Fiction: The Soul Guardian 1

~ January 2005 ~

Another soul forgotten. How easy for humans to abandon each other. At this late hour, in this dark alleyway dumpster, there are few humans passing by. Even with a light beaming down on her, she goes unnoticed.
    Anson kneels down by the child and places a hand on her small form curved in a fetus position. His warmth will do little for this young one. The child's soul appears beside him. He straightens up and looks her over. Such a fragile child but she cannot leave, not yet. Anson doesn't like it but it's not his decision.
    She tugs his hand. Anson pulls away and points to her body. "You belong there," he says in a calm voice. He gives her a gentle tap on her shoulder and she seeps back into her body. He whistles. A dog's bark echoes. Taking a few steps back, Anson eases into the shadows.
    A doberman steps into the light follow by a woman holding onto the dog's leash. Quickly, she assesses the situation and takes out her phone. Anson leaves before the dog can react to his presence.
    Further down the streets, Anson continues his walk. A quaver sweeps over the land - a chorus like cries of lost children echoed lightly in the air. Anson stops. A sinking feeling like he has missed something comes over him. The sound vanishes bit by bit. All soul guardians can hear and feel this disquiet every one hundred days but no one knows what it truly means. Anson lets out a breath.
    With a single thought, he can move from place to place but that is a rather dull way to travel. He prefers to use his body and keep the human habit. He has no worries about time and yet, everything he does depends on time. A second, a minute, might mean the difference between living and dying.
    He soon comes to a three-story house. Inside, a man is pounding his fat fists into a woman. She falls onto broken bottles on the floor. Her fingers find a large piece and she shoves the shard into the man's right thigh. He collapses to the floor. His soul appears beside his body. Beady eyes look from his body to Anson. Anson gives the man a hard shove, sending his soul back into his body. Without thinking, Anson presses a foot on the man's wound making him scream. After a few seconds, Anson releases his foot. It isn't his place to punish. The man falls unconscious.
    The woman scrambles away from the man, not even noticing her bare left foot is bleeding. Long years of violence has unstrung her. She trembles but her eyes remain dry as she shifts her body into a tight ball. Anson places a hand on her shoulder. The warmth from his touch provides poor comfort. She continues to sit and stare. In a few moments, she will call the police. Anson leaves. It isn't pleasant to linger. The man will continue almost without any regrets while the woman will be haunted for the rest of her life.
    Out in the open night air, Anson takes in a breath though he doesn't need it. His next assignment is far away. He must travel by thought. He appears inside a collapsed building where two men and a woman are crawling their way through an air duct to get inside. Their headlamps light the space and their dirt-covered faces. Anson leaves them and appears inside an open area. Under a pile of fallen ceiling, a boy and his brother are unconscious. Beside them, their mother lies on her stomach, dead, like the others in the semi-darkness. One of the boys is clutching an mp3 player. Anson flicks his fingers and the player's screen brightens. He chooses a slow song and turns up the volume to the highest level and then he waits. Later, he watches the boys being carried out but he doesn't stay.
    The night is long. But as he starts walking toward his next assignment, the little child from before appears beside him. He presses his lips tight. He must be resolute. She must go back. He turns around and the child follows.

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This week's Words for Wednesday prompts are: abandon, vanish, quaver, unstring, poor.  More Words for Wednesday over here.