The Observer
     by D.K. Smith     

---

        The killer knows that he is killing, while the dying man knows he is being killed.

         A chill wind whistled across the frozen plain.  A snowflake fell, and many others followed, until they all drifted down like stars, crying.
        I followed a uniformed man through the snow.  He glared at me at times, but I maintained my bland affect.  The officer could have beaten me for trailing him, but he saw the Observers' insignia on my coat.  So instead he ignored me, and we plodded rhythmically through the snow, under sheets of ice which coated the black, crumbling skyscrapers of a dying city.
        No one trod that white desert with us.  Occasionally, the tops of decomposing black towers would peak through the ice, betraying the location of the slums.  Hunger roared in my belly, but no new rations had been released as of late from the Sanctuary. Even my heat robe was losing its power, it had became tattered, and as time passed it slowly lost the synthetics which kept me warm even in these sub-zero temperatures.
        Static screeched suddenly from the police officer's earmike.  He yelled and slapped his ear, and shook loose a small microphone.  I waited impassively as he swore withering curses about old Russian equipment, then he hesitantly returned the microphone to its proper place, and listened.  The thickness of the officer's coat obscured his expression.  Once the message was complete, however, his walk gained purpose, and I followed him.
        A good fifteen minutes passed before I saw the crime scene.  Police bubbles hung in the sky, long ramps leading to the ground from their doors.  The bubble's incandescent walls flashed with colors comprising bright and florid spectrums, warning of police business.  The hues sparkled over the snow, lighting the air in arcing pulses which seemed to weep deep red.
        The body lay surrounded by a circle of men: a woman, half naked, her breasts and stomach frostbitten.  Below her, the ice was colored crimson, as if she had died in a warm red quilt.  I sighed as I studied her, seeing the frozen blood, and her blue flesh. . .truly a miracle.
        "What have you found?" the big officer asked, the decaying skyscrapers reflecting darkly off his badge.
        "Seems she was dragged from Downtown.   You can see the tatters of her business coat.  Her purse is gone.  And someone cut her face."
        The officer leaned down and touched the woman's chin, and turned it slowly.  Her face was a bloody web of cuts, and her eyes were gouged.  He cursed and let the head fall back.  "Any witnesses?" he asked.  The other frowned negatively.  With a grunt the officer rose, and by chance spotted me again.  "Who are you watching for?" he asked harshly.  "For God?  Or for the Devil?  Or just for that stupid sect that you belong to?  Have a view of a killer's work--add that to your memories."
        I bowed my head and began mouthing the prayers.
        The officer shook his head and said to the  young officer near him, "I can't figure out these Observers, Miki.  I used to think they prayed for the dead. . .now I wonder."
        "They say we should all find beauty in suffering," replied the young man sarcastically.
        I said nothing, merely let equanimity remain on my face as I raised my head, and stared unblinkingly at the body before me.  Blood dripped over pale flesh, over her brow, mingled with her brown hair--"Hey!" the young police officer cried.  He shoved me and broke my gaze.  "You can't stare at a naked corpse like that!"  His eyes were hot red.  "It's--it's--wrong!"
        I eyed him blandly.  His eyes searched mine.
        "C'mon," said the big officer slowly.  "He's just a religious nut, that's all.  Seen members of his sect all over the place."
        "People who can see but won't touch are made of nothing," said the young officer, his gaze not moving.
        "Then you've just described ninety-five percent of humanity, son," said the older officer tiredly.  "If we'd done anything about what we saw, we'd have stopped the pollution and the Green House effect and the Earth wouldn't be in its latest ice age.  We'd all be walking down the streets, singing summer songs.  Instead, we're out here in the ice slums patrolling for a killer, eh?  C'mon, leave the Observer alone."

        I followed the same big cop the next day--Nikita was his name.  He scowled at me often, and his eyes had an intense glint in them, as if he despised me.  But I followed him, like a ghost, and he let me.  Eventually he led me to another body.
        This crime scene was in a slum neighborhood like the last one.  A doorway hung open in the snowy ground, a black hole leading into some building half buried in the ice.  Hovering media bubbles shined lights down the dark opening, feeding the latest news to the bored rich huddled in the Sanctuary.  "Look at them," Officer Nikita shouted.  "The only time the reporters ever come here is when there's a newsworthy killing.  They don't give a damn about the poverty, or the suffering of the living--the rich folks just watch us from the Sanctuary, like we're their entertainment, the fucks!"  He shook his finger at the hovering bubbles.  "Up your fucking arse, ya damned assholes!"
        One of the detectives beckoned Officer Nikita and he joined them.
        Quietly I walked to deep hole.  A flight of stairs lead downward.  Perhaps it was merely my angle, but I suddenly saw a very faint line--perhaps a string--stretched across the bottom stair.  If it was a trap someone had placed it well, for the shadow of anyone entering would hide the trip wire from view.  "Hey!" I heard Officer Nikita shout.  "Get away from there! Nobody's been down there yet!"
        "We should send someone down there," said one of the detectives.  "She was obviously killed inside, so we might find some evidence. . ."
        I returned to wait with the junior officers.  It was with the utmost detachment that I watched Officer Nikita, as he got heavy boots, a flashlight, and an oxygen mask.  "You sure there's nothing dangerous down there?" he asked, more as a joke than anything else.  Then with a wave, he started down.
        Moments later, a brilliant flash--I heard a terrified scream, cut in mid-wail by the sound of the explosion.  Officer Nikita's head flew through the hole and landed solidly in the snow not two meters from me.  The people around me screamed, but I watched his eyes.  I watched Nikita's eyes move in his severed head, he was crying, for a brief second still alive and aware. . .and I saw the light of Him in those dying eyes.  The sight was so beautiful, so touching.  I thanked Him for the red of blood, for the hard icy air and the human suffering which humbled us all.
        "You fucking bastard," swore one of the nearby cops.
        I attempted to hide the look of bliss on my face as I stared into another young face; I saw it was Miki, the cop I had talked to yesterday.
        "He's dead," he shouted hysterically, "He's dead, and you just watch--you FUCKING pervert!"
        So young and so brave, and yet so naive, so inexperienced.  He did not know that suffering was all we truly had--
        He lunged at me, but his fellow officers grabbed him.  I watched as he struggled against their bonds, I watched the shift of his muscles, the bulge of the cords in his neck.
        A detective approached.  "What's this?" he asked loudly.
        The other officers released Miki, and they all stood quietly.  "Nothing, Detective."
        The detective shrugged.  "It was a bomb," he said, stating the obvious.  "The bastard must have rigged it.  That's the second body we've found in this district, with the same cuts upon the face.  I--" the detective stopped.  "I'll. . .have to be telling his wife. . ."  He shook his head, and asked in a stronger voice, "Who is this man here?"
        "He's an Observer, the sorry rat," answered a junior officer.
        "Hmph.  If I were he, I'd be worried.  Supposedly this serial killer will be stalking an Observer next."
        My eyes widened.  For a moment, I might have revealed surprise.
        "We've talked to other police bureaus," the detective said.  "This killer--a.k.a. The Ice Killer wanders from city to dying city, each time killing two random victims, but the third. . .it is always an Observer."
        The young officer laughed.  "Get your due now, won't you, you fucking bastard!  Hah!"
        "What's an Observer?" asked a particularly green officer.
        The detective shook his bald head at the other's ignorance, his fat, bearded cheeks quivering.  "The Observer sect started when the public first learned that environment was doomed," he said.  "They believed that we had so little time left, that we had to find beauty in anything, everything."  The Detective frowned.  "Ironically, the founders of the Observers were originally news reporters, movie makers--it was started by members of the media.  Some, like this rat, frequent crime scenes." His eyes found mine, and they were hard and hateful.  "I hope you die horribly," he said.
        Then he trudged away, huffing through the metal alleys to the snow covered tundra.  Some officers were putting Nikita's head into a bag.

        I no longer had Nikita to follow; occasionally that fact made me sad.  Yet I had my Purpose, and so I threw myself to the faceless white city.  I wandered over the snow, knowing that beneath it metropolises lay buried, only the tips of their towers sticking from the ice as reminders of a disappearing age.  They were symbols of the slow demise of humanity, and suitably they were mostly dark, and quiet, and no one roamed, not even during daylight.  Sometimes a loud bang or moan escaped the rotting metal towers, evidence of some unknown life which existed within them.
        The sky was overcast with clouds, and I had no shadow.  It was as if I walked through a dream land.  My feet left fading tracks in the ground.  It was snowing again, and hunger began to gnaw my insides once more.  The rations from the Sanctuary came more and more rarely, as did the synthetic coats which kept us warm in the endless cold.  I do not know why I felt this fear.  Was it some mysterious premonition, or some irrationality?  For a moment, I saw the beauty in a creature's instinctive lust for life; I thanked Him.
        A rustle in the snow behind me.  I stopped, unreasonably frightened.  "Hold it there, man," said a soft voice.  "I wish you no harm."
        I turned.  I beheld a smiling man of a fair complexion.  Something about him made me dislike him, but I kept my expression taciturn, for by the very tenets of my sect I could make no judgements.  Most interesting, however, was that he wore a coat which bore the Observer's insignia.
        "I wish to find someone to hold this for me."  The man removed a knife from his coat.  He must have seen me pale, for instantly he lowered the knife in a nonthreatening manner.  "No, kind sir," he said.  "Please. . .I just need you to hold this knife for me."  And he held it outstretched, the hilt pointed between my eyes.
        I took it.  Now empty handed, the man smiled and left.
        The sudden return of quiet unnerved me.  I fingered the blade before secreting it into my coat.  It was not for me to question, it was only for me to be.  It was not my place to wonder why a man had just--
        Abruptly a scream pierced the dead sky.  I rushed in the voice's direction, and in the dim light near another half buried tower, I saw two men fighting.  Instantly I was silent, motionless.  All my senses became alert, as I observed.
        I heard the crack of knuckles against bones, the thud of flesh losing its blood.  I heard the crack of a limb and the howl which wailed over the pristine white.  Now the winner was beating the loser to death, like the winter beat to death the Earth.  Here was the glory of man!  For who else would wreak such violence, and who else would take their God-given potential and render it so worthless and cruel?  Truly, it must have been Planned.  It was His plan that we were to be lower than the dogs, to be sink into Evil, and we must rejoice.  I fell to my knees and offered up my hands in prayer, the knife the blond Observer had given me falling into the snow.  Trembling with divine tears, I watched and did nothing as the beaten man died.
        In the long distance the lights of the new weatherproof skyscrapers were shining.  They were the towers of the Sanctuary.  I could see them through the darkening clouds, they were like misbegotten stars, glowing by day.  There the rich people lived, the affluent ones, there in the black towers impervious to the freezing dark.  They, I realized, would become the new Observers.  They would live out the Ice Age with their hoarded wealth, and watch the poor and the wanderers like me freeze slowly to death on their screens, thinking how sad, how sad. . .
        I shook my head.  Something was wrong tonight.  Someone was following me, someone was after my soul.
        "So."
        I spun.  The Observer with the fair-complexion stood behind me.
        "Tell me, brother, if I may call you such," he said, nodding to my coat, "Did you see beauty in the death of that man, there?"
        I looked to the corpse in the ice, the beaten man, the Loser.  I yearned to express the beauty I had seen with him.
        The blond man stared at me with eyes too knowing, too dark.  He knew me too well.
        He laughed, and my knees became weak.  I almost reached for the fallen dagger, but I then I stopped.  I was an Observer, and by that very tenement I could take no action. . .
        "You're a fool," the man scorned.  "You're nothing but a pair of eyes.  You're a man who does nothing with his hands, or with his will.  I gave you that knife because I knew that not ten feet from you a defenseless man was being beaten, I gave you a weapon so that you could intervene and perhaps save him.  But you did nothing--nothing!"  The man neared me, his anger palpable, his wrath like a hot blade.  "Yet you," said he in a whisper, "have the audacity to speak of Him?"
        I wanted to tell him, tell that one must see beauty in everything, even cruelty, that only by loving Him even as we saw cruelty may we truly become one with Him, that only by being able to see, feel, share and love the pain.
        The man withdrew a knife from his vest.  It was long, sharp and silver.
        He raised his knife, slowly.  Our eyes locked together.  And I knew he would kill me.  It was in his eyes.  I observed the beginning of my death in his eyes. . .such a horribly terrible beauty, to look into a man's eyes and know he would kill me.
        "Now share the pain," he whispered.
        He plunged the blade into my chest.
        The sensation was strange, like a tickle.  But then he twisted it.  And slowly I fell to my knees, our eyes still locked, my blue against his grey, and the wrath gleamed in them with holy glory, like the wrath of God--"Watch me," he whispered, in a calm yet awful voice, as my body trembled and my mouth formed a soundless O, "Watch me," as I stared into his eyes, as he saw me die, as I watched him watch me die. . ."Watch," he said, "Watch like the rest of humanity, my friend."
        That's when I saw it--hovering distantly in the sky, just above the black sky towers of the Sanctuary--a Media bubble, its bright spotlight pointed on us.
        They were watching, too.
        He withdrew the knife, spilling my red death onto the ice.  "No!" I screamed shrilly, forgetting my oath of silence, forgetting everything I stood for, forgetting everything only to scream at the sky, at the floating black bubble--"HELP me--"
        He laughed and stabbed the knife into my eyes.

Copyright 1999 D.K. Smith