The stench of the living hung in the air like early morning fog. Bobby didn’t remember life smelling so nasty and he didn’t care, it wasn’t life he was after. Muffled footsteps rushed up from behind, he barely had time to step out of the way before two orderlies scurried passed.
“3B, Corsic,” one groaned, his scrubs were a collage of stains and a vapor trail of BO and bad breath followed him like an obedient dog.
“About fucking time,” his partner, a young Hispanic woman who apparently showered in cheap perfume and gargled with nicotine flavored rum, hissed. “That stupid bitch has been driving me nuts for weeks.”
“Gina, you gotta work on your people skills.”
“Fuck you Donnie,” Gina snapped.
“You wish,” Donnie replied, but it was obvious, even to a dead man, that fucking Gina was exactly what Donnie wished for, probably nightly.
The two orderlies turned and filed through one of the many narrow doorways that lined the dreary hallway. Bobby followed them. Inside the close, dank room they stood at the foot of the lone, metal framed bed. On top of a saggy mattress, an even saggier old woman struggled to draw a decent breath. A single oxygen tank stood like a loyal soldier beside her, patches of rust bubbled from beneath its pea-green paint like cold sores. A milky tube fed its precious gas to a crooked mask on the old woman’s pallid face.
Poor thing, time’s just about up old girl.
“Anything left in that thing?” Donnie asked, cocking his bald head toward the tank.
“Nah and I ain’t getting another one either, too much fucking paperwork. She ain’t going to need it anyway.”
She’s a class act.
Corsic looked as old and as wrinkled as the crypt keeper’s grandmother. Every vein and artery pulsed weakly beneath her paper thin skin. What was left of her hair sprouted in tufts, like curly white weeds, from her scalp. Her pajamas, yellowed from sweat and age, clung to the bones beneath them like a sodden tarp over a warped cage.
“Come on bitch, we’re missing Survivor,” Donnie groaned and kicked the bed.
Corsic arched her back in violent spasm. Her eyes sprung wide and stared in terror at the bulging drop-ceiling panel above the bed. She gasped weakly. Her body went rigid, strained tendons pulled the creped skin around her neck as tight as a drum. She settled slowly, deflating, her last breath hissing from beneath the mask. The old woman was dead.
“What the fuck Donnie?” Gina cried, slapping his badly tattooed forearm playfully.
“What? I didn’t do nothing,” Donnie whined like a scolded child.
A slightly smaller and brighter version of the corpse sat up from within it. Bobby stumbled backward, crashing clumsily into the lone, cracked pleather armchair. It moved a millimeter but enough to make its feet chirp the floor. Donnie and Gina spun, eyes wide, faces drawn, as terrified as the dead woman was a moment earlier. Gina blessed herself sloppily.
“What the fuck?” Donnie whispered.
“You fucked up yo, that bitch is gonna haunt you Donnie,” Gina tried to play it cool but Bobby saw her fear, a blind man would.
“Don’t even play like that,” Donnie warned, he wasn’t grinning anymore. “Let’s get a trolley and get this bitch in the fridge. We can still catch the immunity challenge if we haul ass. You know Probst’s got some tricks.”
They left quickly. Neither one dared look back. Bobby and Corsic were alone.
*
“Assholes,” Corsic spit the word as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and hopped nimbly to the floor.
“You can see me?” Bobby asked.
Corsic’s thin gray eyebrows perked, stretching the lids beneath them, “Yeah.”
“You know why I’m here?” Bobby continued the idiotic line of questioning.
“Sure do. I ain’t no saint so I figured it’d be Hell if it was anything,” the old woman seemed oddly casual about her eternal damnation.
Bobby walked slowly toward the old woman, she didn’t even flinch. “Come on then,” he shrugged and waved her toward him. “Let’s get this over with.”
A bright flash drowned the little room in its beautiful, white light. Bobby covered his eyes with his sleeve, it was like lightning had gone off right in front of him.
“Repent,” a soft clear voice commanded. “Our Lord will forgive you if you ask for it.”
Shit.
Bobby had forgotten about the enemy. He should’ve known it wouldn’t be so easy. Opening his eyes he found the source of the light show standing between him and the old woman’s soul. White-haired, white bearded and clad in flowing white robes cinched at his waist with a golden belt, complete with golden sword, he smiled kindly at Corsic as he spoke. “I’m Charlie. I’m here to bring you home.”
The whole scene annoyed Bobby; the light show, the robes, the smile and the flashy sword. “You’re a little late Charlie my man. She’s mine.”
There goes rule number one! Not supposed to talk to the enemy dumbass. Or is it rule number four? Fuck it, doesn’t matter.
Charlie ignored him. “Come child, it’s not too late.”
Corsic studied the Angel for a moment with her bright, keen eyes. Bobby knew rage when he saw it and Corsic was full of the stuff.
“Listen bucko, I never been a holy roller or nothing like that and I never put much stock in it. You telling me that all the bad stuff I did will be forgiven if I just say sorry? Just like that?”
“Yes,” Charlie replied, his smile firmly in place.
“So God’s up there?”
Uh oh, I think I’m losing her.
“Yes.”
Do I really care though? So she goes with him, so what? Look at where she ended up, right? She obviously had a tough go of it in life and old girl could use a break. Is her soul worth fighting Mr. Smiley White? Is it worth dying for…again? I don’t think so.
“Well then, you go back up there and you tell Him that Ann Corsic said to stick His forgiveness up His ass. That God of yours ain’t worth shit on a good day and he’s worth a lot less the rest. He took my husband first but I could have let that one go. My Bill wasn’t much of a man but he gave me my children and for that I loved him. But He took my boy when he was only eight! My poor little Joe. Eight! He was only eight! What kind of God gives a boy that age cancer?”
Charlie didn’t answer. Ann Corsic didn’t expect one.
“My Brenda, she turned to drugs and I don’t blame her, not for a second. She was a good girl until little Joe died but then she got…she got all mixed up. She overdosed in some fleabag motel up in the Bronx a day before her twenty-first birthday but I reckon she didn’t know and didn’t care. Cancer took her too if you ask me. God’s cancer. Your God’s a sicko, you tell him that from me. You tell him I’d prefer to rot in Hell rather than step foot in any place He is.”
Holy shit! This lady’s got some serious issues.
Charlie was still smiling. He bowed deeply and blinked out of existence with the same brilliance he appeared. Corsic turned to Bobby who stood in awe of her and of what had happened.
“Close that flycatcher and let’s get this over with,” Corsic snapped.
“Oh…okay,” Bobby closed his mouth as instructed and led the old woman into the hallway where he’d have the room he needed to swing his scythe.
“Is it bad?” Corsic asked, her voice had lost all of its anger and hate.
“Never been there,” Bobby lied, figuring she’d be better off finding out herself.
He whispered the odd password and sliced open reality. Corsic looked into the void, then at Bobby, her eyes brimming with terror.
This poor woman. I’m sorry lady, I really am.
“Go on,” he urged her into the passageway.
If he could’ve puked, he’d have plastered the filthy walls with the stuff. He hated everything about himself, his new job and his existence.
Corsic stepped into the blackness and vanished. Bobby followed her. Peace filled him again but only for a moment. His cell appeared and
he stepped from the void and back into Hell.
Roasting in his pitch black cell once again, bombarded by the constant sounds of suffering, he barely had time to think about what had happened before his scythe hummed, calling him back into action.
Eternity is going to suck.
2.
Lefrak City loomed over where Bobby stood beside a tangle of twisted metal blocking two of the Long Island Expressway’s five westbound lanes.
Queens again? This must be my territory. I hate Queens.
It was raining hard. Bobby loved the rain but looking up into the deluge of silvered drops he felt none of what he used to when he was alive. The rain fell right through him. There was no refreshing chill, no spiritual cleansing, nothing of what it offered the living.
I hate this shit.
A supped-up Honda Civic had buried itself in the ass of a graffiti spattered box truck. There wasn’t much left of the wannabe racecar or the guy driving it. The truck driver stood shivering beside his vehicle, staring at the busted up body hanging from its tailgate. A young man, no older than eighteen and dressed like he raided Eminem’s closet, was screaming his lungs out in the trucker’s ear. It was a waste of time and energy, the trucker couldn’t hear a word of it.
“Hey bro,” Bobby called out to the furious teenager. “Take it easy. He can’t hear you.”
“Back off!” the kid roared without turning to see who’d spoken.
Okay, we’ll do it your way.
“You’re dead asshole.”
“Says who?” the kid turned on him like a viper, his face twisted with murderous rage. “You? Nah Nice fucking raincoat, you wanna die in it bitch?”
I think I might actually enjoy this.
Bobby pointed to the shattered corpse beside him. “Look familiar?”
The kid looked. His anger turned instantly to fear. “What the fuck? This some fucking game bro?” he cried, reached into his baggy pants, pulled out a small pistol and pointed it at Bobby’s chest.
Does every idiot carry a gun these days?
“Go for it,” Bobby replied coolly.
The kid pulled the trigger three times. The gun fired three bullets. Each one was on target, each one struck Bobby’s chest but never penetrated his robe. The slugs fell onto the rain-slick asphalt at his feet and bounced amid the shattered remnants of the Honda’s windshield.
“Good shooting shit for brains,” Bobby said with a smile. “I’m here to take you to Hell.”
“Fuck you! Fuck this!”
A brilliant flash lit the night.
No way. Not this guy.
“Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” the trigger happy kid asked the new arrival.
Not happening. This prick just shot me…three times!
Bobby said his password, swung his scythe, sliced open reality, grabbed the kid by his hoodie and dragged him toward the portal without looking back.
“Wait, what’s going on? Hey, let me go man! I got rights!”
Yeah, you got the right to shut the fuck up You got the right to go to Hell. You got the right to suffer, just like you deserve to, for all time. Enjoy the ride slick.
He pushed the kid into the swirling gateway and watched him disappear. He should’ve just followed him like he was supposed to, but curiosity got the better of him. He needed to see who came to forgive such a clear-cut candidate for the Flames.
Wow!
The Angel was the most beautiful thing Bobby had ever seen. Long, loose curls of thick red hair framed her sparsely freckled cheeks. Her pink lips pursed as fine wrinkles bunched the bridge of her slightly curved nose. Wide and clear, her green eyes studied Bobby carefully as she frowned.
Mesmerized, he struggled to find his voice while caught in her scrutinizing gaze. “I…it…he deserved it,” he said after an uncomfortable few seconds of silence.
The Angel said nothing.
“He was bad, really bad, trust me. He shot me! The kid shot me three times! That kid didn’t deserve forgiveness.”
“We all do.”
She spoke to me! Holy shit! She actually spoke to me!
Her voice was the most beautiful sound Bobby had ever heard, but what she said annoyed him. “No one offered me any,” he growled.
“Or him.”
Ouch. Good point. Am I here because someone did the same thing to me?
“So…I mean, you were late so….I…I mean…” Bobby’s mind was reeling. “Are you guys always late? This…me… is all this happening to me because you guys can’t get to work on time?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know you,” she replied as her emerald green eyes held Bobby’s like tractor beams.
“Oh, right. I’m Bobby, um… Robert Grant.”
Weird.
“I’m Marie Sinclair,” she smiled.
Amazing.
“I don’t know why I’m here…in Hell I mean,” Bobby blurted out.
“I’m sorry,” Maria whispered.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I’m sorry you’re suffering,” Maria replied, her eyes, unwavering and sad and infinitely kind, left no doubt she meant every word.
She’s perfect.
The air behind Bobby began to sizzle. He turned to see the portal’s edges creeping toward each other. “I have to go,” he sighed.
Maria Sinclair nodded and sheathed the sword Bobby hadn’t realized she was holding until then.
“Will I ever see you again?” he asked.
Another blinding flash answered him. Maria Sinclair was gone.
3.
Outside the void the churning waters of the Long Island Sound raged at the mercy of a powerful Nor’easter. Bobby stepped into the salt-laden gale, opened his mouth wide and let it fill his deflated lungs. His robes didn’t obey the weather, they hung like funeral home curtains from his shoulders blocking any relief the cold wind might offer his tormented skin.
A Coast Guard hard-bottom inflatable surged over the angry whitecaps toward the rock jetty just east of the Throggs Neck Bridge. One crewman worked feverishly to revive someone on its narrow deck. Two FDNY ambulances stood waiting in the parking lot, their strobing lights lashed the lot, the rock jetty beside it and the beach on the other side in alternating red and white light. Bobby walked over to the EMTs standing beside them to eavesdrop, listening to the living was one of the few perks of his existence. It reminded him he was once just like them, alive and ignorant.
“Fishermen from out east somewhere, boat went down, no PDF,” a heavyset woman in her mid-thirties said from beneath her collar, tucked in tight to avoid the wind.
“What the Hell was he doing out in this?” her partner, a tall, younger woman replied from beside her and shook her head.
“Some of those guys are real diehards,” one of the second team commented, skinny and pale, pimpled and greasy, he looked barely old enough to drive, never mind save lives.
“I hope so Lenny,” the fourth added, well-built and well-groomed, he seemed unaffected by the storm.
“Come on, let’s move,” the older woman ordered, clearly in charge.
The two women carefully descended the rock jetty’s slippery surface to the beach below it. Lenny and his partner struggled to carry a red plastic stretcher down after them as the wind tried relentlessly to rip it from their grip.
Lenny had a bad feeling about the storm and its victim.
*
The Coast Guard boat pushed up onto the beach with a roar of power from its twin Honda outboards and the crunch of sand beneath its hull. The two crewmen quickly hoisted the big, limp body up, over the rail and down into the EMT’s waiting arms. “Still got a pulse, real weak though!” one crewman yelled over the wind.
“How long was he in the water?” the lead EMT asked.
“Don’t know, we got a mayday at nineteen forty,” the second guard replied, soaked and shivering. “We found him at about twenty twenty-five, off Execution Lighthouse.”
“Lungs?” Becca, the younger woman, asked while laying
the fishermen out on the plastic stretcher.
“Filled, but we got it out,” the crewman’s teeth chattered as he spoke. “Good coughing at first but it slowed, breathing’s shallow.”
“Need a blanket?” Dave, Lenny’s partner, offered.
“Nah, got one, just wanted to make sure the guy was in good hands,” he replied.
“We got him,” Becca snapped, insulted for no good reason.
Real charmer.
“No pulse!” Lenny cried in a panic.
“Shit,” one Coast Guard spat.
“Starting recovery breathing,” Lenny shouted as he got to work. “Dave get the paddles ready!”
*
Roger stood up among the four crouched EMTs and looked around. His eyes were as big as the unseen moon high above the storm. “Hey, what’s going on?” he asked the tops of their heads.
Nobody answered.
Turning to the Coast Guard crewmen leaning over the boat’s railing, enthralled by the life and death struggle just beneath them, Roger asked, “What did I do? Am I in trouble or something?”
He got no answer from them either. He frowned. He was getting a really bad feeling.
Bobby felt bad for the dead man and stepped in to clear things up, “You’re dead buddy.”
“What? Huh…who are you?”
Roger was about thirty years old, most of them hard-lived by the look of him. He sported a hard round beer belly, a patchy beard, thinning hair and a medley of mismatched tattoos on his forearms. He looked nothing, more or less, than an average loser but Bobby knew from his time in Hell that looks could be very deceiving. Serial killers and human traffickers, drug dealers and pedophiles, didn’t have a look or a uniform. The dead man might look like an average dude but it was what he looked like on the inside that mattered. People with the darkest secrets usually wore the best disguises.
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