The Reincarnationist Papers

by D. Eric Maikranz

  I took off the right glove and shoved it into my pocket after the key.

  “Now, asshole!” shouted the voice.

  I was three-quarters of the way down the alley when I took off running.

  4

  Yearning for the darkness once more, I turned the corner at the end of the alley and glanced over my shoulder to check the position of the police car. It was gone from the alley entrance, but a tall police officer, silhouetted by the burning warehouse, was already halfway down the alley running toward me. I missed a stride as I fished the key out of my pocket and threw it onto the roof of the building on the corner. My high-top sneakers made little noise as I ran, allowing me to hear the footfalls of the cop’s hard-soled shoes behind me. He had gained slightly when I ditched the key but was slowly falling behind as we ran down the sidewalk past closed shops and empty storefronts.

  I first heard the distant sirens when I took off running and finally saw their source as two white fire trucks raced up the street toward us. Their blaring prevented me from listening for the police cruiser or my pursuer’s steps. The cop chasing me was still falling behind but had taken his pistol out. It jerked up and down in his right hand as he ran. He tried to shout something but stopped as the sirens closed on us. The lead engine was half a block away when it swerved to the right in anticipation of a left-hand turn at the cross street in front of us.

  I took a long stride off the curb and onto the asphalt of the cross street, committing myself to beating the lead fire engine across the street. The white truck swept wide into its turn, committing itself to making the corner. The driver’s eyes widened as they met mine, and his companion pulled feverishly at the air horn cord. The blast from the horn mounted in the middle of the grille hit me squarely in the left ear, and I lengthened my stride as the heavy chrome bumper neared to within inches of my leg.

  I continued running in longer strides and looked back to see the tall cop tentatively cross the street after the second truck had passed. He saw me looking back at him and he leveled his semiautomatic pistol at me. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”

  I ran on and measured a turn into the next alley behind a stone church. A shot rang out behind me, sending a chill down my spine.

  “Stop now! Last warning!” He’d stopped running and stood still with his gun aimed at my back.

  A few more feet and I’d be in the alley. My legs seemed to move in slow motion, and each stride seemed more difficult than the last. I veered sharply to the right, into the warm, welcoming darkness of the alley.

  I felt it before I heard it, a sharp pain in the heel of my left foot, like someone had hit it with a baseball bat. The echo of the shot followed. The next stride brought my left foot forward, which collapsed as soon as my weight shifted onto it. I stuck out my arms to break my fall as I crashed into a low railing and flipped over it, falling down a flight of dark stairs to the garbage-covered landing of a basement door below street level.

  My fall was broken by a foot-deep pile of old newspapers, boxes, and other trash. The pain in my foot was blinding. I placed my right hand on my heel and felt an inch-wide gap ripped into the rubber sole at the back of my sneaker. I could barely see my hand in front of my face in the shadows of the sunken stairwell, but I could feel that it was coated in warm, slick blood, a lot of blood.

  I heard the police car stop at the end of the alley and I moved farther into the dark inside corner of the landing, pulling newspapers and other garbage up around me. I curled up under my camouflage and gnashed my teeth in silence against the pain. Car doors closed and two sets of hard-soled footsteps started down the alley.

  “You didn’t shoot him, did you?” a voice asked above me.

  “No, I shot at him. I think I missed,” answered the same voice that had shouted at me.

  “Jesus, Willard, what were you thinking? He was just running.”

  “Running from a felony crime scene, you mean.”

  “We don’t know that!”

  “I know that. If he wasn’t guilty, why was he running?”

  “Great logic, Willard, just fucking great. Say, do you still have a day job in case this cop thing doesn’t work out for you?”

  “Just help me look for some blood or something, all right.”

  “You don’t want to find this guy, at least not if he’s shot.”

  “Just help me, will ya. He ran down this alley.”

  I cradled my heel with my right hand and thought invisible thoughts as I lay curled up underneath the garbage. The alcohol was wearing off, and I began to shake with fear and shock. It was all I could do to remain motionless and control myself at the same time. I tried adjusting my foot to ease the pain, but any movement I made, no matter how slight, made it worse.

  I heard them pass over me and imagined them scouring the alley with flashlights and pistols drawn. My hands were slimy with blood.

  “He’s gone, you missed him. Let’s get the hell out of here, I’m hungry.”

  “I bet you five bucks that fire turns out to be arson,” said Willard.

  They were walking back to the car and getting closer to me again.

  “He got lucky,” continued Willard.

  “Him, lucky? Shit, if you’d have hit him, he’d have really been lucky. This is California, man, he’d have sued the department for millions. You got lucky, Willard.”

  “That’s bullshit, it’s arson. You’ll see.” They were right on top of me.

  I peered upward through a crack in the garbage and saw the bright beam of his flashlight as it darted quickly over me then disappeared. My foot throbbed in time with my racing heartbeat. I felt lightheaded and desperately craved a cigarette. I heard their voices grow more distant over the sound of my own breathing, which now came in staccato huffs, along with violent shaking. Both car doors shut, but it was five long minutes before it drove away, five minutes of more bleeding and fearful shaking.

  I poked only my head out at first, half expecting Officer Willard to be at the top of the stairs, waiting for me to give up the charade. I heard nothing but the usual sounds of the city at midnight, along with the distant sirens still at the fire. He wasn’t at the top of the stairs. I looked around the dark stairwell as I gently removed the trash from on top of me. Fourteen concrete steps led up to street level. The back wall of rough-cut limestone blocks above me stretched high into the night sky. I had landed at the back door of a church. The door next to me felt like wood. The tall windows in the back wall of the church were made of stained glass and glowed faintly with green, red, and yellow from a dim light source inside.

  I readjusted my position and grimaced as I sat on the concrete floor and leaned back against the steps. The throbbing ache in my foot was a tremor that rocked me with every heartbeat. I reached into my pocket and took out my cigarettes and lighter. The pack had been crushed when I fell, and I had to pull out five broken ones before I found one intact. I looked down at the shaking white cigarette as it flared red and noticed it was brown with blood on the ends. I left the lighter burning and looked down at my hands. They were covered in blood. Bending over slowly, I held the lighter next to my left foot. The bullet had torn through the rubber sole of the shoe and into the fleshy part of my heel. Blood dripped from the open wound onto the newspapers. I closed the lighter, closed my eyes, and leaned back again as I drew on the cigarette.

  I reclined against the stairs with my smoke and thought about what my options were. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t limp or even crawl. If I got help, I’d need to go to the hospital without a police report of when, where, and how I was shot. I’m damn sure not going to bleed to death in a city of four million from a gunshot wound to the foot, I thought as I gingerly fumbled around in the trash until I found an unbroken bottle. I grabbed it and began pounding rhythmically on the wooden door as hard as I could without bumping my foot. The solid wood absorbed most of the blows. I clenched my teeth as I put more
force into each successive blow.

  “Open up!” I shouted, stopping the blows only long enough for my words to carry. Minutes passed, and the bottle began to feel heavy in my hand as I continued to pound on the wood. The outline of the door started to blur, and my blows began to glance off irregularly as I fought to keep my bearings. I lost my balance, and the bottle slipped out of my hand, landing in the trash behind me. I slapped my empty hand against the wood several more times before turning over and resting my back against the door. I closed my eyes to control the tilting, spinning staircase. The thought wasn’t that funny, but I couldn’t keep from laughing. I thought about the scared priest huddled behind the door, about Henry watching for me at the back door of the Necropolis, and about what Officer Willard was eating just then.

  I calmed myself down and got my laughter under control just before the door opened and gave way behind me. I opened my eyes, and everything had stopped spinning except me. I put my hand back to brace myself on where I thought the floor should have been but instead vaulted down another short flight of steps to the concrete floor of the church basement. My bloody left foot banged hard against a white-painted step and then caught my full weight at the bottom.

  The bright lights inside seemed to dim the longer I screamed. When they went bright again, I was sitting on the floor bent over holding my left foot with both hands. Blood coated my hands and clothes. I had turned my foot slightly so I could see it when I felt the nudge of a cold gun barrel at the back of my head.

  I froze, my foot still held at a painful angle. I couldn’t see the gunman behind me. I was nudged again as I heard the hammer pull back. “Father?” I asked, closing my eyes tight against the pain and fear.

  “I’m not your father,” said a female voice in an accent.

  I turned my head slowly to the right until she came into view. She was Asian, perhaps as young as me, and very beautiful. Her dark almond eyes penetrated like those of a stalking feline. She wore a black silk robe with two scenes of mountain brooks embroidered in gold thread that ran down from her shoulders before joining at her waist and continuing down one side to the bottom. The robe was loose fitting, and the bottoms overlapped slightly below the waist, exposing the tan skin of her bare legs from the inside of her upper thighs out over her knees to her small feet, which were wrapped in white, cloth-laced wooden sandals. Her hair looked long, even pulled up as it was. She looked like she could have come from feudal Japan, aside from the large caliber black revolver in her small hand.

  “Start talking,” she commanded coldly.

  I obeyed and opened my mouth, but realized I hadn’t thought up anything to say.

  “Now!” she shouted, shaking the gun barrel in my face.

  “I . . . I’ve been shot,” I said meekly.

  “I can see that. Who shot you?”

  I clicked through several options in my head. “These guys drove by and shot me,” I said, looking down at her feet. I felt the dizziness coming on again.

  “I don’t believe you. I saw the police searching for you in the alley.” She took two steps back and continued. “You know what I think happened? I think you are on the run, a fugitive from justice. I think you were shot by the police and then broke in here, where you were shot and killed as a burglar. That’s what I think happened.”

  I looked back up at the gun. She had distanced herself from me and closed her left eye, lining me up in the gun sights with the right. It was the end. I knew it. So this is also what the end of a life looks like. Better than the orange noose waiting for me. It was a strange thought, yet very clean and concise. I knew she meant to kill me. I could see it in the subtle features of her small face. A dizzying rush came over me. It was a combination of this realization, alcohol, blood loss, pain, fear, adrenaline, and finally anger. My vision flashed red as I began to shout.

  “Do it. Do it! Do it! Do it, you fuckin’ bitch, you crazy, psycho bitch, kill me! Yeah, that’s it. Stand back so you don’t get any blood on you. Come on! Come on!” I screamed as I crawled toward the black muzzle.

  “Pull the trigger. Go on, pull it. I fucking dare you.” I spat the words at her. “I’ll probably just come back again anyway,” I said, running out of breath. “I’ll probably just come back again anyway.” I trailed off quietly over and over until I began to cry.

  I wept uncontrollably, like a child, not knowing or caring if or when the release might come. I looked up after several minutes. She was still there, only now the gun shook in her trembling hand, and tears ran down from the corners of her eyes. I fought unsuccessfully to stop crying and collapsed again facedown on the floor. I heard her uncock the revolver and felt her hand on my shoulder.

  She laid the gun on the floor and took my right hand in hers. She placed her hand palm down in mine exposing a postage-stamp-size black tattoo on the back of her hand between the thumb and forefinger. The tattoo captured my attention and refocused my senses. Its shape was striking and looked like three joined peaks, two above one larger one, or two crossed Egyptian flails like so:

  She turned my hand over and ran the fingers of her left hand over the blank web of skin on the back of my hand where her tattoo had been. She looked into my eyes and searched for something in them. She broke her concentration and spoke. “I’m going to call an ambulance. It’ll be okay. You’re not injured badly.”

  “No, please don’t,” I said, lifting my head. “Please stop,” I pleaded as she started to walk away. “You were right about the police shooting me. If I go to a hospital tonight, I go to jail. I can have a friend pick me up. Please, help me, just let me use your phone,” I said, smearing blood under my running nose as I wiped it.

  She stopped and turned. “I have a better idea. I’ll be right back.” She walked up a set of stairs in the back of the basement and returned with a short, elderly Hispanic man. He looked to be in his sixties or early seventies but walked proud and straight as a soldier. His thick, snow-white hair and mustache contrasted dramatically against his dark-brown skin.

  “Ayudame, Antonio,” she said to him and pointed to my right arm, which he grabbed. She grabbed my left, and together they lifted me to my knees.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We’re taking you upstairs to get you cleaned up,” she said.

  I nodded and adjusted my arms around them as they raised me onto my right foot. She was only about five and a half feet tall. Antonio stood just over five feet tall, and I had to hunch my back in order to put weight on their shoulders.

  We struggled up the stairs into a utility room, where my undersized aids rested before carrying me through an open door, into a bathroom filled with antique fixtures.

  “We’re going into the tub—mind your foot,” she cautioned before speaking at Antonio in Spanish. He stepped into the tub first and began lowering me in once I’d braced the back of my left knee on the lip of the claw foot tub. I grabbed its rolled edges and lowered myself down painlessly.

  Antonio disappeared back into the utility room.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked, being careful to speak in the plural.

  She walked over to the sink and started running hot water. “First, I’m going to clean and dress that wound of yours. I haven’t decided about what comes second,” she said, washing the blood off her hands and wetting a fresh washcloth. “Here,” she said, handing me the warm, wet rag. “Wash your face and hands, you’re a mess.”

  I cleaned myself up as best I could before the cloth became pink and useless. Antonio came back in and handed her a small pair of scissors. She walked over to me and bent over to look at my foot hanging over the edge of the bathtub. It bled and throbbed less in this elevated position. Antonio brought a chair over and placed it perfectly behind her as she sat down without looking. She placed her thumb and first two fingers on a clean part of the white toe of the sneaker and raised it gently, allowing a better view of the heel. “Does it hurt when
I move it?”

  I nodded, even though it didn’t hurt, as she had moved it so gently.

  “I’ll have to remove the shoe. I’ll be as careful as I can. Are you ready?”

  I nodded.

  She slid the bottom blade of the scissors under the first cross lace nearest the toe and deftly snipped it in two. The other seven laces went as easily as the first. She slid the bottom blade inside the canvas upper next to my ankle bone and cut through the tough cloth, down to the rubber sole.

  I kept a white-knuckle death grip on the rolled edge of the tub in anticipation of the pain that never came. She worked slowly on the shoe, being careful not to move it.

  She cut the canvas on the opposite side and placed the bloody scissors on the tile floor. “This is probably going to hurt,” she said, taking hold of the dangling rear canvas and the red-and-white toe. She pulled steadily on the rear canvas until the rubber sole bent slightly ahead of the heel and then pulled it straight off painlessly. My white sock was light red along the sole and up to the ankle. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “No,” I said defensively. I looked at her and couldn’t help but wonder who she was, what relation she had with the church, and what she was going to do after she’d finished with my foot.

  She set the shoe down, picked up the scissors, and leaned over to get an angle on the top of my sock. She cut quickly down to the top of my toes, sat upright in her chair, then peeled the entire sock off, again, painlessly.

  “Let’s get a closer look at you,” she said, pulling my foot up by the big toe. She said something in Spanish to Antonio, who took over her grip on my toe. I felt her place a thumb and forefinger on either side of the gash as she opened it gently. Gentle didn’t matter here. I cried out in shock at the slight pressure she applied. Her hand was gone before I had regained my composure.

  “Sorry about that,” she said sheepishly. “From what I can see, it looks like a clean wound. The bullet didn’t hit any bones, and I don’t think it hit any tendons.”