The Bodyguard ("Communion" -- story #25)

COMMUNION
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard, before anything else, knows himself to be one thing: A man of honor. The people who hired him didn’t tell him what the word honor might mean apart from his employment with their firm, but they repeated it often and with special inflection while they were inducting him and the other recruits into service. They used other words as well, words like vision, duty, brotherhood, heroism, loyalty, and patriotism. They made the recruits put their hands on their hearts and make a vow when the wire was first inserted into their ear. It was with the wire that he truly became one with them. It was then that he first heard them from within. The wire is sacred because of this. If he is to be the man of honor and vision they repeatedly said he could be, he knows the pathway to such status could only be reached by means of the wire. That is why he rarely removes it and feels so terribly afraid whenever he does.

The whole time he’s in the shower his eyes never waver from that wire. He can soap, shampoo, and even clean between his toes without looking away from it and its promise. The horrifying vulnerability he feels at such times is not something he can put into words, or would even want to. In fact, he’d much rather have the wire in his ear and a loaded gun in his face than be alone. Death would be candy compared to being without vision, honor, duty, and the other special words that were bestowed on him. He knows the words have power even a bullet between his eyes can’t remove.

As a man of honor, he does not question what the wire asks. He has become one with it. He has become both its altar and its sacrifice. He has entered into its communion.