The Bodyguard ("Blade" story #77)

BLADE
by Michael Kroetch

The bodyguard wipes himself down with gasoline. His head’s spinning. He’s by the docks… Maybe. Smells like it. Or did until he washed himself with the fuel. Now the place doesn’t smell like anything. Now it’s like him. Clean. Pure as the moon. He can see its perfect shape above him, that shining silver blade moving across the darkness. Can hear it pulling on the water around him. Such a pretty blue sound, like someone’s tapping on his skull with a stick. He can’t believe he was once afraid of it. Would actually hide, climbing under his mother’s porch among the forgotten rusting Yuban Coffee cans to escape it.

He puts his palm up toward the moon to feel its light course through him. But in his hand he feels something else. His fingers prickle as if touching skin. And not his own. Which is so terribly troublesome an idea that his wrist instinctively snaps back to his dark glasses and his wire to confirm their status. All is secure. All is as it should be. Then he lightly strokes his breast where his gun waits. Yes, everything’s okay. But, just to be sure, he scans his perimeter once more.

It makes no sense. He can’t see why, suddenly—after all this time—he felt this. It’s absurd. He’s safe. He’s alone. No one is here. So how could it be that he so distinctly felt the sharp scars on the face of the jack-o-lantern girl—their bald whiteness under his fingers?