I sat there stunned for a moment, and then I said, “So what should I do? Head back to your city?”

  “Oh, there’s no way in hell that you should do that.” the person said, “The odds of you being captured are way too likely. I’ll text you an address, and then you should just drive to the address, and the address is far far away from the city you’re from.” and then the call ended and I soon received a text with an address.

  I figured that I may as well just go to the address, and so I drove and drove and drove, and it took me several days to finally reach the address.

  When I reached the address, Zay was already there and so were her parents!

  I was in shock, and I told her parents that it was nice to meet them and that I was glad that they were free now!

  They thanked me, and then they explained that the reason why they had reached the address before I had was because they had flown instead of driven.

  “So who was it who captured you?” I asked; and Zay’s Mom who was named Paula began to tell me about what had happened.

  “So Herbert and I were taken away from Zay, and we were desperate to get back to her but our captors assured us that there was no way that that would ever happen.

  We asked them who they were, and they told us that they were with the government, but they wouldn’t say any more than that.

  And so Herbert and I were just kept confined for all of those years, and we never really figured out much about what was going on until someone approached our cell and told us that they had discovered that Zay had ended up doing vigilante killing like we had.

  The person then told us that they were going to wait for an opportune moment to capture her and imprison her with us.

  Herbert and I were very distressed about this news, and we desperately hoped that our captors would fail to capture Zay, but we knew that they were very talented folks and that they would probably achieve their goal before long.

  And before long they did capture Zay, and when she was imprisoned with us she told us all about what had led to her becoming a vigilante killer, and we were so incredibly furious and outraged and heartbroken about how those evil men had brutally attacked our baby girl and murdered our grandkid!

  Shortly after Zay telling us about the horrors that she had been through, some people arrived at our cell to rescue us, and we quickly went with them and they drove us to a plane and the pilot of the plane flew us very close to this home that we’re now in.

  Right now, we’re still waiting to find out what missions The Vigilantes might ask for us to do, and Zay has explained to us that you had said that you wanted to help her but that you didn’t necessarily want to do any vigilante killing.”

  “Well, I’m certainly glad that you 3 have been reunited after all of these years,” I said, “and I am indeed happy to help Zay and you two but I don’t want to be involved in any killing.”

  The 4 of us continued talking, and then The Vigilantes soon contacted us and began providing Zay and her parents with vigilante killing missions to do.

  I stayed true to my word, and I did not involve myself in the killing at all but instead I prepared meals and cleaned around the house and gardened and whatnot.

  After many months of this, Zay and I ended up falling in love, and we got married and then eventually had several kids.

  Because of the fact that Zay now had kids, she and her parents eventually told The Vigilantes that they wouldn’t be able to do any more vigilante killing missions, and so we all settled into living pretty normal and boring lives which was fine with me because I still really didn’t like killing even if the people who were being killed were all murderers.

  The kids that Zay and I had were named Chloe, Nick, and Tim; and we tried very very hard to give them good childhoods that would help prepare them for adulthood.

  Then one day I saw on the news that a lot of corruption had been removed from the police department in the city where I’d been a police at, and it seemed like the new police department was being held much more accountable than the police department had been before.

  I hoped that the new folks in the police department actually were being far more ethical and moral, and I hoped that the new regulations and police accountability measures that were now in place would stay in place and would be as effective as possible, and I hoped that even more police accountability measures would be enacted in the coming years.

  I then discovered that the Ghasts had now mostly relocated to other places and that they didn’t have as big of a presence in my former city anymore.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  I was glad that their plans to take over the city had failed, and I hoped that they wouldn’t be able to take over any other cities either because they seemed like they’d always be bad news no matter what places they were operating in.

  I mean, how would one ever even reform a group called the Ghasts? The name itself is all about using fear tactics, and I didn’t see how a group with that name could ever be a force for good for anybody…

  Anyway though, after a while Tim, Nick, and Chloe got old enough that they were adults and they all ended up moving out of the house but they still lived pretty close to where we were and we’d see them pretty often.

  None of them had ever been informed that their Mom and grandparents had been working with The Vigilantes, and that was a very good thing as far as I was concerned.

  Unfortunately though, since the kids were no longer dependents of Zay and I, Zay began telling me that she really wanted to get back into vigilante killing.

  “Please Zay,” I begged, “it’s not a good idea! We don’t want to do anything that could make us into targets!

  Haven’t you done enough vigilante killing in your life to last you for the rest of this lifetime?”

  She told me that I was correct, but something in her tone of voice made me doubt that she was being sincere, but I decided to just hope that she was being sincere.

  But then she began disappearing at strange times and becoming more distant, and I became convinced that she had gotten back into vigilante killing without telling me about it because she figured that I would never approve.

  And so I went to Paula and Herbert and told them about the conversation that I’d had with her and about how she’d been disappearing and being more distant lately, and they frowned and said that it did indeed seem likely that that meant that Zay had gotten back into being a vigilante killer.

  They said that they’d try to figure out what the best way to proceed was, and they said that they’d speak with me again once they figured something out.

  I was so worried!

  I mean, some people said that killing could be addictive, and I wondered if maybe Zay was addicted to killing…

  But then maybe it was fueled by her righteous outrage, but just because outrage was righteous didn’t mean that killing murderers because of that outrage wouldn’t end up putting our kids in harm’s way!

  And just because our kids weren’t our dependents anymore didn’t mean that enemies who we might make wouldn’t be willing to target them!

  This was a disaster!

  And this disaster had to be stopped before it could lead to our kids being targeted!

  I began sleeping a lot less and fretting a lot more, and I was constantly trying to figure out how to convince Zay to stop doing the vigilante killing that she was probably doing again.

  But I just didn’t seem to be able to figure anything out!

  Was this going to be my entire life now? Just feeling constant fear and worry all the time?

  But then one day Herbert and Paula met with me and said that they’d figured out a plan to try to convince Zay to stop doing her vigilante killing.

  They said that they would falsely admit to her that they’d gotten back into vigilante killing but that they were terrified that they would make enemies by doing it who might end up targeting their family to hurt them!

  Then they would ask Zay what they should do, and they were hoping that Zay’s response would be to admit that she had gotten back into vigilante killing too, and then the 3 of them could all make a pact to stop doing vigilante killing once and for all for the sake of protecting Chloe, Nick, and Tim; and that pact would cause Zay to give up the vigilante killing that she was doing.

  I said that that sounded like a great plan to me!, and a few weeks later I noticed that Zay wasn’t being as distant and that she wasn’t disappearing a lot like she had been before.

  Just to confirm that the plan had worked though, I asked Paula and Herbert about it when I got a chance to, and they said that the plan had indeed worked perfectly and that they were very confident that Zay would never do any vigilante killing again.

  I was very very happy about this, and over the next few weeks and months it became clear that Zay’s pact with her parents was something that was very likely to prevent her from ever being a vigilante killer again!

  Eventually, Zay told me about how she had gone back to vigilante killing for a while and about how her parents had told her that they’d gone back to vigilante killing too which had prompted the 3 of them to make a pact to never do vigilante killing again so that they wouldn’t make enemies and endanger Tim, Nick, and Chloe.

  I told her that I was very proud of her and her parents for having made that pact and that the 3 of them were correct to put the safety of Chloe, Nick, and Tim first.

  She said that it troubled her that she had even gone back to vigilante killing for a while, but she said that the burning anger at murderers had just been so strong in her that she’d acted against her better judgement by going back to vigilante killing for a while.

  “I totally understand.” I said, “And it is horrible to know that there are murderers out there. Do you think that things will ever improve in the world to the point where nobody’s wicked enough to attack and murder people anymore?”

  “I don’t know…” Zay said, “But I do know that the longer I live the more convinced I become that evil always messes things up and is completely worthless and disgusting. But evil seems to be a permanent fixture in our world for some terrible and deeply troubling reason. Maybe in the afterlife there are places where there’s no evil and all that people know is good?”

  “I sure hope so,” I said, “and maybe that’s one of the things that this life is all about. Is preparing us to make a choice for the afterlife. A choice about whether we want to go to an afterlife where we know only good, an afterlife where we know good and evil, or an afterlife where we only know evil. And I’ve certainly had enough encounters with evil in this life to know that I want to end up in the afterlife where people only know good!”

  “You and me both, my love, you and me both…” Zay said in a sad but also hopeful tone of voice; and then the two of us decided to go to a park and enjoy a peaceful and relaxing walk, and as we walked along while holding hands I prayed to whatever God might be out there that God had an unlimited amount of good things in store for Zay, myself, our family, and for everyone who was sick and tired of evil and wanted for good to triumph in every situation.

  The End