Six Feet from Impact

CHAPTER ONE

            The intense glow of brilliant light was so concentrated you would think that your eyes would melt and trickle down your face just looking at it. Your first thought would be to hurry and hide, cover up your body, and get out of the light! The impulse to hide in the darkness, as a vampire would run from the sunlight, would run surging through your veins. However, it was not like that at all. I, too, was marked like one of the so-called vampires who wanted to run from its treacherous grasp and wished I had not done what I had done to have been thrown into this line of work.

Maybe they did not deem themselves deserving of the job that they had, the job we were all damned to have for all of eternity. I myself hadn’t heard of anyone who ever got to leave. I guess I was one of the true risk-takers, one who longed for true death. I tried to laugh in the face of it, but it just laughed at me instead.

I have been roaming this earth for a few hundred years; in that time the world has changed before my very eyes. Over the years, I have become a master at my work. I can tell you at first, I was inexperienced and clumsy, making many mistakes in my given trade. As time went on, things became second nature to me. My speed and agility and my ability to manipulate the elements all became an obsession to me. Hope seemed to be the only thing I had to assist me in my work. I made many mistakes in the process, and my heart was the price I had to pay for all of them.

My soul, on the other hand, was in question. I wasn’t sure if I even had one anymore or ever did for that matter. My name is John Davis. Well, it was John Davis before that dreadful day so many years ago. The last time my ears heard my name called out by another mortal being, I was the center of attention only minutes away from being hanged.

            Who could have thought when my body was bound to that massive oak tree that my life that day wouldn’t end? Only my life as I knew it was over. As I stood tethered up there on that hill overlooking the meadow where we played as children, a million things flashed through my mind: My first horse, hiding from my pa after I crashed the wagon, my wedding day, the day my son was born, and the most recent, the day I took another man’s life. I would rather have been left swinging from that wretched tree as a snack for the scavenger birds to feast upon than be cursed for all of eternity.

            Why didn’t someone else come for me that day? Why did it have to be her? With the face of an angel, she had a bright orange light radiating from around her body. The innocent eyes of a child spoke to me as she gazed upon me on that very day. I didn’t know who she was, but there was something very calming about her. But instead of feeling overwhelmed with peace and serenity, I felt a calm sense of fear, an emotion that as a mortal man wasn’t available to me. I would exist to know this feeling well, know it to be the only feeling offered to me, something I just wasn’t able to put my finger on…

It was an extremely hot day. The tourists were still arriving. It would be one of the most lucrative Fourth of July holidays the Jersey Shore had seen in years. I had ranged my territory beginning at Sunset Island and crossing over Barnegat Bay to Seaside Heights through Seaside Park and extending down to the three thousand acres that filled what was left of Island Beach State Park. More people vacationing on my turf would mean that I’d be working double time to keep life’s balance in order. It’s funny to me how if I had never done the dirty deed so long ago that got me into this line of work, I would have never known that people like me even existed. It’s funny what things in life we take for granted, how every day we almost come face-to-face with death. Who would have thought that walking down the street or in many cases, going for a pit stop in your own bathroom would be such a high risk?

I grew to love my work over time, so much so, that I sometimes spent more time than I was