Bury Your Guilt

A man sits at a table in the corner of the old coffee house alone. His hair is grey and thin, his face wrinkled from his long stay in this world.

His hands wrap around a blue mug as he sips on his hot coffee. A gold watch sits on his wrist, not fitting quite as well as it once did.

His foot taps lightly on the floor and a sigh of warm air escapes his lips, followed by a glance at his watch.

As if on a cue, a bell rings above the front door. Through the door comes a young man that the older man instantly knows is the person he meant to meet with. He can tell by the troubled look in his eyes.

He waves the newcomer over to his table in the corner, and the man walks briskly over without stopping at the counter to order himself a drink.

The older man shakes his hand and introduces himself:

“Douglas Meyers, call me Doug.”

The younger man says: “Keith Green. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

Doug thinks Keith looks like a clean-cut guy. His dark hair is cut short to his scalp and he wears a black polo with khakis, looking as though he must have stepped out of work for this rendezvous.

Keith does not waste time on small talk. Both men know exactly why they are there, so there’s no need for formalities.

“I hear you’re the guy to help me with this, uh… thing.”

Doug presses his lips together into an expression that’s hard to read.

“Well we’ll just have to see about that,” he says, which doesn’t deter Keith as he begins his plea for help.

“It started about a week ago… I feel crazy even saying any of this out loud,” he looks scared as he talks. “It was easy enough to brush off at first, you know, just sorta odd things— seeing movement out of the corner of my eye, hearing little noises, whatever. Then it became more frequent, more obvious, I mean, there’s just no denying what I’m seeing. This woman. She’s everywhere.”

Doug nods his understanding. He, of course, had experienced this himself all those years ago.

“She looks…” Keith looks like he’s choking on his words and takes a look around the room, making sure no one else is listening in before he continues in a whisper. “She looks like she’s dead. The smell, the flies, God it’s awful. But she can’t… she can’t be dead because she stands there, she whispers things at me, she raises that crooked finger and… and beckons me toward her.”

Doug shakes his head this time, still in understanding. A chill runs over him as he remembers himself going through the same exact thing. Feeling the same exact way.

“I would see her outside, in the trees, through the window,” tears begin to well in his eyes and his voice shakes. “Now she’s coming into my house, sitting in the back seat of my car. She’s everywhere. And she’s getting closer. I’m so scared.”

“Christ,” Doug utters as he shakes his head again. “I’m sorry. I know the feeling all too well.”

Keith almost looks angry.

“I don’t want your sympathy,” he says. “I want you to tell me how to end this.”

Doug wishes he could.

“Listen to me,” Doug says, watching the steam floating off his coffee. “I wish I had an answer for you, I really do, but that’s just not how this stuff works.”

Keith looks perplexed, and Doug continues on.

“I can tell you what I did, but I can’t promise that it will work for you.”

“Yes. Please, yes, tell me,” Keith looks like he is about to jump out of his seat and climb across the table.

“There’s no getting rid of her for good,” Doug says plainly. “From what I understand the best you can do is, well, gift her to someone else. It’s pretty messed up, but if you want to save yourself… it’s gotta be at the expense of someone else.”

Keith considers this for a moment, before saying: “Whatever it takes.” Then, as if to justify what he had just said: “I have a wife. I have to protect her too.”

Doug explains further: “You need to find someone else that is going to confess their sins. That’s how you got her in the first place, right? Confessed to some terrible thing you did?”

“I-” Keith starts.

“I don’t give a shit,” Doug waves him off. “I did something terrible too, that’s why I had her. You find someone that you know for sure did something horrid and you keep them right close to you. When that woman is so close to you that you feel her breath, when she’s about to rip your heart from your chest, we make damn sure that person confesses to what they did. Should do the trick. As long as it’s worse than what you did, or as long as they at least feel guiltier about it, she’ll shift her focus, move right on from you.”

As Doug talks, he sees Keith’s nervous eyes shifting around the coffee house. He can almost feel the anxiety growing.

“How do I choose the right person?” Keith asks.

“Start hunting,” Doug responds, “find someone that seems riddled with guilt. Gotta make sure it’s something real bad, but more importantly that they feel real bad about it. The worse they feel about what they did, the more likely they are to tell.”

“Who did you choose? What did they do that was so bad?”

Doug hesitates for a moment before saying: “I won’t go spilling their secrets, but I’ll tell you it was worse than what I did. Worse than a damn hit and run.”

Keith is no longer looking around the room, but still crawling in his skin. His focus is fixed on Doug. Or maybe just behind him.

“She was a mother wasn’t she?” Keith says with his demeanor instantly changing.

Doug stares across the table at him, trying to dissect what he’s just heard. The young man, although still nervous, suddenly looks determined. Calculating.

“A single mother. Had a young girl, what three years old, at home.”

Doug feels his heart start to pound in his chest, and beads of sweat form on his brow. Suddenly he finds himself to be the nervous one.

“Her daughter was sick.”

How could this man know these things?

“How can you live with yourself after something like that? The guilt is eating you alive isn’t it?”

Keith doesn’t look scared at all anymore. Now a passion fills his eyes, something dark, something scary. Doug recognizes it as the look most anyone would have when they are fighting to survive.

Doug can’t believe he almost fell into this guy's trap.

“The woman is here isn’t she?” Doug probes.

“Just admit it, old man,” Keith spits.

“All this time we sat here talking, you were just stalling,” Doug pushes his chair away from the table and stands over Keith. “You were just waiting for her to get closer, hoping you could push her off onto me again.”

“You passed this thing off onto a single mother with a sick daughter!” Keith is shouting now, and people are looking. “That mother had to work nonstop to make ends meet, to pay for treatment for her daughter! SHE WAS KILLED BECAUSE OF YOU! ADMIT IT!”

Doug chuckled as he began to walk away. Of course he felt guilt for what he did, but he knew better than to ever admit that.

“You really thought this plan of yours would work?” He asks as he is almost out the door.

“Please!” Keith is crying, begging for his life. “You have nothing left to live for, old man! Please just take her from me!”

The bell above the door rings as Doug steps out into the warm sun. As he begins to walk down the street towards home, he hears screaming in the building he just left.

He chooses not to think about the horrific scene unfolding within the coffee house.