Savior

“You could have saved that girl!” Clarissa, my wife shouted in my face, tears streaming down hers. “You’re a Savior! It’s what you do! You’re supposed to save people!”

It was true. I was one of the city’s five Saviors who worked for the Savior Corporation. Our job was to patrol the city and save people’s lives, but it was more complex than it seemed on the surface. Right now, Clarissa just saw the surface, and the surface looked like a seven or eight year old girl laying motionless on the playground a few blocks from our house. Blood poured from a head wound, pooling around her like a gory halo. I shuddered.

I had been out walking with Clarissa on this gloomy afternoon in late February when out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the girl on the top of the climbing structure. She had been making continuous attempts to stand upright on the bars at the top of the dome-shaped structure. Just as she accomplished her goal, she face first, hitting her head on the bar next to her, and then sliding through, head first. She hit the ground, accompanied by the noise of shattering bones.

I had rushed forward, testing to see if she was still alive, but the minute I got closer, I knew it was too late. I checked her pulse anyway; there was none.

Clarissa was right. I had seen that she was about to fall. I could have saved her; should have saved her, despite my instructions.

Clarissa had stopped yelling, but tears still streamed down her face. I turned away from the scene with regret. My heart was heavy at the young girl’s death as though hands had gripped it and were trying to tear it open from the inside. I reminded myself that despite my job, people died all the time. I wasn’t here to stop death, only to postpone it for some lucky people.

Despite what I told myself, my heart weighed as much as the large brick house I would return to. That girl would never get to go home. A lump swelled in my throat and I pushed it back down again. There was no justice in the world.

I pulled up my hood. The chill of the cool air cut through my coat, but that wasn’t why I did it. I needed to make sure that nobody saw me here, especially the girl’s poor parents.

A quick glance around informed me I didn’t need to worry about witnesses. The girl had obviously broken away from her parents and was in the playground by herself.

“She wasn’t mine to save,” I said quietly to Clarissa’s back.

I wasn’t angry with her for the yelling, for she was absolutely right. There was only one person who deserved my anger directed at them and that would have to wait until later.

I tapped Clarissa on the shoulder and beckoned her to follow me home. I didn’t want anyone to see me here.

My job informed my colleagues and I not to tell anybody, including our families, about the rules of being a Savior. There are many things the public doesn’t know about my job and our cause.

My supervisor told me that there would come a time when there were no more lies to tell and only then could we tell our families the truth. He told me that not everybody reaches that moment, yet I would know when it arrived. In my gut, I felt that now was that moment, but I couldn’t tell Clarissa out here on the street where anyone could hear us.

I now stood a few steps from her, waiting for her to follow. When she did not, I walked back to where she was standing, still staring in the direction of the playground, and gently placed a hand around her waist.

“Let’s go home,” I told Clarissa gently, guiding her back towards our house.

“Damn straight,” she said slapping my hand away. She rotated on her heel, he long brown hair spinning in an arc around her, and began taking long strides away from me.

I turned back one last time as we exited the scene. As I took my first few steps away, I heard screaming, the calling of a name: “Melanie”. The parents were searching for her.

I walked faster, my head down. I didn’t want to hear their reactions when they found the girl. Tears welled up in my eyes for the little girl who would never see her parents again and it

I was flooded with relief and trepidation when our upper-middle class house came into sight. It was located in the northwest section of town and was fairly large with sixteen rooms. The house was painted white with purple shudders that Clarissa had absolutely insisted upon. The lawn was well manicured, mostly by someone else, and would be bursting with purples, oranges, and reds when the warm weather graced us once again. As of now, the bushes stood sentry by our door, looking desolate, forlorn, and resolute. The trees were empty of foliage and somehow, even though I had been staring at this neglected landscape for the past three months, it somehow felt distant from the place I called home, and that worried me. Perhaps it was simply the unknown that had me uneasy.

Clarissa unlocked the right door, of the set. The magnificent windows set into the door twisted with thin streaks of metal that reflected rainbow as the light hit it. The sun was still holed up in its cloud fortress and the shimmer of the metal was dull at best, barely there but for a faint glimmer. For some reason that gave me hope.

I stepped into a cheery yellow front hall. I placed my shoes on the mat to the left of the door, and put my keys in the bowl of miscellaneous objects that one might need to take before leaving the house: chap stick, keys, granola bars, et cetera. The table had a glass top and metal legs that intertwined in a similar fashion to the door and a large mirror hung over it.

I made Clarissa a cup of tea in our homey brown kitchen. I also made myself one and we sat down in the living room as per her request. The walls were normally a warm yellow, but they seemed to have turned to a dull grey around me. The white sofas hand turned beige and everything looked wrong. Even the antique green tea cups with their green, snaking pattern of vines, seemed somehow astray.

She looked distantly out the window as I entered with our tea. Her arms were still crossed, as they had been the whole way home. I knew she angry with me, but hopefully, by the time I was done explaining, she would understand. I knew I was lucky that she was even willing to hear me out, however, I thought that perhaps it was more due to her curiosity than to her regard for my side of the story.

I stared sadly at Clarissa’s curly brown hair, which I had run my fingers through so many times before; her full pink lips that I had kissed on our wedding day, her pale, white skin that I caressed almost every night, and bright blue eyes, which sometimes contained flecks of gold. Those eyes were currently glaring at me from across the sofa and it made me sad to think that she may never look at me with the love I remembered, if I was not able to adequately explain my behavior. I already longed for her gaze, her touch; to bridge the chasm that had split between us.

To my surprise, Clarissa took charge of the discussion, turning it into an interrogation. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t pack a bag and go back to my parents’ house right now.” She demanded. Clarissa was from one of the two suburbs our city had, both set about forty-five minutes to an hour away.

At that, I almost lost my calm. Lost hope for us being together, for repairing the damage, for her ever loving me again. A lump rose in my throat once more, and I had to repress it before speaking, reminding myself that the future was contingent upon what I said now. “Please, give me a chance to explain. I’m really sorry about this, but there were certain things that I wasn’t allowed to tell you about my job and the way the operation works. Even I don’t know everything about the operation. But I know that I’m allowed to tell you now.”

“So what changed?” she spat, arms still folded, but an unbridled note of curiosity inching its way into her voice.

“The public will never know certain things about the Savior Corporation, but, I can tell you now because you have seen it for yourself. I have a limit to the amount of people I can save: twenty people per month. If I exceed that number, they will replace me.”

“How can they make you do that?”

“They’re a lot more powerful than you think,” I informed her with a shudder. In fact, I knew that even I didn’t know the extent of their power, but there was no use in worrying Clarissa with information like that.

“But who are they?” she said with skepticism ringing in her voice.

“The leaders of the operation; the people who trained me, and the boss. You know, the one I’ve never seen.”

I reflected on this statement for a moment, that statement triggering a memory of a closed wooden door with a silver-colored handle containing a keyhole. My boss’s office is always closed and only the mentors are allowed to see what was beyond it. There were all sorts of rumors as to who or what is behind the door. I swear each Savior has a different theory. Malcolm says nobody is behind that door and the trainers are the ones that run the operation. They want to create an air of mystery and intimidation so we can prove our loyalty to a nonexistent, esoteric ruler. Beth thinks that there’s fifty more men working behind that door and this operation is a lot bigger than we think, and Jeff thinks that a messenger of God himself might be running the operation.”

“But why can’t you save everyone! Why is a limit necessary?”

“To keep the balance of life in check,” I replied automatically, but then I thought about that girl. How was it fair that I had used up my quota by this time, and I wasn’t able to save her? If I’d been able to choose, I would have picked her over the 50-year-old man in bad health whose car had stalled out in the middle of the trolley tracks.

“She wasn’t mine to save. People can’t live forever,” I continued, repeating what my mentor, Jordan had told me.

“Yes, but this way, people can die when they’re old and…”

I cut her off. I was tired of this argument and tired in general. Who was I to question the way this well-established system functioned? I was just doing my job and now my home life was in an astronomical mess. “We can’t save everyone. There are only five of us and she wasn’t mine to save. I wasn’t on duty. I used up my quota for the month. If another Savior had been there, it would have been different, but there wasn’t time to call anyone.”

“I still think you should have broken the rules. She was just a little girl. Have you lost all sense of morality?! This isn’t why you joined the Saviors. You joined in order to help people: because you wanted to make our city a better place.”

“This doesn’t happen to me very often. In fact, this has only happened to me once before, and Malcolm was there. Even Arthur told me they could count the number of times this has happened on one hand, and he’s been doing this for 28 years!” Arthur was the oldest Savior still working, at 52.

“Oh yeah, did they tell you what to tell me, also?” she glowered.

“No, I went to them for guidance because I was worried something like this would happen.” That was not entirely true. My supervisor had given me a general sketch of how to deal with this, but my fellow Saviors had colored in the design.

The more I thought about the words coming out of my mouth, the more I worried that I was, in fact, regurgitating the things Jordan had told me, and that would not be enough to allay Clarissa’s mistrust. I tried to formulate a statement that transcended simple mimicry, but I struggled to give my own words footing on my tongue, and said instead, “They told me something that makes me feel better. Twenty people saved, is still better than zero. I don’t know all of the reasons we can’t Save everybody, but I trust that there is a good reason even if I don’t understand it. This system is much older than I am and there were reasons it was established the way it was.”

I felt even more frustrated. I committed my lips to stop being surrogates for my boss’s words! It killed me internally that I couldn’t find my own words. It was a bit like having my feet knocked out from under me.

“I guess. If you believe it’s right and you believe that they’re right, then I trust you,” Clarissa said with a shaky sigh as if she was going to cry.

Sensing that the gap between us was narrowing again, I set down my teacup and inched towards her on the couch. I pulled her into my arms and she cried for a while.

When she was done, she sat back and regarded me for a while. “I want some time to process this. I want you to sleep on the couch tonight,” she told me. I simply nodded consent to her request. I understood.

“And I need a vacation,” she said. “If you finish your quota of people to save early next month, then you have the rest of the time off?”

“Yes, I do.” I told her.

“So, when I got my raise, I also got an extra four days of vacation, so now I have eleven. Maybe you can finish all your Saving early next month too. We haven’t gone anywhere since our honeymoon and that was a little more than two years ago.” She spoke in a vague, tired voice, staring off into the distance.

“I’d have to talk to the bosses. As I figure, weddings are an exception and I don’t know what the rules are for vacation…” I said hesitantly, not wanting to promise anything.

“But why?” Clarissa asked in exclaimed.

“I think people feel unsafe if they know one of the saviors isn’t in town,” I told her. “They don’t know that I have periods of time where I can’t save anyone, so I usually keep doing some patrolling.”

“But everybody needs a break sometime!” Clarissa said exasperatedly. “Please ask, because if you don’t, I’ll have to go on vacation without you,” a sly smile curved her lips, but it was weak and I knew she didn’t mean it.

Clarissa was a fire fighter at Center City Fire Department. The east end, also known as Center City, was their only jurisdiction. The outlying areas had another fire department located on the northern edge of the South quarter of the city. It was a fairly high paying job, but didn’t rival my paycheck. If Clarissa got a night shift, she would have to sleep at the station. She said the constant traffic whizzing by made it hard to sleep, but she didn’t care, she was somehow able to drown out background noise in ways I had never been able to.

Clarissa loved her job, not just for the thrill like some of her colleagues, but because she genuinely loved helping people, like me. It’s one of the main reasons I married her. If that was the basis of our relationship, it was no wonder that today’s events had splintered our relationship so badly.

Although she loved her job, it was a very wearing job and whether it was a mental health day here and there or an actual vacation, she appreciated a break when it came along.

“Sounds fair to me,” I said on the surface, but inside, I knew I’d be very jealous if she went away, whether it was out of the city or out of the country, and I didn’t get to go.

I went upstairs to shower. I felt dirty and disgusting after what had just happened; like I was drenched in the girl’s blood and everybody could see my shame. How was I supposed to live with something like this? She could have been anything from a low-life to a doctor. She could have helped people, or destroyed them, but now the world would never know, and that stung like acupuncture for my heart. Her blood was not on me, but I still made sure to scrub myself clean.

When I got out of the shower, I cleaned a patch of fog off the mirror and I looked at myself. My wet hair was already starting to arrange its self into its usual curls. I kept the hair long enough that it curled, sticking up about two inches off my skull. My hair was dark brown, almost black and my soft brown eyes shone out of my face. A few freckles dotted my nose and cheeks. The extensive amount of time I spent outside was beginning to darken them. My nose was just a bit too large for my face, but my lips were average enough, and my skin looked as though I had spent all summer tanning, despite the fact that it was February.

This is what Clarissa saw when she looked at me. I wondered what she would see now. Would it be different? Would I be a monster to her? Would I be a monster to myself?

After the shower, I figured that headquarters was awaiting a visit from me. They always wanted a report if something unusual or new happened. I assumed they already knew about the incident; however if I didn’t check in within a certain period of time, it might be considered dishonest. On the other hand, checking in showed loyalty. It was important to show your trust and loyalty every so often, and it occasionally earned me a raise.

I got dressed and grabbed the light zip-up sweater I had been wearing before and slung my backpack over my shoulders.

The sun had gone down, and the minute I stepped outside, I knew the jacket would not be enough to keep me warm, but I didn’t want to turn back and face Clarissa again. There was too much pain in that house, and going back was too much. I felt that on some level, I deserved to suffer from the cold. With the wind biting through my jacket, I walked to the trolley stop two blocks from my house.

Clarissa had a car to get to and from the fire station because she had to drive there at odd hours and some of those times were when the trolley wasn’t running. It was impractical for me because parking would be an issue in some areas and I wouldn’t be able to Save half the people that I do if I spent all my time trying to look for a parking space.

There was also no parking by headquarters in order to keep its location relatively low-key, but I had to report frequently. My Savior badge granted me free rides on the trolleys anyway, so a car wouldn’t be worth my time or money.

During rush hour, the trolleys ran every ten to fifteen minutes, but I waited nearly 25 for mine. Not many people living in the northwest side of town (the second wealthiest district) wanted to go to the south end (the most impoverished) so those didn’t run very often.

The bitter February winds whipped through my hair and stung my face. I pulled my hood up to keep my head warm, but the warmth it provided was minimal.

When the number 5 trolley to south Sakerton pulled up, I got on. I pulled out my Savior badge and showed it to the driver. He nodded and I walked down the aisle and sat in an empty seat, not bothering to remove my hood.

The trolley made two more stops in my neighborhood before entering to the trolley lane to the side of one of the main roads leading through the middle of Sakerton.

Our city was shaped like a circle where nearly 5 miles of the middle were 6 lane roads going from one section to another without any buildings nearby.

The trolley made one stop on the very edge of the south side of town and another three blocks in. This was where I got off. The trolley would go down one side of the south district, then run most of the length of the south end and back up the other, to complete a loop through this end of town.

When I got off, I had only half a block to walk before I reached an alleyway with some rotting garbage and a black cat with white “socks” who had been living in this alleyway since they started training me to be a savior 6 years ago.

The cat was a bit older than it had been when I first started, but it was still nimbly licking its paws on a garbage can lid. It stopped licking and looked at me as though wondering whether I was going to challenge it for ownership of the alley. Then, deciding I was no threat continued licking its paws in disinterest.

I walked to a dingy, rusting door in the middle of the alleyway that nobody would look twice at. I unclipped a key from my belt. I opened the door and went inside. I waited for the door to close. The door clicked open and started beeping. This meant that I had fifteen seconds to get inside. The system was armed against intruders so if the person remained in the antechamber longer than that, the mechanism would shoot a laser through their leg, incapacitating them. It always gave me an adrenalin rush no matter how many times I did it. I pulled an electronic swipe card from a different niche on my belt and swiped it over the sensor next to the door.

When I got to the other side, I gave my heart rate a minute to return to normal.

I descended the rickety flight of stairs with carpeting so old, small puffs of dust rose when I stepped on it. At the end of the stairs, I was met with a well-lit room whose decorations were mildly improved from the stairs preceding it. The walls were painted a medium shade of blue with white trim surrounding the floor. In the middle of the floor, four cubicles were constructed. All of them were filled with men working at their computers. The man in the back left corner, Puck was on the phone.

To the left was another door. That door led to the training rooms where all Saviors spent three years preparing before they were initiated. Another swipe pad stood next to it, that only the four trainers at the desks had access to.

The men in the cubicles were the ones who trained the new recruits. One of these men was my mentor, Jordan, and the other three were my trainers, each with their own area of expertise. Each Savior had one of the trainers as their mentor who oversaw most of their training and the other three trained them and taught in the area of their expertise. This system was on a cycle so that Arthur, the oldest Savior, and I both had Jordan as our mentor. The other three Saviors each had different mentors.

To the new trainee (who I assumed was done for the day considering the late hour), Jordan was just another trainer and one of the other trainers was his or her mentor.

The trainers were were also the only people who had been in the boss’s office and knew what he or she looked like.

While I was training, I asked my mentor, Jordan, once what was behind the door. Despite my direct question, he never told me and I quickly learned to stop asking questions of that nature. I was rewarded if I proved my loyalty and trust in the Corporation and that’s how we were all trained.

I pulled off my sweatshirt and hung it on one of the pegs lining the walls on either side of the door where several other coats already resided.

“Hey, hey!” boomed a loud, jolly voice behind me. I turned back to the room to see my mentor, Jordan walking towards me from his desk, arms outstretched.

He was a jovial man whose smiles always seemed so genuine, like he was truly happy to see you he was in his late 40’s and the sides of his hair had begun to take on a salt and pepper effect. His eyes were straw colored, produced by a rare genetic mutation that had first been found about eighty years ago and his nose, was a little too small for his face.

Jordan was thin, and in very good shape. He wore an expensive suit. In fact, Jordan made so much money, that he lived in one of the ten mansions in the north end of town. He made twice as much as I did, even with the raise; and I wondered, not for the first time, where the money came from.

I pushed the thoughts out of my head, worried that they would show on my face. Asking was, of course, out of the question. It was a show of distrust. I knew I would not get an answer.

Jordan hugged me and I gave him a stiff, unenthusiastic hug in return. Jordan was the kind of person who was always happy to see his friends. He seemed to me to be very social. I imagined that it was probably hard for him to be cooped up in this basement with minimal human interaction, which made him all the happier to see me.

When Jordan stepped back, he took a good look at my face. I watched as his broad smile slipped a little, his round cheeks sunk. “Step into my office,” he said, stepping into the first cubicle on my left. I knew he was trying to be serious for my sake, but a bit of joke still leaked through his words. There was no private office in which we could talk because everything was public knowledge and there were no secrets, which I quite liked. It was not only a model for my work, but also for my life.

Each of the cubicles was big enough for two people to sit comfortably. I sat on the other rolling office chair across from him. I’d sat in this seat many times: first as a nervous interviewee, then as a nervous trainee and now as a confident employee.

I noticed four new school photos of each of his children pinned to the corkboard that made up the upper half of his cubicle’s wall. I studied them briefly before turning to look him in the eye.

In any other situation, I would have pointed out the pictures and asked how his family was, but I knew how Jordan worked. We would take care of the issues at hand first, and if there was time afterwards, we could enter into the realm of small talk and formalities.

“I know it’s hard, Ethan,” Jordan began. “But you did the right thing and you proved your loyalty once and for all. Most saviors encounter this in their time and I’m glad you did the right thing. You solidified that trust by coming here to report what happened and face your actions, tough as they were. Of course, this is a big deal and you’ll be getting a raise for this.” Jordan began to smile again. “I’m so proud, although you should know, I never doubted you.”

I felt a swell in my chest as I shared Jordan’s sense of pride in me. On the other hand, I did not feel that a raise could compensate for letting that little girl die. Jordan obviously seemed to feel that money was compensation enough to ease my conscience.

He put his hand on my shoulder for a brief moment, withdrew it, and then continued talking. “Now, did anyone see you?”

“There was nobody around,” I replied. “There was nobody around except her and us and I pulled my hood up so that if anybody did come, they couldn’t see my face. I have no idea where her parents were, but we didn’t see them.” I choked back the lump again, imagining her parents finding her. It was less of a lump now, and more of a monster trying to claw its way up my throat and out my eyes and nose.

I paused for a second, deciding whether the question I had in mind would be considered demonstrating distrust if I chose to ask it, but decided to throw caution to the winds. “Jordan, what do they think when we don’t save people?”

To my relief, this seemed to be an appropriate question, and he answered me. “They might think that we were in the wrong place at the wrong time or that we were off saving someone else. These people know you’re only human and there are only five of you protecting 2.4 million of them. That’s what last year’s census said, I think. They all know you’re not a superhero, so don’t put that burden on yourself.”

Jordan paused and I nodded slowly, taking it all in.

“And I assume you told Clarissa?” Jordan prodded.

“It was time,” I replied simply, repressing the monster once and for all.

The smile returned to Jordan’s face. “Yes, it was. I told you, you’d know when it was time. I’m not sure you quite believed me when I first told you, but now you see. You’ve really gone above and beyond what I expected of you.”

“You know, I see you almost as an older brother. It’s good to hear you say that,” I said. There was a slight twinge of uncertainty underneath everything. I fought it, clutching at what Jordan was saying in an effort to convince myself that everything was the same as it had been before, or at the very least, all right.

“The boss,” at this, Jordan gestured to the closed office door, “says you can save one more this month if you want. I mean it’s your choice. You can go on vacation for the rest of the month but if you happen across someone who needs saving, it’s on the house,” Jordan flashed one of his patent smiles.

Jordan rested his hands on the arms of the chair as if to stand, ready to end the meeting, but I held up my hand.

“One last thing,” I said. “Clarissa and I haven’t been on vacation since our honeymoon two years ago. She was wondering what the rules are when it comes to my vacation time.”

“Ethan!” Jordan exclaimed so loudly that I nearly jumped, “everyone needs a vacation sometimes. We know that, the only thing is, you have to stay within an hour away. Just in case we need you for something big: a crime spree, an overactive gang, or a mass armed robbery. That way you can come back quickly and nobody will even no you were gone. Sound good?”

Not as good as it could be, but better than I expected so I just nodded and forced a smile across my face as though he had pacified me with his words, raises and vacations. The truth was, I was still upset, but it wasn’t fair of me to bring Jordan down too. I knew that I wasn’t the first Savior to have this type of case, and he was probably used to dealing with things of this nature.

Jordan cocked his head to one side. “Is that all?” he asked.

When he asked this at the end of each meeting, I was always mildly tempted to ask all the questions that buzzed around my head every time I think stopped to think about my mysterious job, but as usual, I said none of the things that popped into m my head.

I learned the hard way that asking questions breaks the bonds of trust between the Corporation and myself. It also injured the bond between Jordan and me. For some reason I could never understand, I craved Jordan’s trust. I wanted him to trust me so I trusted them. The best kind of trust was a mutual one.

Part of the reason I wanted his trust was because I liked him. Training with him had been challenging, but it had also been fun. He had eased me into Savior life well. During training, he had pushed me hard, but not too hard. I appreciated it because it slowly built my endurance without breaking me.

I sifted through my thoughts to make sure that there was nothing I had forgotten, but I didn’t find anything. I shook my head.

Jordan rose from his chair, as did I, shoving my chair back to the corner of the cubicle where it normally resided. I got my jacket and began walking up the stairs. Jordan grabbed his thicker, and much more weather appropriate coat and walked me up the steps as he always did. We walked through the first door, waited for it to close, and opened the second, (there was no time limit for getting through the doors when exiting). Finally, we stepped into the cool evening air. An involuntary shiver passed through me at the cold, but thankfully Jordan didn’t seem to notice.

It was already dark when we immerged from the warm underground office. Jordan frequently said that his excuse for walking me out was so that he could get some fresh air, but the truth was, he was simply a polite man. It must be hard to work underground all day despite the fact that he got his exercise in training recruits. At least Jordan got some action in his daily work routine.

“It’s nice to be outside,” Jordan said, breathing deeply. “I really love my job but it can get so stuffy down there.”

I simply nodded. I waited for Jordan to fall into step with me and then began walking.

By the time Jordan had walked me to the station (only a block away), we’d covered our usual topics: how his wife was doing, how his kids were doing in school, and how Clarissa was.

Just before I climbed the stairs to get to the platform, Jordan shook my hand and wished me good luck accompanied by another of his blinding smiles, and the regularity made me feel a bit better, and certainly less alone.

I climbed the platform and looked out over the tracks as Jordan turned and walked back to the base. Trash littered every inch of the tracks between the two platforms and mice scurried out from under the rails, poking at the occasional piece of plastic hopefully. This part of the city needed many repairs and there was nobody to make them. Broken windows and dead lawns stretched down the blocks as far as I could see.

As I looked across the city blocks around me, I noticed that it would be impossible to take a car past the first block. There were big chunks of pavement missing, like gaping mouths waiting to swallow the unsuspecting traveller, and other chunks rose to the height of the average car wheel. Only the trolley tracks persisted through the damaged streets.

I could see all of this with the help of the bright trolley station lights and two street lights, one blinking and the other steady, but the rest of the streetlights had burned out some time ago and never been replaced. Clearly the one a block from me was on the verge of doing the same. I could see a few more lights dotting the distance, but their light wasn’t close enough to me to reveal any details. All was quiet except for the occasional shout, door slamming, or running footsteps.

I had saved a few people down here, I recalled, but not many.

There were two ways to determine where I would be patrolling on an average day. The first was that Jordan would call and assign me to a certain area or a specific life-threatening emergency. The other was that I could decide. By doing this, we were able to come across people in danger and save them.

Thinking back, I couldn’t remember a time that Jordan had called me and told me to patrol here. Then a horrible thought struck me: maybe they were biased. Or maybe, a little voice nagged in my head, you’re the biased one for not coming down here and patrolling. Even if they are biased, that makes you guilty of the same.

It occurred to me that even though our headquarters was in this neighborhood, I’d never even stopped to consider that the people in this part of the city needed saving just as much as the people anywhere else. Now that I thought about it, they might need even more saving than the rest of the city. Perhaps more injustice was allowed to fly under the radar here.

The darkness pressed in around me and a chill ran through me. I couldn’t be sure whether it was from the cold or something else. One of the things that some other saviors had trained themselves to do was to endure heat and cold, but it was an optional training and required a lot of work and endurance that I didn’t have.

When I got on the trolley, I sat by the window and stared out into the darkness. I watched as the pavement became less rugged and the roads became smooth. I watched until I saw a brigade of cars surrounding us coincidentally, and then I closed my eyes for the rest of the trip.

Being a Savior was nice because at the end of the day, we got our sense of fulfillment. Sometimes, we felt like we had done our good deed of the day. The truth was that despite the fact that we may have good intensions, we were making money off of it, so did it really count as our good deed of the day?

Maybe this realization was my wakeup call. Maybe it was time to start doing more for not just the people in the south end, but for this city in general.

Before I did that, however, there were a few things that I needed to discuss with Clarissa.

It was nearing 8:30 by the time I walked back into my house. “I’m home,” I called as a wave of warmth hit me. I hung my jacket in the front hall closet. I took off my shoes (Clarissa didn’t like shoes in the house) and replaced them with slippers. I took out a pullover maroon sweater from the closet and put it on. I decided that I had endured enough cold for one day.

Clarissa padded down the stairs, her bare feet silent on the carpeting. “My goodness, you were there a while,” she smiled and hurled herself down the last few steps towards me. “Did you two go for a drink, too?” she joked, entirely forgetting for a moment that she was supposed to be angry with me.

She hugged me so tightly she knocked me back a step. I loved that her hugs always felt so genuine, like she missed me every time we stepped away from each other. Maybe she did. I liked to think so. It seemed like she had forgiven me. Perhaps I would not be confined to the couch after all.

“I didn’t leave here till 6 so not that long ago,” I reminded her. “Anyway, we have a lot to discuss.”

She sighed. “Again?” she complained in a voice of mock annoyance. “I thought we got all that out of the way before you left. I don’t really want to talk about it anymore.”

“I did too, but some things came up today when I was meeting with Jordan. Plus I have an answer on your vacation query.”

“Okay,” she sighed.

“Come, let’s get into something comfy and I’ll tell you all about it.”

Together, we ascended the curving staircase of our home and into the door at the end of the hallway, which was the master bedroom. I watched as Clarissa stripped off her worn clothes and tossed them neatly into the direction of the hamper basket. I marveled at her smooth movements.

As she pulled on a pair of sweatpants, I noted how her underwear highlighted the curves of her butt perfectly.

I grabbed her from behind and kissed her on the cheek. She shrieked with surprise and elbowed me away.

“Back to the couch with you,” she said, a bit playfully, but there was a hard note in her voice that told me plainly that she was not joking.

When we were finally done dressing, Clarissa lay down in bed and wrapped herself in the blankets while I perched on the bottom right corner. I reached out for her hand and she let me take it. Then, I began telling her what Jordan had told me.

When I got to the part about the vacation, Clarissa scoffed. “You’re telling me that you’re basically chained to this town for the rest of the time that you’re a Savior?” she asked incredulously.

“Darling,” I began, “we knew this would be a commitment when you married me. It’s difficult at times, but you knew what you were getting yourself into.”

I backtracked. Reminding her of commitment was probably not the way to go about this situation. “Look, with this raise I got today, I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to take an exotic vacation by yourself.”

“But I want to go with you,” Clarissa said. “And you know I don’t like going on planes by myself.”

“Jordan suggested that we could go to the beach if I finish my saving early next month. It’ll be a lot warmer than right now.”

“Ok,” Clarissa agreed although I could tell it wasn’t her favorite idea for a vacation.

“And you can take a separate vacation afterwards, if you want,” I told her.

“What did you get that raise for anyway?” Clarissa asked.

I hesitated. What should I say? Watching a little girl die or for being more loyal to my job than to my morals?

I said neither of these things, however. Instead I simply said, “It was for my loyalty and hard work, especially this month.”

“Ooh! That’s great!” Clarissa said sounding a bit forced. “Keep it up and we’ll be able to afford one of those big mansions in the north end of town!”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself just yet,” I warned her, shaking my finger at her. “No Savior has ever made that much money.”

She laughed and mock-punched my arm. Then she settled into the pillow and stretched her limbs as far as they would go, and closed her eyes, her hair splayed around her head, and her face relaxing into peacefulness.

“There’s one thing I’ve been thinking though,” I said quickly, before I lost my nerve.

“Mmmm,” she hummed, hinting to me that she was getting ready to sleep, but that she was still listening.

“It’s just that there is so much that needs to be done in the south end of town. I don’t think you’ve ever been down there, have you?”

“Only that one time I got moved to that department when they’re understaffed. I remember what it was like.” Her voice had gotten much softer, carrying with it with the warning of impending sleep.

“Maybe we should talk about this in the morning?” I asked, fearing that she would fall asleep in the middle of our conversation.

“No, I’m listening,” she murmured.

“We have so much, and they have so little. If we gave just five percent of my paycheck to helping repair the roads, putting in streetlights, and picking up trash, we could do so much. We could help families who are struggling pay rent and maybe even create some jobs for the people down there by paying people to fix the things that need repair. And you do our accounting. You know that with my new salary, 5% will barely be a dent for us. So what do you say?” I concluded lamely.

“I think five percent sounds fine to me. I like the idea” she murmured, “maybe even six would be fine. I think you should start with the roads. I heard a lecture speaker once who said that having nice looking infrastructure can help lead to a reduced crime rate. Also, if you fix the roads, it will be easy to get repair teams in to fix other things.”

“You’re a genius!” I exclaimed, resisting the urge to hug her and rouse her from her almost sleep state. “I’m so glad you’re on board with this. I love you so much and I’m glad you’re not greedy.”

“I have everything I need and more,” she replied, “what is there to be greedy about?”

“I was also thinking I should start patrolling down there every so often while I’m at it. I realize that nobody really goes down there except when there’s a call, which almost never happens. Anyway, they need our help just as much as the rest of the city, and why shouldn’t they get it? Besides, I get paid, regardless of whom I save.”

“Ok, sounds good, honey,” she said, and I could tell that I was losing her.

Just as I was about to stand up, however, Clarissa spoke. “You know, it scares me sometimes.”

I sat back on the edge of the bed, a little closer to her, this time. “What does?” I asked.

“Your job,” she mumbled into her pillow. “Almost every time you save someone, you’re putting yourself in danger.”

“Do you know how many times the average person encounters and avoids danger in a week? They told us for women over 21, it’s 13 times per day and for men its 19. You’re in just as much danger on a day to day basis as I am.”

“No, I’m not. I’m a Savior’s wife. Not everybody recognizes me, but some people know who I am. They’d never let me keel over. If you couldn’t save me, someone else would.”

She was right, but I’d never thought of that before. It made me happy. I had always spent more time worried about her because she was my wife, but looking at it in this new light, it seemed that I didn’t have to worry.

“Regardless, I’m trained to be able to take care of myself,” I informed her.

“But you’re only 25!” she retorted.

“And you aren’t much older! What’s that got to do with anything?” I asked her.

“Well you’re just so young and if anything happened to you...” she trailed off.

“And it wouldn’t be the first or the last time a Savior died so young. I knew what I was getting into when I took this job. I knew what this job meant and I’m not worried, so you shouldn’t be either. I’m tied to this job and worrying has no effect on the outcome. Besides, I hate to see you worry.”

“You’re right,” she sighed opening her eyes and facing me. I brushed her hair back from her face and she didn’t push me away. The tiredness I had felt earlier hit me once more, coercing me towards the sofa and the thought of sleep.

“Don’t get used to taking up that much space. I’ll be back eventually,” I warned as I slid my book off my nightstand and backed out the door.

I trudged down the hall to the linen cupboard. I got out a sleeping bag and then I went to the sofa.

I had a lot running through my mind, and it only took me two pages before I felt ready for sleep. My brain needed a rest from all the thoughts spinning around in it.

The gears in my head began winding down and by the time I close my eyes, I was ready to go to sleep. Unfortunately, my dreams were restless, and terrifying.

I dreamed I was inside the dead girl’s body, looking out through her removed eyes as her parents cried over me. I looked down at my hands through the darkness of this gruesome body suit to find them covered in her blood, muscles, and splinters of bone. My hands were the claws of a monster, and I was growing fur and teeth to match. I put my claws into the inside of her flesh and made to pull her apart, to get out and release the monster I now was upon the world.

When I woke up, I found a tear track running down the left half of my face.