Darius Goodspeed

There is an expression in prize fighting: ‘Everyone has a plan until they get hit. After you get hit, it’s up to you whether or not you get back up’.

The fact is that everyone wants to believe the best of themselves, we’re all the heroes of our own little stories. I sure was.

I was a doctor you understand, with a focus on emergency medicine and infectious disease. When I’m not doing my own research on diseases, I tend to donate some of my time to the emergency rooms around Denver. I’m a resident, born and bred of Colorado, and have been living in Denver most of my adult life, and it was my way of giving back to my community.

One night, a woman was admitted to the ER, and I ended up treating her. She had multiple injuries, several fractured bones, bruises a’plenty. She looked like she had gone nine rounds with Mike Tyson in a bareknuckle bout. As I treated her, I heard the same old stories. You must understand, as an E.R doc, I get to see some of the best and worst of humanity. Not all the bad like a cop see’s or experiences, but still some ugly things. I was used to the stories that were told by abuse victims.

I usually don’t get emotionally invested. But something about this patient, this girl, this woman got under my skin.

Don’t let this mild appearance fool you - I may not have been raised on the streets, but I spent my time running around with some rougher crowds, and I knew how to kiss, and cuss, and fight too. So when this woman’s “loving boyfriend” turned up, I stuck my nose out. I had a quiet conversation with the man, warning him about the consequences that would fall if this woman ever showed up again to be treated for these kinds of ‘falling’ injuries.

He Laughed at me, this woman abusing piece of shit. I am usually a pretty mild guy, don’t have much of a temper and keep my peace. But when he laughed at me, something in me demanded I act. So, I waited. My shift was just about over so I followed him out when he left the hospital, followed him to his car and there I gave him a thorough beating. The injuries he dealt to that woman, I gave him in kind, and then I stuffed him into his shiny black Mercedes and told him that if I ever saw him again he’d get another beating but worse.

A week later, I was leaving the hospital, and somebody grabbed me. Knocked me on the back of the head. When I woke up, I was strapped to a chair and the guy I had beat was there, along with a few other people. So was the woman. Another man joined us that point, older and fatter, but I could see in his face the older man was family to the younger one I had beaten up.

He explained that he understood why I had done what I did, and he approved of it in general and would have done the same in my shoes. He said that unfortunately, he could not let it be known that his son had been assaulted and that the person that had done it had gotten away with it.

He killed the girl. Then he left and the rest of the guys tuned me up.

The last thing I remember is the man I had attacked standing over me with a gun to my head. I remember glaring at him through blood and promising that I would kill him one day. And then there was nothing until I awoke on the other side of the Veil.

Now, I seek him out. I will find him, I will kill him, and that is the way it has to be. That was more than five years ago, and I am beginning to lose faith that I ever will find the man.

The Past & Present

Darius has been a ghost now for nearly a decade and as his opportunities in the world of the living have grown less and less promising, the spirit has taken up service with the Deathlord that governs the Necropolis of Denver. He operates now as something like hired muscle, an irony for a man who in life was a healer and now at times sentences ghosts to an eternity as objects used by other ghosts.