Redeem

It was weighing heavy on my heart. The memory of her. Haunting me. Like the hessian, headless, galloping in my wake. Not a peaceful night’s sleep. But why after so many years after her death. I put it to rest, Harmon thought. I accepted it as unfortunate. I moved on.

But the incident. Or at least the memory of it refuses to leave me in peace. She still lives, the voice in my nightmare declares. Gone, from this time, it states. Redeem. The last word I hear in the recurring dream before the warhorse overtakes me. The hessian’s red hot sword lashes out. It’s devil’s fire felt on my face after I wake.

I try to push away the spirit’s words. But the nightmare returns. The haunting. I’ve finally accepted it. It won’t go away until I do something about it. Redeem, the spirit says. The spirit must be reading my memories. You’ve done the deed. Deal with the consequences. I have.

Harmon needed to get some things done and he needed money to do it, so he took what he was owed. Embezzled, fine, if that’s what you want to call it. But Harmon had earned that money. Earned it, he told Jezi. Earned. Earned and deserved every bit of it.

I was on company business. Securing a multimillion dollar contract for Allegi Industries. No contract. I stepped up when others stepped down with the promise the contract would be drawn up. And I was going to use the commission to start my own franchise. And they knew it. You knew it, Jezi.You refuse to allow me to do my own thing, I told her.

Yes, I took it. I took the money. I paid the plane tickets and the hotel. I paid for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I paid for presentation materials. The snacks, coffee, water, juice, etcetera that the clients ate came out of my pocket. The temporary employees that helped with the setup of equipment and helped greet the clients plus the new clients that the seminar the company acquired was due to my effort. So what, Jezi, if I took the money. They tried to rip me off.

When the sales poured in and the current clients raised the quantity of their orders, I received no adjustment to commission. No bonus. They claimed they didn’t know what I was talking about. I brought the receipts. I showed them the presentation video.

Instead of supporting me, they claimed all that was done no one asked me to do. I didn’t have to handle all that by myself, they claimed. I should have called somebody. But I took initiative, Jezi. That’s what a top-notch associate does. An associate who’s here giving the client their money’s worth, their time’s worth.

You would think I spent all my time with Allegi doing nothing. You complained about the long hours, Jezi. That I put so much time in with this company, I ought to be in a relationship with them. Buy them dinner, take them on vacations, spend quiet nights by the fireplace with your clients, because I’m not doing it with you. Well, this is what I was doing. I was accommodating the customer and Allegi. I was securing my future, our future, I told her.

If I can find Jezi in this past and prevent the fight, I can save our relationship, and prevent her from leaving to stay the night at her sister’s house. That’s what I decided to do. Against my and a friend’s better judgment. I decided to go back in time. She helped me. She would monitor me. She tried to talk me out of it. I agreed with her. Spirit be damned. But then the thought intrigued me. Seeing Jezi again. Starting over.

Jezi never made it to her sister’s house. It had been a lite rain the night before and all morning. The roads were hazardous before the strong winds pushed the dark clouds, heavy rain and lightning through town. Jezi hydroplaned off the highway, skid into the railing, flipped two, maybe three times and slammed into a tree. She was dead when they arrived, the paramedic said.

I felt justified by my actions. I was fed up. Jezi was a co-worker and had more years with the company, her family company. She was the enemy in that moment. She blasted me for being dishonest. I blasted her for being part of the problem.

I gave this company my all. And I’m tired of being used. I’m done with you and your beloved, Allegi Industries I told her. It’s some cryptic madness going on here and you’re a part of it. So why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on, Jezi? What is happening to people. Some of our co-workers are entertaining clients on Allegi resorts and are never heard from again.

How many like me are closing accounts for hundreds of millions of dollars and have to fight Allegi to get even a small percentage of the sales? Then they award them the substantial sum they earned along with a ten to fourteen day cruise and vacation on Allegi Islands Resort (A.I.R.). The same island as the company headquarters.

The island of superlatives are honored, recognized, awarded, gifted with a cruise on what is essentially the company’s vacation cruiseliner. Allegi owns eighty percent of the island’s cruiseliner Celestine Cruises. The cruiseliners are docked on the other side of the island just over an hour away. Allegi amusement park, resort lodge, restaurants, and outlet center sit nestled between Allegi’s largest mountains.

The construction of the company’s twenty-seven-hole golf course on the edge of the island overlooking the ocean was placed on hold in the present. But the plush, rolling hills of green dotted with sand bunkers, red cedar trees, yellow elder, and multiple hues of hibiscus plants make it a vision. The true challenge one guy who visited the future said is when the wind slices between the mountains and carries your ball out over the ocean.

Another point of contention. Jezi said, “You spend all that time creating, negotiating, enjoying the journey, benefitting from the company, and then you basically burn it down with your actions. Did you stop to think that you’d be burning down my career, my life along with yours?” she said. “No, you didn’t. You didn’t think of me at home preparing to have this baby. It was all about your glory.”

It was the first I heard of a baby. And then she walked out. It was the last I saw her, alive. She couldn’t have been pregnant more than a short period of time. Our time together had waned. Our interest in one another faded.

It’s dangerous, what I’m doing. I shouldn’t have come to the past. I was told, if you must see her before she died, see her, but that’s it. If you prevent her from dying, someone will have to take her place. Someone else will die. It might be you, Harmon. It might be a family member, close friend, your future wife. You can start over, right. I can help you.

I needed to, wanted to, redeem Jezi, but also solve the mystery of my missing co-workers.