s eyes, with an unwavering gaze.

  “Then my gift to you is this. Perceptions of the rightness of something can often be in error. Perceptions of the wrongfulness of something can also often be in error. It is always wisdom to look again closely. The true victory is in the correct judgment, and one can always change a judgement if one is still breathing. Things are often not as they appear. This is true on many levels, and in many ways. Bless you, for your kindness to a stranger, and remember this.”

  Turning back again, without waiting for a reply, the man resumed his path.

  Logan watched the old man walk off. He did not have the first idea as to what to make of the old man’s parting words.

  Part of him wanted to brush the man off as merely another bizarre component of the colorful tapestry of a downtown and campus environment. Another part of him was not so hasty. The old man had spoken succinctly and intelligently, and Logan wondered what his story really was. Logan saw no real way to find out the truth, even as intriguing as the old man was. Letting off a little sigh, he finally shrugged and continued into the front door of the popular campus music store.

  For the next thirty minutes or so, he browsed the music racks. If he had some money to spare, he knew that he could have easily spent it. As it was, he had to file away notes in his mind, at least until he had a little more discretionary income.

  Without making any purchase, he walked out of the store and turned to head back. A few blocks away was his house, situated within an older neighborhood. It was well past the time that he needed to be returning to his work.

  Looking ahead, he saw the homeless man that he had given money to. The old man was crossing the street about a block down from where he was.

  Coming down towards the street from the opposite side was a person that Logan recognized, accompanied by two others that he did not. Logan paused to watch the inevitable crossing of paths, curious to witness the result.

  The trio of neatly dressed, clean-shaven young men neared the old man as he stepped up onto the sidewalk. Logan recognized the young man in the middle as being from an immense church in town that Logan had done some work for on a few occasions.

  Softball fields, classroom complexes, basketball gyms, auditoriums that could seat over five thousand individuals, and more occupied the monstrous church complex. Logan was well aware that many people moving to Lexington seeking to advance in the community joined the prominent, influential church.

  Logan was sure that the three young men were probably doing a little better than himself in a financial sense, and surely were capable of helping the old man. He watched the developing encounter with a little interest.

  The old man turned to them as they approached, and from his gestures Logan knew that the old man was soliciting some help from the three young men.

  Logan watched with amusement as the three young men stiffened up a little as they neared the strange homeless man. Their body language was clear enough. They were well aware of the old man’s overture and presence.

  Two of the men soldiered onward, trying to act as if they did not even notice the old man. The third was shaking his head in the negative, at least giving the old man a response, though he barely broke stride to do so.

  The homeless man did not exhibit any change in posture, as they passed, simply nodding to them and continuing on up the street. One of the two young men that had supposedly not taken account of the old man chanced a glance back at him, as the trio neared the side of the street that Logan was on.

  Logan had not been surprised in the least by their rejection of the old man. Their response was exactly as he had predicted, though for the old man’s sake he wished that he had not been accurate.

  He almost broke into a laugh at the worried expression upon the face of the one looking back towards the old man, as if the fellow was deeply concerned that the old man might be following them to accost them.

  Shaking his head, Logan chuckled to himself as he walked onward. He knew that the three had religion, but was not so sure that they had faith. Watching their encounter with the homeless man prompted him to muse for a few moments on the subject of religion, and how it was not necessarily the same thing as faith. It was an interest of his, at least on an intellectual level, even if he did not practice any particular form of it.

  The concepts of free will, gods, devils, and destinies intrigued Logan well enough. He had absorbed quite enough about those topics over the years, at a parochial grade school and through regular independent reading that had given him a solid grasp of the world’s various faiths.

  There were some obvious conclusions that he had come to.

  History marched onward as the dust of self-proclaimed prophets, predicting the world’s end, had long since blown away in the winds of time. That same history also held a litany of figures who had shamed the faiths that they were public leaders of, while some of the most pious and reverent persons of history had been persecuted, defamed, and killed as heretics.

  Logan had come to see religion as a creature that differed very little from the basic forces that ruled mankind. Adherence and affiliation to religion, in the proper context for a given culture, was used across the world to bring power, wealth, and influence in a manner that had little to do with the tenets of the various faiths themselves.

  The inability of the public to recognize this reality had long angered Logan, and turned him away from any positive connotations when it came to matters of spirit. It had become difficult for him to separate the concepts of religion and faith.

  The world was filled with many groups that were irrevocably convinced that they had full dominion on truth. At best, only one of them could be right. At worst, none of them were right. Looking at it from a detached perspective, it was a confounding situation.

  Logan had plenty of reason to doubt that any of the ones that he was aware of had full dominion, based upon the fruits of their histories and efforts. He also had never personally experienced a miracle, had never seen a spirit, and nor had anyone else that he knew.

  There was also the troubling notion that the things that his religiously oriented parents, and similar friends of theirs, prayed for fervently never seemed to come to pass, some becoming far worse in many cases. In contrast, the things desired by many non-religious individuals that Logan knew had come to fruition, of
ten with ease and abundance.

  Logan was certainly not the person to ask regarding his opinions on the power of prayer.

  Over time, he had seen more than enough evidence to convince him that mankind was very astute at intricate fabrications and deceptions.

  With all of his heart, just for once, he wanted to see and experience something absolutely undeniable with his own eyes. No third party accounts, not even eyewitness accounts, would be acceptable substitutes for his desired experience.

  Then, and only then, he might find something to put his faith into. If that day ever happened, he knew that he could finally let loose of many inhibitions and misgivings, and pour his heart and soul into a faith, and gladly leave his dissatisfying agnosticism far behind.

  Maybe someday it would happen.

  Maybe it would not.

  He was not going to hold his breath while waiting.

  Looking down at his watch, he saw that he still had almost an hour to go before night arrived. Time would soon become a blur again as he hurled himself into his projects and submitted the visionary to the mundane as best as he could.

  As always, it was clients before creativity.

  It was not a pleasant course of action, but it did bring in an income.

  RYAN

  Ryan and Antoine jogged across the main street, heading towards the heart of the city as the shifting hues of sunset crossed into the uniformity of night.

  Artificial light and sprawling shadows settled across the reawakening streets. The lull between the rush hour and the nightlife was over, and traffic was just starting to pick up again.

  It would still be a few more hours before the city curfew took effect, nothing but a minor nuisance to the two street-honed teenagers.

  Ryan had recently set his affections towards a young lady of his age named Pamela, who lived a couple of blocks over from his small, crowded home. To his view, the relationship was proceeding nicely, though he hoped that she would shake off some other guys that she was seeing and commit fully to him.