Hello, Mercy

Lunar Awards Season Three Submission

Some people are haunted by ghosts. I was never haunted by evil things, only good things. The first time I became aware of Mercy was when I was six years old. The other kidnapped children saw him, too. At first he was just a light in the corner of the ceiling. He should have been a shadow in the corner, but he wasn’t. He was bright like an LED bulb, only there was no lamp. I focused on him during the recordings and the subsequent beatings. I felt his goodness, but I never understood why something so good would be present in a room full of men possessed by evil.

Before I started calling him Mercy, we nicknamed him the balloon, since he was a sort of ball of light. Some of the kids had had birthday parties before they were taken. Balloons of every color, one of the boys said. If you sucked in the air, it made your voice sound like a cartoon character. Every child at the party had a balloon. When no one else was around, we would play games to see who could jump the highest and touch the balloon. We always got close, but no one laid hold of him.

I would have nightmares. I always dreamt that I was at a birthday party. I think I could see my parents. I think they were happy. We were happy. I was holding a balloon. The men came and took me from behind. They held my mouth shut. I saw my parents looking for me. I saw a woman motioning at the balloon in the sky and screaming, frantically, “That is Freddie’s balloon. Where are you, Freddie?” I would always wake up before I could yell back that I am right here.

I was one of the only boys from the original batch of children remaining in the warehouse. The other kids had been sent to various warehouses. They called it a promotion. I’m not sure I would want to take my chances with unknown evil. I’d rather stay with the familiar routine, as painful as it was, and the balloon was still there in the corner. I felt a fondness toward him.

One night, when I was twelve, I didn’t have a nightmare.

I was at the same birthday party, the one that began all my nightmares, but I didn’t feel afraid. I was holding a balloon in my hand. I looked up to see what color it was. It was just a soft, warm light, like the morning sun on a field of waving wheat. As I stared into the light, my eyes adjusted, and I saw something. I saw a person in the light.

“Don’t be afraid, Freddie,” the person said.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I have been sent to protect you,” he said.

I laughed, “Protect me? Can you get me out of here, then?”

“I can only serve the use for which I was created.”

“That doesn’t sound helpful. Can you give me money?” I asked.

“I can give you something more valuable than that: Mercy.”

When I woke up in the night, I felt an invisible blanket around me. It was warm. I knew what it wasn’t. It wasn’t a nightmare. It was Mercy.

At thirteen, I did the same things to six-year-olds that they had done to me. I tried to position myself with my back turned toward Mercy, but when I glanced at the corner of the room, he was still there, hovering.

At sixteen, I stopped looking.

At seventeen, I stopped remembering.

At eighteen, I was arrested and sentenced to twenty years in federal prison.

In solitary confinement, I had nothing to prove to anyone on the outside. There were no fools to defraud. There were no external systems to master. But my mind was a cruel prison. There were at least ten of me living inside my mind, and none of them got along.

“You are a sick, demented animal. You are not human,” said contempt Freddie.

“They deserved what they got. All of them,” said domination Freddie.

“They would have done it to me if we had been in opposite roles,” said protective Freddie.

“You are a soulless creature,” said guilty Freddie.

“I did what I had to, to survive. What would you have had me do?” said desperate Freddie.

“He enjoyed every moment,” said evil Freddie.

“He was just a little boy when he was kidnapped, and now he is sitting in this cell, still a prisoner. He has never known freedom,” said understanding Freddie.

“You can figure a way out of this. It wasn’t your fault. You don’t deserve to be treated this way,” said manipulative Freddie.

“I hate you. I hate everything about you,” said self-destruction Freddie.

“I see a balloon,” said little Freddie.

All ten of us saw the balloon in the corner of the room. A white balloon that cast no shadow. Little Freddie reached out to grab the balloon. But domination Freddie gut-punched the child.

“You disgust me,” said contempt Freddie.

“Are you going to betray us now, after all we have done to keep you alive?” said desperate Freddie.

“There is no mercy left for someone like you,” said guilty Freddie.

“He is going to murder the guard to pay us back for his stupidity,” said evil Freddie.

“He can’t help but reach out to something that he thinks will help him,” said understanding Freddie.

“That thing might not be good for me. I don’t want to risk it,” said protective Freddie.

“Mercy doesn’t exist, just like you don’t exist,” said self-destruction Freddie.

“I promise to be better to you if you just sit back down and listen to us,” said manipulative Freddie.

Little Freddie sat back down on the floor. The world began to spin. An overhead speaker garbled a message, “Everything okay in there, Freddie?”

Protective Freddie said, “No, I think we overdosed on something the nightshift gave us.”

“Okay, Freddie, stay calm. We are calling medical.”

“It’s okay, don’t revive him,” said self-destruction Freddie.

“Can you send someone in here, please?” said manipulative Freddie.

“We’re sending in medical. Hang tight,” said the voice.

“Send in a guard for us to play with. He doesn’t need medical,” said evil Freddie.

Little Freddie’s world was a kaleidoscope of colors. He reached out for the balloon, and this time, he grabbed hold of the dangling string. “Gotcha!” said Little Freddie. “Hello, Mercy!”

“Hello, Freddie,” said Mercy.

“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” said Little Freddie.

“I’ve been here watching over you.”

“You didn’t keep me safe. Why?” asked Little Freddie.

“I was sent with a purpose, and I carried out the purpose for which I was sent.”

“What was that purpose?” asked Little Freddie.

“To protect you, that no matter where you were, no matter how good or how bad things became, there would always be a part of you that would reach out for me.”

“And now, I got you!” said Little Freddie, with joy.

“Yes, Little one. Now you have grabbed hold of that which you could not obtain on your own, and tonight, I will take you home. We will celebrate.”

“Like a birthday party?” asked Little Freddie.

“Yes, like a birthday party. A coming home party.”

The world began to fade around me.

“But before we go, Little one, will you bring the others with you or leave them behind?” Mercy asked.

“They haven’t been very nice to me. Some of them even want me dead,” said Little Freddie.

“Do you want them dead, too?” Mercy asked again.

Little Freddie paused, then took a deep breath and spoke.

“Hi, everyone. Are you listening? There is a chance for us to go together where there is no more pain,” said Little Freddie. “Thank you for helping me survive. Now your job is done. You can rest.”

“We did a lot of wrong things in the name of surviving, Little Freddie,” they said.

“I know. You did a lot of wrong things. It was me, too. I did them, too. That’s why we are in prison, but this prison cell is a mercy compared to what we deserve.”

“How can we just leave together, like that? Isn’t that too easy? Don’t we deserve to die?” they asked.

“We do deserve to die. But today, we have Mercy.”

I grabbed the balloon for all of us, and I felt a tug, like a zipper coming undone around my face. I burst through, and Mercy carried us away.