The Robe

I have no idea why I took the black hooded robe from the thrift store where I work, risking my job, but I did take it then throw it into the back of my closet to be forgotten about.  Me and my buds planned to head up to the old barn for Halloween and have a little party, but as the date got closer we decide to make it a costume party.  It was the night of the party and I couldn't find my leather jacket.  I was going to grease my hair back and go as a 50's greaser.  When I couldn't find my jacket hanging in my closet, I started digging through the pile of clothes until I found the hooded robe.  I figured what the heck; I was running late so throw it on.

***

I had been drinking for about an hour when Gail Summers showed up with her boyfriend.  She was had always been weird and then our freshmen year she had slit her wrist in the girl’s bathroom.  A teacher had found her, and she had spent several weeks out of school.  She had somehow completed the course work and stayed up with the rest of us, but after that she had gotten really strange.  What happen when she saw me in my robe was completely over the top.  She began to shake all over and her jaw was moving as if she was chewing on something.  Suddenly she let loose with an ear shattering scream.  Her boyfriend grabbed her and pulled her out of there.

Carol Powell was a cheerleader and the most beautiful girl in our class.  Her family had money and the story was that she hadn’t spent the summer between 7^th and 8^th grade in France but actually getting plastic surgery.  I don’t know about that story because I had loved her since I first started getting interested in girls.  She had recently shown an interest in me and at the party we ended up in a corner making out.  I had my hand on her leg moving towards the forbidden land when somebody grabbed me and pulled me away from her.

Jim Powell was 20, good looking and rich.  The problem was he knew that he had it made and could treat people like crap because his family’s money.  The story was that two years ago he had beat a kid up so bad that the kid nearly died, he got away with it because mom and dad paid people off.  He slammed his fist into my stomach and was drawing back for another punch as I double over.  Suddenly my three best friends were there, two grabbed him as Johnny grabbed me.  Jim shook off Ted and Bob and grabbed his sister’s arm.  “Stay away from her, or next time your butt buddies won’t be enough to save your ass!”

I tried to go after him, but Johnny wouldn’t leave go.  “He would kill you buddy boy, use your brain.”

I turned to him and suddenly the world seems to tilt.  Ted was standing there smiling the idiot smile he always had on his face, but I could also see his head tilted at a sicken angle.  Bob was digging for a smoke, but I could also see him staring straight ahead with blood running down his face.  Johnny was the worse he was smiling and so alive, but I could also see him pale and dying, something was sticking out of the side of the image.As suddenly as I saw the weird double image it was gone, and I was looking at my good friends again.

The party went on after that without any more trouble or weird stuff and I had forgotten all about it.  Jim kept his sister with him and his crowd and every time I started wandering that way 1 of my friends would be there to drag me back to our side of the barn.  At 3 am we piled into Johnny’s car and went roaring off back to town.

Before I continue let me say I am not defending Johnny or any of us.  We were drunk and shouldn’t have been on the road, but what happen in my opining wouldn’t have happen if Jim wasn’t such an asshole.

We had just made it onto the blacktop when Jim came roaring up beside us.  He had Carol, his girlfriend and 1 of his dork buddies in the car.  He pulled alongside us and honked his horn.  As we looked he gave us the finger and speed off.  Johnny tore off after him and the race was on.  We caught them and passed them.  We were all laughing and telling Johnny how fast his car was when Jim’s car came roaring up again.  Johnny start zigzagging to keep Jim behind us and that is when we hit the curve.  I really don’t remember how it happens, but suddenly we were flying through the air the car was twisting all over the place.  I felt something hit me in the back of my head and it all went black.

***

I later told the police that I couldn't remember anything until I woke up in the hospital and you whoever is reading this will understand why.  I was standing in a field and I had no idea how I had gotten out of the car to be standing there.  I looked around and spotted the car.  The driver’s side was against a tree, it kind of formed a horse shoe around the tree.  I had just decided to go check on it when I found myself stand beside it looking into the back seat at Ted.

His head was tilted at a weird angle and I knew even thou I wasn’t sure how that his neck was broken.  I also knew that he was on the edge between life and death.  As I looked at him I knew that if he survived he would never walk again or hold his girlfriend, Ted would be a living head with a dead body attached.  Something made me reach in the open window.  My fingers seem to pass through his skin and suddenly I felt Ted pass on.

Bob was in the passenger seat his face was a bloody mess.  His eyes were lifeless, but some sense that I hadn’t had before told me the Bob still lived.  That sense told me that the Bob that had always been cracking jokes and getting in trouble was gone.  This Bob would have a hard time telling somebody about his day.  I knew like I had with Ted that his skull was shattered, pieces of bone riddled his brain.  I did it again, reaching in it slide my hand into his skull, Bob gave a faint smile then he was gone.

Johnny’s door had slammed into the tree driving a branch through it and through him.  He looked up at me with a look of peace.  "Do it Frank, please end the pain for me."  Johnny had been my best friend since we were in first grade together and now I knew he was dead.  I could end it quickly or he would hang on for hours, but he was going to die.  I leaned in and hugged him before reaching into his chest and squeezing his heart.

I turned and took a step away from the car and found myself somewhere else.  Jim, his girlfriend Brenda, Carol and the dork were climbing out of his car.  Carol was digging through her purse and came up with her cell, but before she could dial, Jim snatched it off her.  "What the hell are you doing?"

"We have to call the cops."

"Not yet.  That ass Johnny was drunk too, so we see how they are then we decide if we want the police involved."

"I told you to slow down!"  Carol screamed.

He slapped her, "shut the fuck up.  Now let’s go find them assholes."

I tried to move towards them but suddenly things seem to swirl around.

***

I was told they found me 20 yards from Johnny's car.  I woke up in the hospital the next day, with a minor concussion.  I felt weird all that day and night and had no idea why.  It began to fade when we left the hospital and my parents and sister took me home.  It was there in my closet hanging right next to my leather jacket, the hooded robe that I was wearing that night.

The police were by the next day to take my statement.  Seems they wanted to prosecute Jim for drunk driving, vehicular homicide and a bunch of other minor charges.  Carol had made a statement to a cop on the scene about her brother causing the accident, but by the time they had reach the police station she was claiming she didn't know who had caused it.  I didn't know who had caused it and I had told the cops as much.

I asked mom and dad both about the robe and both claimed that the hospital had cut it off of me and they didn't know where this one was from.  I tried to forget about it, but two days after coming home from the hospital I had a feeling, a need to put it on and go outside.

Old Miss Waller lived down the street forever and was a very nice old lady.  She passed out cookies to all the kids during the summer and was always there to bandage a scrapped knee when we played a little too hard.  We kids sweep her walks and raked her leaves for her, we even cut her grass all for free.  As I approached her house, I had that weird feeling that I had at the hospital when I first woke up.  I passed through the door, I mean right through it without opening it.  She was lying on her couch and I could feel her heart struggling to keep beating.

Somehow, I knew I had a choice to make, her life was in my hands.  I stepped back this was huge; how do you decide if a nice old woman should continue to struggle through life or should be granted a quick and painless release.  I reached into her chest and touched her heart.  She opens her eyes and smiled at me before it stopped beating.  In some way, I knew she felt no pain as her life ended.

It was a cold January morning when we all walked into the court house.  Since Halloween it was all anybody talked about and I had become like a star which bothered me.  Jim’s parents had hired a high-priced lawyer, a hired gun to save their son from going to jail for a very long time.  The big surprise was that Carol was to testify for the prosecution.  I don’t really know how the adults felt but all of us kids knew that Jim was going to get off.  His parents wouldn’t allow him to go to jail, from the stories we heard they had called a judge friend of theirs the night of the accident to get him out of jail that very night.

I wasn’t allowed in the court room during the trial since I was a witness but a few people told me that Jim’s hired gun was well worth whatever he was getting paid.  Finally, it was my turn.  I took the stand and swore on the bible like everybody else.  The prosecutor took me through the night down playing the drinking and up playing the argument, I had with Jim.

Jim’s attorney came at me with both barrels, he had me admitting to the fact that I had been acting inappropriate with Carol.  He had me admit that Johnny been stumbling drunk by the time we left the barn.  The only thing he didn’t get me to admit to was the fact that Johnny caused the accident.  I left the court room feeling sick to my stomach.

When the gavel came down at the end of trial Jim was found guilty of drunk driving.  He would lose his license for a year and would have to attend drug and alcohol counseling.I guess that is when the plan started to form in the back of my mind.

I had been doing my job, I thought of it as my job by the time of the trial, as the grim reaper and learning how the robe worked.  I now knew that I could save people as well as ease their passing.  I couldn’t repair damage; a broken neck would remain a broken neck so I didn’t feel any worse about ending my friends’ lives.  I had also learned that for some reason now when I put on the robe only those on the edge of life and death could see me and crazy people which makes me wonder how crazy are they really.  I could enter a person as easily as entering a room and control their actions for a short time.

I had lost my job at the thrift store and I had dropped out of school.  Everybody blamed it on the accident, but the thing was I start being able to see things.  In school, I walked into science class and I saw that all the frogs in the one case cut open as if dissected even as they hoped around.  At the thrift store, I keep seeing these nice old people dead, some of them in the most horrible ways.  I would spend hours in my room alone, everywhere I looked I saw death and it was getting to me.  My parents sent me to a therapist at one point but I saw a family photo on his desk, I knew the little girl in the photo was dead of a rare heart disease.  I also knew but I'm still not sure how that she had died soon after that picture was taken.  I throw up all over his office and ran out of there I never went back.

The strangest thing is the check. I now receive a check at the end of the month it just appears in our mail box made out to me.  It is from Grim Enterprises and it was always a $100 for each person I dealt with that month.  I looked Grim Enterprises up on the internet, but none of the companies was at the address on the checks.  I even wrote to that address asking for some kind of manual or instruction on the robe, but I got my letter back simple stamped return to sender.

Things had just been getting worse as the year went by and it was Halloween.  One year ago, I became the Grim Reaper and that night I was going to take a soul for myself.  I am going to kill Jim using the robe.  I follow him from one party to the next he is drinking himself stupid, but that is what I wanted.  I am watching him from across the street when I feel a presence behind me.  I turn and see another reaper standing there.  I had never paid attention, but the robe gave no indication if it was a man or woman.  The voice was distorted and eerie, “Don’t do it.  There are rules and what you are planning breaks a big one.  If you break the rules there will be a price to pay.”

“Who are you?  Are you from Grim Enterprises?  What are the rules I was never told any rules, hell nobody told me anything?”

“Just don’t do it, you have been warned, you will not be warned again.”  The figure seemed to melt into the shadows.

I stood there thinking about what it had said.  If there were rules and they would punish me for breaking them so what.  What are they going to do take back their stinking robe?  Jim was a dead man, I had already decided that and to hell with the rules.

Jim still lives with mommy and daddy, but they are away and poor little Carol was thrown out for turning on the family.  As he steps inside I use the robe and take over his body.  I have never done this to a health person before it felt strange like putting on clothes that were too small.  I could feel him fighting, but the robe made me strong and I forced him upstairs to the bathroom.  The medicine cabinet in his parent’s bedroom, something told me that was where the stuff that would do the best job would be at. I grabbed a dozen pill bottles and just dumped them on the counter.  I mixed them all together and grabbed a handful.  Swallowing them was easy it wasn't my throat that the pills were being forced down dry.  I got three handfuls into his mouth before he started to convulse.  I was thrown out of him.

I wandered the rest of the night.  I helped eight people that night to cross over peacefully and pull one small baby back from the edge.  When I got home I learned that the price I had to pay for my crime would be paid by my sister.  Mom had found her in our bathroom; she had swallowed three old prescriptions that were still in the medicine cabinet.  She was going to live, but my beautiful little sister that had played the piano with such skill would have a hard time tying her own shoes from then on.  Jim survived to; he was as badly damaged as my sister.  I considered finishing what I started, but what if they took my mother or father this time.

I have no life left really.  I spend my days locked in my room alone.  I can’t stand to be around my family because every time I see my sister I am reminded that I was the one who did that to her.  Dating is out, I can’t turn off my death sense and seating across from a girl smiling while you know her grandmother will be dead in three weeks is too hard.  I go out but only when I am wearing my robe, I go out and visit those who are on the edge, sometimes I save them and sometimes I help them over and make sure the end is peaceful.