Chapter 549: Don’t Fear The Reaper, Fear Me

Oh, begging for death is too kind.

My first destination was a well-isolated and secluded area near an active lava flow. From the looks on the faces of the men and women waiting for my arrival, they knew this spot well.

“Wonderful,” I said, alarming them more. “You already know how slowly it takes the lava flow here to burn away the clothing, flesh, hair, and bone as a child slowly sinks into the slow-moving lava. Do any of you believe in the Hawaiian Gods?”

“What is this fucking shit? Mind games and intimidation may force a confession, but it is done under duress and won’t be admissible in any court of law,” one guy yelled at me.

“I don’t think I asked about anything you may or may not have done. I asked if you believed in any of the Hawaiian gods,” I told him.

While some did, they were all raised on the islands and knew the various legends.

I smiled and told them, “My daughter swims in lava.”

I gave them a few minutes to let that sink in. One wailed in pure unbridled fear when the revelation of what I said hit them. Those skeptical of what I told them couldn’t question what they saw. I went to the area with the bright orange strip of exposed lava and jumped in. I faced them as my clothing burned off when I sank into the lava.

I went under and swam toward another exposed section of lava, where I climbed out, covered in lava.

As I walked toward them, the lava ran down my body. I stood there a foot away from them, half-covered in lava. The heat was intense enough to make it unquestionable that it was indeed lava on my body. I pushed the remaining lava off my body with my hands to continue making my point. I made sure to flick a blob at each one for it to burn through their clothes and skin before they managed to burn their fingers when getting it off their body.

“Anyone who wants to confess their sins?” I asked.

I bet you do.

“Sorry. I’m not a priest, and this isn’t a confessional,” I told them. “You need not fear the reaper, or however that song goes. You will pray for death tonight, and your prayers will not get answered. Jail and a death sentence do not atone for what you have done.”

I knew the nastiest of the group. I grabbed the asshole around the throat and carried the man to the top of the exposed lava flow. I pushed his feet down into it with a shield around them to keep him from sinking or burning, yet. He started trying to get free without success.

“I grant to you a few moments to let your life flash before your eyes,” I told him.

A few seconds later, I snapped my fingers and removed the shield that protected him. He let out a scream as his clothes and skin began burning away. The man’s struggle to free him from the lava got frantic, but with no better result. He slowly sank as the lava carried him along.

I proceeded to drop each person into the lava at the start of the flow.

Except for their clothes, their bodies were unharmed because they were still in their cells in jail. Somehow I knew what was required to temporarily pull their consciousness into the identical clones of their bodies. They felt and smelled everything without losing consciousness until the lava finally melted their skull and consumed their brains. I created a new set of their bodies and did it all over again for each child they had killed, or allowed to be killed, in lava.

Once that was finished, all done in a time bubble, we moved to the ocean.

They experienced sharks eating them and didn’t stop feeling any of it until their brains got digested. In the cases where the sharks didn’t eat their heads, they dropped down to the ocean floor for the fish, crabs, and other sea creatures to eat upon until their brain was no longer there. Sometimes, they were lucky, and nothing was biting. I liked it when I put a life jacket on them and threw them out as a hurricane approached, as some had done to various children. They were thrown about in the wind and waves and struck by lightning.

Am I messed up in the head because I enjoy the feeling of their brains cooked by the lightning as I slow it down to take days instead of a fraction of a second?

The best I had not predicted I would enjoy as much as I did was when their bloated, naked bodies washed up onto the shore. They didn’t roll out onto the middle of the beach. Instead, I had them bashed over rocks or ended up in a less-used area. In either case, they smelled their bodies rotting, felt it when the gasses had nowhere else to go, and they popped like a balloon and could not scream. Best of all was when I pulled the residual energy of what may have been the ghosts of the children they had killed into clones of the bodies they had right before these people killed them. I don’t know if it was their souls, spirits, or what, but each did whatever they needed to where I didn’t feel them any longer. I tried to have the place in my head to find whatever remained of that child, and it refused, telling me that it crossed a line I was never permitted to cross. Paula’s energy remained bound to me and couldn’t go where the energy from the children had gone.

I’m good with that. I don’t want to hurt those children wherever their essences, souls, or whatever went after they found peace. I don’t care if those who killed them ever find that peace.

When I thought I had finished, I had more to do. These people had poisoned, strangled, shot, and killed various kids in many other ways.

Of all the ways these people died, the lightning is a distant second to being pushed squished into a casket with as many others as possible. Their bodies rotted away until nothing was left inside the air-tight coffin to promote further decay. Sometimes, it took a thousand years, but they got to feel their bodies get consumed by lava again. Other times it was when the wood of the caskets rotted away enough to let the dirt in. Their bodies were slowly turned back into the dirt by worms and bugs. Then there were the grave robbers who dug them up, dumped them on the ground, searched them for valuables, and left them to rot or be fed upon by scavengers who didn’t mind rotting flesh. Sometimes their bodies are found and re-buried or, better yet, cremated.

I can’t do this to all who need it, but I feel it was required to strengthen the island legends about the god whose virgin daughter swims in lava.

Less than an hour passed when I left the house, stopped in town to pick up some stuffed animals and comfort things for the kids, and returned to the house.

In the morning, I had yet another surprise. All the children ate, dressed, and then we loaded up the bus for the children to pick these people out of mug shots. Unfortunately, when we got there, things went a bit off-plan. The child murderers moved into larger holding cells with similar-looking prisoners awaiting trial.

“I don’t know whose ass is going to answer for this circus, but I’m only following orders,” the police chief said as he led us to the door that would take us past all the holding cells. “What I know is that their high-priced lawyers agreed because the suspects look similar to the others in the holding cells. So, all these people need to get off the hook is to have a child identify someone of a similar appearance to give reasonable doubt.”

“I don’t know what to expect either. My friend Paula said this is highly unusual and a bit suspect for both the defense and prosecutors. Someone knows something we don’t,” I told him.

I think I’m that someone.

It turned out that the kids didn’t have to say a thing or point to anyone. Me walking by carrying one of the kids had the desired effect. All those whose consciousness had felt their cloned bodies die repeatedly began screaming for the guards to get the kids and me away from them.

Continuing the off-book exercise, the children went in groups into the line-up room on the criminal side of the one-way glass. The people who abused them picked out the children they had abused and detailed everything they had done to them. Their lawyers objected to the entire process, saying their clients were coerced in some fashion.

If what they freely confessed to wasn’t going to ensure they went away for the rest of their long lives, which I ensured would be into their nineties at least, lives, what came next did.

Pictures of the missing children and those whose bodies someone found got shown on a computer screen mixed in with dozens of similarly aged children. Those extra pictures came from school pictures going back fifty years. It surprised me that all the children had gone missing, were found murdered, or had their bodies found where the cause of death was suspicious. The police added many more charges to the list of each suspect.

“Mr. Jones, do you know why all suspects insist that you are a Hawaiian god? Each says you had them taken to a lava flow where you dropped them in lava and made them feel it as the lava fully consumed their bodies. From there, you threw them into the ocean and subjected them to every way a child they are suspected of murdering died, even bringing back those children to take their revenge on them,” one of the lawyers asked after forcing detectives to put me into a large conference room with police and the lawyers. “Can you account for your whereabouts last evening?”

I gave him a long look and then replied, “As a matter of fact, I can account for my location by GPS trackers one of you had placed on all my vehicles and testimony from the private detectives you hired to follow the children and me. Then you have the police officers sent to protect the children from anyone your clients may have contacted to remove any witnesses to the crimes for which they stand accused. I suspect you can subpoena the traffic camera footage and private security camera footage like doorbell cameras. The idea of claiming I’m a Hawaiian god seems close to a coached attempt at an insanity plea. I do get told that I have the body of a Greek God. I doubt anyone would believe I looked even remotely Hawaiian or the least bit like a Pacific Islander.”

“Did you not fly halfway around the world and hunt down the man who kidnapped your child while using a supergun that can shoot through anything except human flesh? Do you not regularly go around torturing and beating people to near death but stop short of what would kill them?” a different lawyer asked.

“I did fly around the world to get my daughter from the sick man who kidnapped her. He felt he should kill my child because his wife had sex with me well before his family knew she existed and bought her from her parents, which somehow caused his unborn child to abort. The crazy man had no clue that his DNA was so damaged from generations of incest that any egg he managed to fertilize would never be viable. His wife got pregnant by his father, not him,” I explained. “Though I have to question your sanity, or at least that of whoever provided you with your information. Then we have your claim about guns that shoot through anything but human flesh. Me going around torturing and beating people to near-death? Your client claiming I’m a Hawaiian god that killed them repeatedly last night while they were here, in their cells, on camera, and under guard all night long? If I were some Hawaiian god or any god, why would they still live after what they stand accused of doing to children?”

“You are a trillionaire. You can do anything and get away with it,” another accused.

I laughed and then said, “Are you saying a nineteen-year-old is the richest person on earth and that he goes around doing evil things because he can get away with it? Seriously? I’m here because I took in twenty orphaned and abused children who approached me when I left the beach yesterday. I’m the same guy that pays every dime to care for over ten thousand foster children, including children at my foster care facility on Oahu. What was I doing last night when I was away from my home? I bought the children stuffed animals and comfort toys to help give them a little peace while I waited to get them to the best mental health doctors in the world to help them work through the horrible things done to them and the horrors these children endured saw. Your clients sit accused of being child molesters, murderers, sex traffickers, and who knows what else. I get that you are doing your job. Though if anyone else were making such crazy claims, you would demand the police have them sent for a mental evaluation.”

The lawyers kept going off into the world of impossible and insanity. It wasn’t that anything they said wasn’t pretty much the truth. It was unbelievable.

To shut this all down, I said, “Look. You are claiming I have magic guns, trillions of dollars, and I’m some Hawaiian God that your clients said killed them repeatedly last night. If I have what you claim and can do what you say, why am I even sitting here answering your questions? If I’m a god, why are your clients here, safe and sound and without any marks that weren’t on them when examined last night? Why do they still exist, and aren’t a pile of ashes in a forensic scientist’s baggy somewhere?”

“Uh,” was the best they could respond.

“Can I get back to doing what I can to start reversing the trauma your clients have suspectedly caused those children and others? Though I request the exclusive rights to this incredible fantasy story that the group of you and your associates have created about me. It is good stuff,” I told them before walking out.

With that done, I had the kids taken back to my house to get something to eat, swim, and relax for the day.

I chose to stay around to watch these people go before a judge to hear the charges, plea, and try for bail. It did surprise me when most of them pled guilty to many of the charges but were innocent of the others, and a few claimed innocence of all charges.

“Your honor,” one lawyer said after his client confessed to many charges against him. “My client is currently mentally unstable and does not comprehend the severity of the charge to which he pled guilty. Yet, according to the larger group of suspected child murderers, rapists, and molesters, the group was taken from jail last night by David Jones and subjected to each of the horrors for which they stand accused. These include having their bodies consumed by lava and drowning them at sea. Mr. Jones is a trillionaire on paper. He has the resources and law enforcement connections to take the actions which my client claims. I have sworn statements by each party that describe Mr. Jones telling them they had angered the Hawaiian God whose daughter swims in lava. This Hawaiian God is masquerading as a nineteen-year-old male from the mainland.”

“Counsel,” the judge began. “I’ve been on this bench for forty years and heard some crazy defenses. You are not the first to have a client claim that their actions were driven or controlled by one or more Gods. To clarify, you are not making any such claim, instead stating that your client only pled guilty to their crimes because a God, who is a trillionaire and appears as a nineteen-year-old male, repeatedly killed your client last night in the manners by which they stand accused of killing their victims. And you want me to deem them mentally incompetent to enter pleas to the charges against them because of the trauma experienced at the hands of this God?”

“That is correct, your honor,” the lawyer replied.

“Did your client explain why they still live,” the judge asked.

After a quick discussion, the lawyer answered, “Because they say the God, aka Mr. Jones, doesn’t kill people. It falls in line with confirmed reports about Mr. Jones’s behavior.”

“Counsel, I believe you have not thought your fantastical claim through,” the judge replied. “You claim your client is mentally incompetent to enter their plea regarding the charges against them due to being killed repeatedly by a God. The same God you just told me doesn’t kill people and who masquerades as a benevolent trillionaire nineteen-year-old building foster care complexes to care for orphans, child abuse victims removed from their homes, and runaways. I read the brief you provided, and it reads like a great fantasy.”

The suspects were denied bail.

I stepped out of the courtroom after the last suspect saw the judge. I was back at the house an hour later. Kids were playing outside, swimming in the pool, watching TV, and playing video games. Everyone was happy to see me when I went around checking on them. I was due to fly Bambi’s parents home tomorrow, so we all turned in early after dinner. The twenty kids were all going with me because they wanted to be as far from those criminals as possible. No one would have to testify after the criminals’ extensive details in their confessions and guilty pleas in court.