No Good Deed

The room was dark and cold, illuminated only by two small candles that rested on a small wooden table. They struggled against the cold, and their flickering tips cast light on two men, one on each end of the table. The first sat shaking, his hand on a cigarette that he held close to his mouth, even when he was breathing out. He was breathing heavily, and his light brown hair hung over his face in a disheveled fashion. Across from him, the other man sat, his face flushed with concern as he carefully watched the motions of the shaking man. Finally, after a moment in silence, he reached out and set his hand on the table. “Tell me what happened.”

The trembling man took a long breath from his cigarette. “My name… is Gabriel Laritz…”

I was a Senior at the time… only eighteen, but cocky… I wasn’t a bad kid… but everybody thought I was…

It was prom night… I had just left the dance with my girlfriend, Erin… we had been together for a couple of weeks… she was a beautiful cheerleader with long blonde hair… every delusional adolescent’s dream… I had never been all that popular, but she seemed to be interested in me, so I thought I was in love… I’d have done anything for her… if I had been smart, I would never have had to…

We were on top of the world that night, and we found ourselves alone at the abandoned Jefferson Bridge south of town… I parked my car and we started to walk around the area… it was a new moon, and dark as Hell… yea, we shouldn’t have been out there… but we were teenagers… stupid teenagers… We stopped over by the maintenance catwalk that led under the bridge and stared out into space… the bridge was suspended about a hundred feet above a now-dry riverbed. There, the thrill of heights mixed with the general euphoria of the night and left us separated from the rest of the world… I came back to reality just in time to remember the diamond ring sitting in the glove-box of my car… I had thought it a nice gift, and it hadn’t cost me much… I told Erin to wait a minute while I grabbed something, and slipped back to the car… I slid the ring box into my pocket and turned back…

It was then I saw him… he stood in the shadows just to her right, watching her with sinister eyes… I would not have even noticed him if not for the light of a nearby street lamp glinting off something in his hand… a knife…

She hadn’t noticed him, but I wasn’t going to wait… I made it to him in Olympic gold time… She turned just as I reached him, and he didn’t see me coming at all, his eyes too affixed to Erin… Had I stopped and thought about how to properly incapacitate him, today would be very different… But I was fueled by instinct, adrenaline, and rage… the first punch sent him sprawling backwards and his back smacked hard against the metal bar on the railing… Better judgment would have stopped me there, but wisdom failed me… my second punch provided sufficient force to flip him over the railing… His scream was deafening as he plummeted a hundred feet to the hard ground below… I felt no sympathy then… I feel none now… five minutes later I sat down on the pavement and finally realized I had killed a man…

Gabriel took a long breath from his cigarette

“So… you killed him…?” The uneasiness was apparent in the other man’s voice.

“Yes… it was the right thing to do…” Gabriel’s eyes flared and he brought his fist down hard against the table. “It was the right thing to do!”

The other man motioned for him to calm down. “Continue.”

It didn’t take long for the police to arrive… somebody had heard the scream and called the police… I was sitting on the pavement, breathing hard, when they showed up… Erin hadn’t said a word since I had gone to the car… the scream was still echoing in my head when the officer came over and began questioning me… I told him everything, everything exactly as it had happened… They never said a word to Erin, and she never said a word at all… Once I had given them the whole story, they put me in cuffs and threw me in the backseat of the squad car…

I can remember the whole ride to the police headquarters… my mind was filled the whole time… the image of his glinting knife, his cowardly scream, and the constant, plaguing question of why I was being thrown in jail for saving my girlfriend’s life… I figured, at the time, that it was a necessary arrest, and I would be freed soon… When we got to the jail, they gave me my customary phone call… I called my parents… They… they disowned me and hung up the phone… I haven’t spoken to them since…

They kept me in jail till the trial date, at which point they finally charged me with first degree murder of Jack Rasmouth… he was the most respected man in the tri-county area… it didn’t matter that it wasn’t pre-meditated, they stuck me with it anyway… I couldn’t afford a lawyer, so they gave me one… Jacob Rasmouth, nephew of the demented rapist I had sent to Hell, and probably his biggest fan… and that was just the beginning of the mockery of justice that was my trial… I never stood a chance…

They removed the knife as evidence and planted me with brass knuckles, but in spite of this, I still had faith I would be freed… I believed my beloved Erin would take the stand, tell them everything, and I would go free… but it never happened… she refused to testify for or against me…

It didn’t take long for the sentence to come down… everyone but the foreman judged me guilty… the judge was merciful… he gave me ten years with probation after seven… and with the sound of his gavel, I watched my future die…

I’ll never forget walking out of that courtroom and towards the car that would take me to prison… they cuffed me and shoved me out to walk down the courthouse steps… outside, the people were prepared to lynch me, but the security guards held them back… Instead, they simply spit on me and threw whatever disposable items they had with them… My spirit was still not broken… I still held faith… until I passed her… Erin watched from the crowd, with no expression on her face… but her right hand held the hand of a guy who was too busy yelling profanities at me to pay any attention to her… she didn’t look me in the eyes… not even once… And I swear… when they slammed the door behind me and drove away, she didn’t cry a tear…

Gabriel rubbed his eyes and dropped the cigarette into an ashtray on the table.

“Why didn’t she testify… why didn’t she help you?”

Gabriel slammed both hands down hard on the table. The wind from this motion made one of the candles flicker. “Because she didn’t care! Because she never cared!” Gabriel calmed down after a moment. “They always told me beauty could kill… but they were wrong…” He looked up into the other man’s eyes. “Beauty always kills.”

Jail was Hell… I knew it would be… I got into three fights on the first day… won two of them, and that was enough… when I went to my cell that night, I had three broken fingers and I was bleeding from my nose and right eye, but I was safe, at least for a time… luckily my cell-mate wasn’t nuts… we got along better than I could have hoped, and that kept me safe…

After a while, I got the respect of a large portion of the cell members, just because I had gone so numb to everything… I didn’t do anything bad, good, neutral… I didn’t do much of anything at all… Every day was just walking through the same routine…

Seven years passed by as slowly as possible, but eventually it ended and they brought me up for parole… Not a member on the board wanted to let me free, but the prison was beyond over-crowded, and I seemed like I’d follow the law closest… They threw me out without a dime…

I didn’t have anywhere to go… so I tried to get some odd jobs wherever I could… nobody in my hometown wanted anything to do with me, so I started hitchhiking… I wound up here, eventually… No jobs for an ex-con, so I’ll be moving out soon…

“So… if you can find it in your heart to offer me a room for the night, I will be eternally grateful… but if not, that’s just as well…”

Gabriel leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. The other man nodded his head slowly as he mulled the situation over.

“Yes… you can stay in the guest room… down the hall to the right…”

Gabriel forced an incredibly slight smile and left the room without a sound. The elder man sighed as the door to the guest room closed shut behind Gabriel.

The older man continued to sit at the table the remainder of the night, thinking about the story and watching the candles dance in the darkness. At about one in morning, he noticed the candle next to where Gabriel had been sitting had begun to flicker. He watched as it continued to struggle and fight against some invisible force. Finally, after about ten minutes, the candle died. When the light disappeared, the elder man bowed his head solemnly, got up, and went to bed.

The next morning, the older man went to wake Gabriel up and found the guest room door jammed. With a slight force, he managed to push it open and proceed through. Inside, he found Gabriel sitting in a rocking chair, his wrists slashed, his head rolled back, expressionless, and a crumpled note lying in his lap. There was a bloody knife lying on the ground by his left hand and an uncapped ink pen by his right. With a deep sense of solemn remorse, the older man walked over and picked up the note. The inside was crumpled in one spot from a single tear, but he managed to open it enough to read the messy handwriting on the inside anyway. It contained only one sentence:

“No good deed goes unpunished.”