by Scott Colby
That’s it! Hit him! Knock his fucking head off!
“Actually,” Billy said, “I was hoping we could work together on this one. Someone needs to teach your son a lesson.”
“He has been a bit of an insufferable little bitch lately.”
What? Damn it, Ma, you have no idea what I’ve been through the last few days! There are magic assholes everywhere and all they want to do is fuck with me for their own fucking entertainment! Do you have any idea how much my life fucking sucks right now? Hit the bastard!
“You should hear him right now,” the reaper growled. “He’s whining and crying like a teenage girl who just got grounded. He needs to learn to stand up for himself. If you club me for him, well…”
Abelia finished for him. “…he’ll never learn.”
“And if you beat me with that stick, let’s just say that things won’t go very well for you.” Billy gestured toward Mrs. Felton with the travel cup’s open mouth as if inviting her to climb into it.
She lowered her weapon. “Will it hurt?”
Like a motherfucker!
“It’ll only if I let it—which I won’t.”
“And you promise you’ll put both of us back?”
“When I’ve gotten my point across and Poofy’s proved he’s learned his lesson, yes.”
Abelia shifted control of the chair leg to her left hand and raised her right, extending her smallest finger. “Pinky swear?”
No! No pinky swearing! Beat his punk ass up!
Billy smiled and wrapped his finger around Abelia’s. “Pinky sw—”
He never finished. Mrs. Felton yanked him toward her, simultaneously jabbing her makeshift cudgel into his abdomen. The reaper collapsed, wheezing, as he tried to catch his breath. Feeling Billy’s grip on his soul loosen, Kevin again pushed with all of his might against the cold fingers holding him in place. Though he had more room to move, the reaper still held tight.
“Fuck you, you fucking dumbass!” Abelia bellowed as she brought the chair leg down across her opponent’s nose. Billy screamed as it broke, spewing blood all over his pink bathrobe and the white kitchen floor. Kevin strained against the reaper’s clenched knuckles as they spasmed loose, screaming silently as he slowly tore free. Pain flared throughout his soul as he strained away from his prison one excruciating inch at a time, like a plant tearing itself up out of the ground while its roots held tight to the soil.
Abelia swung again, but this time Billy caught the chair leg in his free hand. The wood around his fingers turned black, the shiny finish flaking away in tiny chunks. The club warped and split as Mrs. Felton fought to pull it free before the reaper could transform it into a useless hunk of weak ash. Focused on freeing her weapon, Abelia missed the kick that took out her kneecap and dropped her to the floor beside Billy. Her agonized scream cracked something in Kevin’s spirit.
You son of a bitch! Kevin screamed as his soul was violently sucked back into the reaper’s fist. Billy cracked his fingers, giving him a clear view of his mother as she clutched her knee and writhed in pain. I will fucking kill you for that!
With an unimpressed snort, Billy leaned over Abelia and quickly shoved the fingers of his other hand up under her nose. Mrs. Felton’s body tensed as she fought to keep her essence inside of her where it belonged, but she couldn’t withstand the reaper’s power. Her soul slid out of her nostril like a snake leaping out of its old skin. Billy flicked it around and hung it to dry like a piece of laundry, examining the spectral version of Abelia with a proud smile.
Now you’re really fucking dead! Kevin’s heart sank. His best chance at freedom had just been taken away. He sure as shit wasn’t getting out of this on his own, and he had no means of getting in touch with Driff or Ren or anyone else who might be able to lend the necessary assistance.
“Don’t worry, we’re going to see them next,” Billy said, his voice dulled by his broken nose.
Kneeling, the reaper shoved Abelia’s soul into the Chicago Blackhawks travel mug where it had fallen on the floor, then picked the whole thing up and screwed the cap on tight. Kevin’s perspective spun back and forth as Billy worked. He was glad he no longer had a stomach.
Billy then tucked Kevin into the breast pocket of Abelia’s pink bathrobe, arranging things so he could peer out over the top. A great big gob of blood and snot dripped down past Kevin’s view and splattered on the linoleum. Hoping the reaper had made a mistake by ending their physical contact, Kevin leapt anew against the constraints of his new prison, slamming into an invisible field and snapping right back into place like a ghostly rubber band.
“Now then,” Billy said happily, tapping the side of the travel mug. “Let’s go visit your friends.”
— CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN —
After shoving a few tissues up his broken nose and snagging the keys, Billy commandeered Abelia’s little white sedan. Three herky-jerky tries, a severely dented rear fender, and one chunk of siding taken off the house later, the reaper finally succeeded in backing the vehicle out into the street, only to drift into the other lane and narrowly miss getting sideswiped by a pickup truck coming the opposite way.
You might be the worst fucking driver on the entire fucking planet, Kevin thought. In the breast pocket of Abelia’s fluffy pink bathrobe, Kevin had a front row seat to what was sure to become a brutal automotive accident.
Ignoring Kevin as he accelerated, Billy laid on the horn and flipped off the driver of the pickup truck.
At least you got that part right.
The car jerked as Billy braked suddenly, wound the wheel all the way to the right, and then gunned it once more to put the vehicle in its proper lane. The Chicago Blackhawks travel mug banged around ominously in a cup holder that was two sizes too big. Visions of it tipping and releasing its contents danced before Kevin’s eyes. If Abelia got free, Billy would be in deep, deep shit.
The reaper sighed and depressed the gas again, exercising a bit more finesse this time. The car crawled forward for several moments at five miles per hour.
What are you pushing the accelerator with, your little toe? Kevin thought. He needed to get that travel mug rocking. Give it some gas, you pussy!
“Grow up,” Billy snapped, maintaining the car’s current speed and anxiously checking the mirrors.
We just got passed by three turtles and a sloth, Kevin tried. I’ve seen octogenarians going to bingo drive more aggressively than you. At this rate, Ren and Driff will be dead by the time we get to them. You might want to get a move on before the car’s inspection sticker expires and we get pulled over—the cops around here don’t take kindly to transporting immortal souls in unlicensed beverage containers.
Although Kevin could feel the reaper’s heart racing, Billy kept his cool. He tried again to escape his pocket prison, hoping his captor’s focus on the road meant inattention elsewhere, but the invisible influence keeping him in place remained impermeable.
As they rounded the edge of the town common, Kevin changed his tactics. Never driven before, have you?
“What do you think?”
That new tidbit fit well with what Kevin already knew about his captor. Combined with Billy’s aversion to alcohol and his awkwardness around forward women, the reaper’s inability to drive a car painted the perfect picture of a young man somehow frozen in adolescence.
Kevin poured compassion into his next question. What happened to you?
“Don’t worry about it,” Billy snapped, his heart pounding even harder. “I don’t need your sympathy.”
That was empathy, dumbass.
“Really? You’re going to try to lie to an individual who can read every thought and emotion in your soul?” The reaper paused for a moment as he carefully adjusted course. “Empathy implies understanding. You couldn’t possibly understand anything about my fucked up life.”
Try me.
Billy slowly removed his right hand from the wheel and wrapped his fingers around Kevin’s soul. “Fine. Just remember: you fucking asked for it.�
��
The view of the reaper’s hand exploded, replaced by a cascade of sound, images, and emotions that mentally knocked Kevin to his knees. The aftermath of a violent car accident, an entire family in various states of injury, all of them dead or slowly dying and raving hysterically. A man’s soul staring down sadly at what remained of his skull after eating the end of his shotgun. An old woman passing due to liver failure, wailing in agony because she hadn’t gotten the chance to say goodbye to children who lived on the other side of the country. Death after death after death streamed across the canvas of Kevin’s senses, bombarding him with sorrow and regret. But he was so much more than an outside observer; the panicked thoughts and wild emotions of the dead and the dying flooded his mind just as they had the reaper’s. He screamed in horror, trying vainly to block it all out.
In each and every case, the soul of the recently deceased immediately fought to restore his or her ruined body. The man who shot himself scrambled to put his brains back into his skull. An accident victim stuck her ghostly finger up into the torn artery through which she’d bled out, trying to staunch the remaining flow of blood. The old woman willed her liver to begin repairing itself. With their existences on the line, each awakened a torrent of inner power none had ever suspected they’d possessed.
And in each and every case, Billy put a stop to it. Sometimes all it took was a few kind words, reminders of a life lived well and good deeds done. Sometimes it took a bit more persuasion. Sometimes Billy simply grabbed hold of the offending soul and yanked, as he had done to Kevin and Abelia. Regardless, as each soul slowly faded into oblivion or the hereafter or wherever it was they either went or didn’t, the reaper’s own anguish at his role in events blocked out all else.
Billy’s hand moved back to the steering wheel, restoring Kevin’s view of the dash. “Get it now?” the reaper asked.
Despite his lack of lungs, Kevin nonetheless found himself hyperventilating. To call what he’d seen intense would be an understatement. What Billy had just forced into his mind were endings, irreversible and unstoppable. There was no pause and no rewind—and there would be no sequel. The purest expression of the finite. Kevin felt dirty, like the worst kind of voyeur, as if in experiencing their last moments he’d violated the dead in a most gruesome fashion.
Given the nature of the reaper’s responsibilities, it was no wonder he was a little cracked. Hell, it was a damn miracle that he wasn’t a raving lunatic. Kevin knew he wouldn’t have held up half as well in Billy’s place.
I get it, he gasped. I’m sorry.
The reaper started shaking. “Not yet, you aren’t.”
See, that’s the attitude that made me lie to you about Nella.
Billy completed the turn around the common and straightened the vehicle, pumping the brakes unnecessarily a few times as he adjusted direction. He fiddled with the blinker, shifting it up and down until he finally found the right turn signal. The turnoff onto the private road that led to the Roberts estate was coming up quickly.
Kevin searched vainly for options he knew deep down just weren’t there. Without any ability to manipulate the physical world on his own, he had no hope of escaping, rescuing his mother, or getting a warning to his friends. His attempts at tricking the reaper into a mistake had only succeeded in producing an episode of mental and emotional torture. Although he hated to admit it, Kevin was completely fucking stuck. His only hope would be to ride this thing out and hope Driff could find a way to put it all right. Surely the elf had planned for something along the lines of this particular eventuality.
As the little white sedan sputtered right onto Hampstead Street’s perfect blacktop, Kevin retraced his steps. Perhaps locating exactly where he’d gone wrong would serve some use. The problem, of course, was in choosing a starting point. It would be easy to say he’d doomed himself the moment he’d chosen to return to Harksburg, but how was he supposed to have known that in doing so he’d ruin the wedding of the local avatar of death? What about his decision to not run, but to stand his ground and—well, not fight, exactly, but to try to do something to change his fate? Should he have kept his nose out of Oscar’s little revival on the town common? Had hurling eggs at Mr. Gregson sealed his inevitable doom? Would life be any different if he had succeeded in his quixotic quest to find the damn gnomes he was convinced had infested his home? Could he have handled things better with Sweatpants Bob, Muffintop, Lil, Fran Kesky, or any of the rest of the motley crew of lunatics and scumbags that had crossed his path?
He shook his non-corporeal head and corrected himself: the real problem wasn’t choosing a starting point. The real problem was how consistently he’d fucked up.
A short burst of sad laughter from the reaper jiggled Kevin about his prison in Billy’s breast pocket. Stay out of my head!
“Technically, your head is back on the dining room floor.”
Something inside of Kevin snapped. Billy’s comment, while not particularly insulting in its content, was far too glib for the situation at hand. It burned with overconfidence, with arrogance, with a conceited knowledge that he was in absolute control and he was going to enjoy it for as long as he could. It was just the wrong thing to say at just the wrong moment. Anger flooded through Kevin’s being, hot and rampant. He couldn’t punch Billy in the face as his instincts screamed at him to do, but maybe he could do something even worse.
Fuck off. Like poking around in other people’s minds, do ya? Here, I’ll give you a real fucking show!
Focusing intently, Kevin dredged up his memory of his most recent evening with Nella. He ran back through that night slowly, focusing on every tiny detail. He started with her coy smile as he pushed her down into the mattress and leaned in for a kiss, her breath warm on his face. He forced his mind’s eye to linger on her soft lips and the weight of her legs as she wrapped them around his midsection, then he mentally moved onto the cool skin of her lower back. Their tongues danced across each other as Kevin slowly traced his fingers up her smooth sides and then across her breasts. At the moment of penetration, he focused not on his own pleasure but the smile on her face, the joy in her eyes, the gills in her neck fluttering open as he pushed himself deeper…
Billy slammed the accelerator to the floor, launching the little white car forward. Having not achieved such speeds in at least the last five years, the car protested with an ear-splitting whine more animal than vehicle.
Please crash, Kevin plead with the reaper. In his memory, Nella flipped him onto his back and started riding him. Put yourself out of your fucking misery, you piece of shit!
Moments later, just as Kevin had finished remembering the curve of his lover’s hip in inexorable detail, Billy spun the wheel and slammed on the brakes. The car spun out with a squeal of shitty tires on hard asphalt.
Billy, Chicago Blackhawks travel mug in hand, was halfway out the door while the vehicle was still moving. Abelia’s sedan came to a pained stop right at the edge of the cement walk leading to the Roberts estate’s front porch, sputtering and rumbling like a fat man who’d run a mile on the treadmill for the first time in his life. As Billy stomped purposefully up to the house, Kevin fed him memories of a particularly good blow job. The reaper stumbled on the first step but managed to catch himself.
Which, Kevin realized, made little sense. Why hadn’t Billy severed their mental connection the moment he’d started reminiscing about Nella? Without the ability to physically manipulate the world around him, those memories were the only real weapon in Kevin’s possession. Either Billy was a super creepy voyeur, or he simply couldn’t disconnect himself from his captive’s mind.
The reaper’s abrupt sigh was all the answer Kevin needed.
All you have to do to make this stop is let my mother and me go. None of us will ever bother you again.
Billy ignored him and rang the doorbell. A soft chime echoed through the house, but no one answered. Kevin shifted his focus to a romp in the shower, his attention on the soap bubbles dripping down Nella’s slender blue
back as she rinsed her hair.
Three increasingly angry rings of the bell later, the reaper visibly shaking with fury, Ren finally called out from somewhere inside. “Keep your fucking pants on! It’s too fucking early for this shit!”
The sound of Ren’s voice put a quick end to Kevin’s mental assault. This was really happening; Billy was going to magically murder his best friend and there was nothing he could do to even try to stop it. He couldn’t even warn Ren about what was coming. He’d hoped they’d encounter Driff first, but the elf didn’t seem to be anywhere in the area.
See, I stopped. Please leave Ren alone.
Billy shook his head.
Please?
“No.”
Leave my fucking friend the fuck alone or I fucking swear you will relive every last fucking night I spent with your ex. And I will make damn sure you don’t miss how much fucking fun she had.
“No. You brought this upon yourself. You fucking deserve it.”
So do you, asshole.
Before Kevin could queue up another memory, the door in front of him was violently yanked open. Dressed in his favorite pair of red silk pajamas, Ren appraised them with bleary eyes and a haggard look. He’d never been able to handle champagne.
“Billy?” he asked, his eyes widening as he realized what he was looking at. “The fuck—”
He never finished his question. The reaper’s hand snapped up to his face, found the purchase it needed, and tore a ghostly duplicate of Ren Roberts out through the young man’s nose. His empty body crumpled to the floor. Billy flipped open the travel mug’s spout, shoved Ren’s soul inside, and then snapped it back shut.
Motherfucker, Kevin moaned. He couldn’t believe how quickly that had gone. Where the hell was Driff?
The telltale click of a revolver’s hammer being pulled back into the firing position answered Kevin’s question. Driff had snuck up behind the reaper while he’d been busy with Ren. Kevin smiled. The elf had a plan!