The Bodyguard ("Outside" Story #69)

OUTSIDE
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard is walking. He’s in the city. It’s morning. The sun is a dull glob behind a tree. There are a thousand doors or more. He sees them all. He sees their colors. Some are made of wood. Some of steel. Some have fabulous, intricate designs carved into them. Some have no design. Many are very old, but not all. The newer ones are usually loud and not for him. He is looking for the right one. He was given a picture, but was not told where it was. He knows time is a factor because it always is when he is working. There is no way around this for him. It is why he must hurry. It is why he cannot enjoy any of the smells from the different doors. He has lost the picture of the door he is looking for, but cannot let this stop him. He knows it in his head like he knows how his lips look in the dark. He will find it. This is not something has any say in. The word came from the wire. His joy in this fact is almost more than he can tolerate.

He feels the doors with his fingers. Some of them at least. These doors may not be the right ones, but he cannot help himself, cannot hold himself back from their surfaces. He flattens his palms against them and a kind of music rises out, and up into his wrists. Like blood. Or fire. He wants so much to leave his hands there where the flesh of the doors is so vibrant. But he knows better. He knows he is failing when he takes this time for himself because it is time taken away from his duty. The right door is here. Somewhere. He can feel it throbbing in his brain. Like a tumor it calls to him and his feet start to race and pulse toward it. This way. That way. Over there. So many doors. His duty lurks and throbs and waits and somehow he must get his palms onto the door to which he has been assigned.

A dog barks as the bodyguard bumps into its owner. The people who are staring only get in his way. Why will they not leave him alone? He is not running into time, he is running out of it.