Epilogue
Life is unfair and it sucks.
In case you're wondering what happened to the overly talkative Polish translator who was guilty of nothing other than trying to help us out at the direction of her employers - she was fired. The young woman's concerns that she would be let go since the police wouldn't let her go home were warranted. The Polish bureaucracy took another week after it was clear that she was uninvolved to process the paperwork that would allow her to leave the country and that was six days too late for her German employers. Apparently, there is no shortage of Poles wanting to cross the border for the higher wages of the West. Marcie's offer to help her out, of course, ended with her life.
Velma called Marcie and Reggie's company and asked if they would intervene on Kasia's behalf. Their negative response was icy and curt. They wanted to put everything to do with Marcie Fleach behind them. Reggie's will left everything to Marcie and Marcie had no will. Reggie's family was contesting. The company was in chaos.
I had thought that by looking away from Marcie's final moment that I would save myself from the memories and mental images of a human being taking her own life. But that had been a mistake. A suicide leaves a wide wake in the lives of those near it. Whether that nearness is geographic or emotional proximity. It is not a victimless crime and the victims continue to pile up years after the fact. What I chose not to see with my own eyes, my imagination filled in and my nights after the event were filled with horrid nightmares. I woke up screaming every night. From Shaggy and Velma's neighboring bedroom, I heard that she did as well. We both found ourselves awake before sunrise on Sunday morning. We talked and it wasn't getting better for either of us.
Bringing the Gang back together as a detective agency had healed old wounds and had seemed a godsend when we had started it up and the old chemistry had returned. The friendship and love we shared was invaluable but the price was so very high. Was it our youth that had shielded us from seeing and recognizing the realities of the human impact of our mystery solving? Were we just that naïve, that convinced of our own invulnerability?
We were too close and spent too much time together for there to be any secrets. Fred was still suffering and seeing a therapist based on his having shot and killed Frank Herring. Daphne put on a brave front, but her self-image was struggling against the damage done to her once-perfect (and now still nearly perfect) face. Shaggy still would sneak off by himself to cry every few days while re-living the near loss of his friends and shooting (although at least not killing) another human being. Velma's ghosts were many but the sight of her childhood friend blowing her brains out had increased the size and ardor of those ghosts. And I was completely alone and feeling more alone than ever as I wrestled through nights filled with nightmares.
My conversation with Velma as the first rays of the Sunday dawn hit the window resolved nothing for either me or her. I left her to her thoughts and exited the apartment. It was a chilly morning, but I needed to get out and run and let my dog half take over for a while. I needed to stop the endless churning of my thoughts which led only to more nightmares and fear. I took my usual route to the park. The church parking lot was empty. I usually passed it later in the day when it was full. The sun was fully up over the horizon when I made it to the park which made me compliant with the park hours of sunrise to sunset. Fred would be pleased. I was obeying the rules.
I broke into a run but stopped and slowed to a trot after 50 yards. The unbridled joy was not there. My dog half was sitting back and refusing to take control from my non-dog thinking half. And my non-dog thinking half was lonely… and sad… and frightened… and angry. Angry. Where had that come from? But as soon as I thought it, I knew it was true. Maybe the truest of them all. But who was I angry at?
Was I angry at Marcie for performing the ultimate act of selfishness and imposing it on the people who loved her like Velma and her father? Neither of whom would ever find resolution and closure for the relationships that had been broken with her. And imposing it on so many others. Like me, and Fred, and Daphne and the emergency responders and all of the others who had to stand witness to the sight of a beautiful woman who could have had so much to live for but who instead lay on the floor of an old cabin with her brains and blood soaking into the dirt.
Was I angry with all of the people that had known Marcie for years and seen the obvious signs of mental illness but, instead of reaching out to her, had shunned and avoided her? People like me?
Was I angry with Mr. and Mrs. Black for using their money and power to reach into my life and rip it apart just to prove that they could? Or maybe I was angry at the army of lawyers whose moral compass no longer found true north who were willing to use a little girl as a tool in order to provide themselves with more billable hours.
Was I angry with Amanda for refusing to risk everything for her relationship with me?
Was I angry with the voters of the State of Michigan or the diners in the restaurant and all of the others who had taught me to recognize that look of hatred which cast so briefly across their faces that they thought no one saw? Or was I angry at the society that birthed them and weened them on hatred and then renamed their hatred and ignored their hatred until even they no longer knew they were haters?
Was I angry with Velma for taking Shaggy from me?
Was I angry with Fred and Daphne for flaunting their love in front of my face year after year?
Was I angry with the Anunnaki for creating me to be alone?
The answer to all of these questions was 'no'. I was not angry. I was furious. I was raging. Shaking my paw at an uncaring universe and a bellicose fate who refused to step in and fix this mess. Maybe this was how Marcie saw life. Maybe she simply understood better than the rest of us and saw her only answer at the end of a gun.
Scooby dooby fucking doo.
My head was hanging low as I made my way toward the playground. I lifted my nose and tasted the air. Maybe I would smell Amanda and she would be waiting under our tree to tell me that it was all a mistake and she and I could be together after all. No one would fight in the courts to keep us apart. No one would stare at us with hatred in their eyes. We could live together at peace with the world and be given the opportunity to be left alone to try and find our own happiness. This pipe dream lasted two seconds. I noted a familiar scent on the air but it was not Amanda's.
The playground was empty in the early morning but I made my way to our spot and lay in the uncomfortably cold grass. But her presence and scent were here – fading but here. In another day, they would be gone. I lay my head down in it, closed my eyes, and waited.
When the footsteps came up to just in front of my nose, I did not open my eyes when I spoke, "Rye'm rorry arout your brother."
The mystery woman who I now knew was named Janet Khang didn't sit, "Yeah. Me, too."
"Rhy are roo here?"
"I wanted to thank you. My brother's disappearance was horrible. Not knowing was horrible. I needed to know."
"And now roo do."
"And now I do."
"Reel retter?"
"Not yet. But I will."
"Raybe roo understand that Rye am one of the good guys now?"
"I believe that you are a good person."
"Rye am not a person. Rye am an aberration."
She paused a long time befoire replying, "They're not mutually exclusive."
That sounded like a springboard into some philosophical crap, so I ignored it, "Roo know now rhat roo can trust me."
"No. I can't trust you. I told you before. You are different from me. I don't know how you're wired."
"Everybody is rifferent from roo. Who do roo trust?"
"In the end, people who look like me, talk like me, act like me, and think like me."
"Rhat's a shitty ray to live."
"My brother used to say things like that."
I let that one hang in the air for the few seconds it deserved, "Ree was right."
The obvious reply came back, "He's dead… at the hands of a woman he trusted to simply be hiring him for a little impersonation. She told him it was to allow her fiancé to finish a project he was working on in peace without creating suspicion from their competitors. He just had to pretend to be this other guy for a few months and he would get a big payday. He trusted her. She killed him."
I pulled myself up to a sitting position, "Rhen does it stop? The fear and the hatred?"
She shrugged, "As long as people are different."
"Rhat can't be ree answer."
"As long as people are different, they will choose teams. It's who we are."
"Unress ree recide to stop. If ree stop the fear, then ree stop the hate. Roo cannot have love rithout trust and roo cannot have hate rithout fear."
"Did you read that on a bumper sticker?"
I might as well have for all of the good it did me, "Romething rike that." I laid back down and listened to her footfalls fading away.
Even as the sun rose, it remained cold and I was shivering as the dirt under my stomach sucked away my body heat. But I stayed there, waiting for a familiar scent and a familiar voice that was not coming. I was an optimist. Meaning that I was a sap. When I could stand neither the cold nor being a sap any longer, I got up and headed home.
The church parking lot was filling now as I passed. I didn't know what happened inside that building since I had never been inside one. The internet debates when I had brought the scientific reality of a fourth dimension and beings residing therein to the world had given me the impression that there was no welcome mat at the door there for me. But this morning I stopped and I watched as people hugged each other and then walked arm-in-arm into the building. Old people walked with the young, rich with the poor, black with the white. In this church there were very few black people as in the church down the street there were very few white. But there were some. And, looking at it from the outside, they at least pretended to put all of the differences aside for two or three hours on Sunday morning. And maybe pretending was the starting point.
I crossed the road, passed through the parking lot, and headed for the front door. On my previous walks, I had heard some of the church-goers pointing at me and saying my name, so at least some of them knew who I was. The front door seemed somehow daunting and I stopped and sat. A young woman who was holding a fistful of paper pamphlets stepped out of the door and walked up to me. She extended one, "Do you want to come in?"
"Rye don't know." I reached out my paw and she stuck a pamphlet between two of my claws. It was a single sheet of paper printed on both sides and folded in half. The front of it gave the name of the church superimposed over a clip-art picture of a sunset and then the date. The woman turned from me and smiled as she handed out the pamphlets to others coming through the door. The inside of the paper listed a series of mundanities about food drives, meetings, and social gatherings. There was a list of names of what appeared to be the church staff. Nothing illuminating or exciting.
I teen-ager with a younger child in tow came up to me. The younger child spoke, "Can you talk?"
"Res, rye can."
The teen-ager looked down at his companion, "See, I told you. He used to be on television or something."
I stuck the pamphlet into my collar and walked toward the door, the young greeter woman opened it for me and smiled, "Welcome."
"Rhank roo."
The entry lobby was packed full of people that all quieted and looked at me as I came in. They clearly recognized me. My heart fell as I again saw the thinly-veiled looks of anger and fear and hatred that I had seen in the restaurant with Amanda. How had I gone my whole life without ever recognizing that for what it was? They turned away from me and back to their conversations pretending to themselves that the look in their eyes was hidden away and unknown by the recipient.
An elderly woman walked up to me. She was badly hunched over and her eyes were just above mine as I was on all fours, "I understand that you are a talking dog?"
"Res, ma'am."
"For years, I sat in church with my Harold, but he is no longer with us and now I sit alone. I would appreciate it if you would sit with me."
What do you say to that? "Rhank roo, Rye rould rike that." I followed her in and she led me to an amazingly uncomfortable bench. I had seen these church things on television and they looked really boring. I guessed that the benches were uncomfortable to keep everyone from falling asleep. Or maybe if a person was religious, they disdained personal comfort. That seemed pretty theological. I had no clue what I was talking about.
The room was filled with a soft roar of a hundred different simultaneous conversations. Judging from the furtive glances in my direction, I would guess that many of them were about me. There was a screen over the stage on which a countdown was going on. It gave me a sense of anticipation since I had no idea what was about to happen. From television, I had expected a bunch of people in black robes to ascend to the stage and start singing but that didn't happen. Instead, a small group of people that looked like a rock band climbed up and picked up their instruments as the countdown hit 30 seconds.
When the countdown hit zero, the band started to play and sing. They weren't exactly good and the music was something between 70's soft rock and commercial jingles, but the words were put up on the screen and everyone stood and sang along. It was nice in a campy sort of way. A small number of people seemed to be really into the music while most appeared bored. There were only four people in the world that had ever heard me sing and that number was not about to grow this morning. I kept my mouth shut and listened. No choir of angels descended from on high and I sat through a sing-a-long.
They took a break from the singing to read the mundane information which was already in the pamphlets. Apparently, no one read them. They then asked for money which confirmed something that I had heard Shaggy's parents say about churches. Some bowls were passed around ceremoniously and people put bills, change, and envelopes into them. I'll admit. I wasn't really feeling it.
The band resumed for another song and then they stopped singing and walked off the stage as a man stood from the front row and walked up to the lectern. This was the part that was like television where the guy stands and gives the lecture. Maybe this was where he would explain what all of this was about. On the screen behind him, a slide with a series of words popped up. It was obviously a quote from The Bible. I had never read the book and it meant nothing to me. The speaker opened up his copy on the lectern and surveyed the audience. His eyes stopped on me and stayed there.
He held me in his gaze for a long time and I was getting extremely tense when I watched him step down off the stage and walk towards me. I wanted to run. Every fiber of my being begged me to run. I turned my head to the tiny woman next to me and she smiled. That smile kept me rooted in my spot.
The speaker stopped in the aisle right next to me and looked down, "There is something you need to know." The room was silent and his voice carried.
This was not getting any better, "Rhat's that?" I quavered.
He said the next words slowly and clearly, making sure they were heard and understood in every corner of the large room, "You are welcome here."
I looked around the room. For every one person I saw nodding and smiling, I saw another person glaring angrily. And for those two, I saw eight fidgeting uncomfortably in their seats. I looked up at the speaker, "Rye don't think so."
He smiled, "Maybe not by everyone sitting in this building. But you are welcome here by God." Ah, it was a church. God was bound to come up.
And I really wanted to understand it, "Rhat arout the Anunnaki?"
He shook his head, "I don't know what you mean."
There was no other way to say it, "Rhat if there is no god?"
I felt the frail, bony arm of the elderly woman drape across my back. She spoke with more strength than I would have thought possible, "Then you are welcome here by me."
The speaker nodded his head and smiled wider, "And me." He reached over and placed his hand on my back, as well.
Another voice called out, "And me." And then another and another and people stood from their seats and gathered in a tight circle around me, all placing their hands on my back. And then another circle formed who placed their hands on the backs of those in the center and a third circle formed behind them. People were now leaning awkwardly over the backs of the benches to maintain contact with each other. Physically letting everyone know they were part of something bigger than themselves.
Through the gaps between bodies, I could see that most of the people in the church remained in their seats and many were leaving out the back.
The old woman leaned in and whispered very softly into my ear, "Those people who are leaving? They're my brothers and sisters in Christ and I love them as I love you. But that doesn't mean they're not assholes."
And then I got it.
I was not about to believe in God in a single morning and I probably would never come to this place again. But there was something here. There was a lot of chaff and just a little wheat. But there was something. And that something was hope.
XXX
Writer's Note: This ends the three-episode story arc focusing on Scooby Doo. I will be taking a break for a while to focus on some other things. There is one more three-episode story arc and then the finale remaining to the overall story. The plan is to start uploading again in early Spring and go to the conclusion.
