Heaven Painted as a Free Meal

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  She nodded. “But what about that part of me?”

  “You’re still attached to your body,” Elliot said. “So no worry, you’ll return to it when you want and when needed.”

  “Well I sure don’t want,” she said, laughing.

  He held out his hand. “Then come with me.”

  A moment later they were outside their condo in the warm evening air. It was if they had just transported there.

  She could smell the freshly mowed grass and the drying sagebrush from the foothills behind their place. She had loved walks with Elliot before his death. Now she was getting to experience it again.

  At least in her imagination.

  They started off down the wide sidewalk beside the parking lot. On one side was her red Blazer in its normal spot. She was never driving that again. Her sister would like it, since it was only a year old.

  Then they turned to the left to go around one of the buildings and into the park-like grass area behind the condos. The sidewalk skirted the grass on the left and the sagebrush covering the foothills on the right. The sidewalk went all the way around the entire complex and on nice nights they used to walk it and talk about their days.

  The temperature this evening was perfect, a slight breeze to cool her a little. She was outside and still wearing her nightgown and robe and slippers. But it didn’t feel that wrong for some reason.

  After a few minutes of walking in silence, hand in hand, she finally said, “You really want me to believe this is real, don’t you?”

  “It is real,” Elliot said. “But after I died, I thought I was dreaming for a while as well.”

  “I’m not dead yet,” she said. “So this has to be a dream, right?”

  He squeezed her hand. “No, this is real. And when you die, you’ll join me like this.”

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “Ghosts,” he said. “I’m a ghost and you will be as well, but not like some scary ghost thing haunting an old mansion. Normally everyone just moves on to the next life, whatever that is. But you and I have been recruited to stick around in this world and help people.”

  She laughed. “Dream just got real silly.”

  “Let me tell you silly,” Elliot said. “I don’t know if you paid any attention or not, but on the evening of the day I died, Barry Johns just up and confessed out at the Sizzler Restaurant near the mall. Did you hear about that?”

  “I remember I thought it sort of odd,” she said, surprised at such a strange topic coming up in her dream. “And they found the women’s bodies where he said they would be. I remember reading about that as well.”

  Elliot nodded. “Here is where it gets really silly.”

  “That’s not silly enough?” Deanna asked.

  “No, listen to this,” he said. “I was thinking that I was dreaming as well, and Jewel and Tommy and K.J. were trying to convince me I was not.”

  “Who are they?” Deanna asked.

  “Three of the five members of our team we have been recruited to join,” he said. “You’ll meet them.”

  “Other ghosts?” she asked.

  “Other ghosts,” he said. “Remember the two women killed downtown last fall by that car the police were chasing?”

  She nodded.

  “They are the other two members of the team. Nancy and Belle.”

  Deanna just shook her head. They were about three quarters of the way around the complex and she could suddenly feel pain in her side and her right leg and she started to limp.

  “So you’re telling me you had something to do with Barry confessing?”

  At that moment on the sidewalk, a short man wearing a bright purple suit and red shoes and bowtie appeared. His shoes looked more like ruby slippers and they both had bows on them that matched his red bowtie. He had a fedora-like hat, also red, with a bow on it as well.

  “Elliot, we have a situation,” the man said. “Meeting at the Nugget buffet.”

  “Give me one minute, K.J.,” Elliot said.

  “Nice seeing you, Deanna,” the man in purple said, nodding. And then he vanished.

  Deanna just opened her mouth, but had nothing to say she was so shocked.

  A moment later she and Elliot were back standing over her body in their condo.

  “You need some pain meds and need to get back to bed,” Elliot said.

  “But you’re not finished with your story,” she said, feeling more exhausted by the moment. Her dying body was dragging her back. “And was that the K.J. you mentioned?”

  “We’ll have more than enough time for that,” he said. “And yes, that was K.J.”

  Elliot helped her ease down onto the couch and stretch out with her own body.

  And then Elliot was gone and she was awake in her cancer-riddled body. It had been such a strange dream. It had felt real, but yet not.

  “Could I get my pills, please?” she asked just barely loud enough for the nurse to hear, once again missing the young body that had just taken a walk around the complex.

  The nurse jumped from a chair at the dining room table and scrambled to the bathroom for the pills. And then a few minutes later Deanna had her dying body off the couch and shuffling, with the help of a walker and the nurse, back to bed.

  In her mind she said, “Elliot, what you are telling me had better not be a joke.”

  He wasn’t with her.

  And she felt the pain, both real and not having him with her, more than she wanted to admit.

  EIGHTEEN

  JEWEL WAS SITTING next to Tommy at a six-person table in the far corner of the Golden Nugget buffet when Elliot appeared.

  When Jewel had arrived the buffet smelled of prime rib and baking bread. Even though she and Tommy had just had dinner, the smells had made her hungry again. It was amazing she didn’t gain a lot of weight as a ghost.

  “How is Deanna doing?” Belle asked as Elliot took a chair next to Belle and across from K.J.

  “We went for our first walk today out of her body,” he said, smiling. “She thinks all this is part of her brain tumor and cancer causing dreams, which is as expected.”

  “Go slow,” Jewel said.

  “Very slow,” Elliot said. “And we’ll have more than enough time in three weeks after she gets out of all the pain.”

  Jewel only nodded to that. As a doctor, not being able to save someone was always the worst part of trying to help people. There was just nothing good to say about any of it. She liked how Elliot was thinking about it. Deanna wasn’t dying, she was just getting out of pain.

  “So what’s happening?” Elliot asked.

  “The gunmen,” K.J. said. “Seems that Poker Boy and his team have not yet found who was behind those gunmen.”

  “So the gunmen haven’t returned yet, have they?” Nancy asked, looking worried and sitting forward.

  “No,” K.J. said. “But they are expected in two hours. Something about the times of the ring, the power cycles, and so on. I don’t understand exactly, but it seems the gunmen appeared to try to give blood sacrifices to the ring at power high points. The next high point is in two hours.”

  “I know a little about the ancient tribes that were in this area,” Jewel said, feeling very puzzled at all this. “None of them did blood sacrifices of any type.”

  K.J. nodded. “This dates back into the time when this valley was lush and mostly marshland. This is actually coming back to haunt us from the Atlantis period. It seems a splinter group of humans lived here that thrived on the black magic from blood.”

  At that moment Laverne appeared, causing K.J. to scramble to his feet and lose his red hat.

  Laverne had on a gray power suit, had her long brown hair pulled back, and looked intense and focused.

  Everyone started to stand and Laverne indicated they should all stay seated. She pulled a chair over to the table and then put a time bubble around them. All sounds in the room stopped.

  Jewel just found Laverne amazing. She radiated power and control and yet seemed very likabl
e under the surface.

  “The splinter group were called the Blackrow,” Laverne said after K.J. got his hat back on his head and got seated again.

  Laverne went on, smiling at K.J. “The Blackrow, about forty of them, were rounded up by Atlantis authorities, charged with mass murder, and put in jail, where they all died when Atlantis submerged. Blackrow was forgotten until those men arrived around that old Blackrow power circle.”

  “So who even remembers Blackrow?” Tommy asked.

  “Anyone alive back in the last days of Atlantis,” Laverne said, frowning. “So upward of a few thousand or more.”

  Jewel felt shocked. There were that many gods and superheroes who had been around that long? Wow, just wow? She and Tommy really needed to find someone to tutor them in the history of the gods, superheroes, and Ghost of a Chance agents.

  Elliot and Nancy and Belle looked as stunned as she felt. Maybe the entire team needed a tutor in the history of things.

  “How about ghost agents?” K.J. asked.

  Laverne nodded. “A few have stayed through that long. But they work in Europe and China, if memory serves.”

  “So this is black magic?” Jewel asked.

  “All magic goes black eventually,” Laverne said. “Which is why all real magic is forbidden for anyone to use.”

  Jewel and the other ghost agents all just sat there stunned. All of them but Elliot remembered how close they had come just before Christmas fighting black magic. The world had almost ended. So black magic scared Jewel more than she wanted to think about.

  “Seems we have two problems,” Elliot said. “How to stop those men before they get started. They are not going to wait to detonate this time, since we stopped them twice.”

  Laverne nodded.

  “And secondly trying to figure out who would gain from this?” he said.

  Jewel agreed completely.

  “Poker Boy and his team,” Laverne said, “have gone after the idea that one of the longer-lived gods who have lost power over the centuries want to bring back Blackrow. They have learned, putting it bluntly, that if enough blood is spilled inside that ring at a high power moment, it just might resurrect all original Blackrow members and give them a lot of black magic power.”

  “Creating an instant magical army,” Jewel said, not liking the sounds of that at all.

  “Exactly,” Laverne said.

  “No luck on that path yet?” Tommy asked.

  “Poker Boy and his team are right now following some very promising leads,” Laverne said. “But they believe that those twelve men with bombs in them are already set and moving.”

  “And that’s where we come in,” Jewel said, finally understanding. “We need to find those men and get shields on those bombs without them even knowing they were discovered.”

  “Exactly,” Laverne said. “If whoever is doing this manages to bring back the original group of Blackrow followers, I have no idea what would happen. But I can guess we would be in for a very long and bloody war.”

  “So let’s go,” Nancy said.

  Laverne held up her hand. “One other problem. After today, the most powerful of the power points is in three evenings. Then the power points will be finished for over two hundred years.”

  Silence.

  Then Elliot said, “I wish Deanna could help us on this.”

  Laverne looked at him. “She can, as of about midnight tonight. At that point she will slip into a coma and never wake up again. Her essence will be free to leave her body and help you.”

  Elliot nodded. “Thank you.”

  “We’ll deal with that after we get this first one stopped,” Jewel said, seeing that Elliot was not focused on this problem, but on Deanna. And she didn’t blame him in the slightest.

  Again Elliot just nodded. Then he took a deep breath and Jewel could see he was back in his eyes again.

  “When we find the bombs,” Tommy said, “we’ll shout. Right?”

  Laverne nodded. “Stan and I will be monitoring and will clamp shields tight around the bombs and teleport the bombs to a safe spot. So the men with the bombs this time won’t even pass out.”

  “And the guns?” Nancy asked.

  “The security at the casino, working with our people, have set up scanning equipment to find any gun being brought onto the property,” Laverne said. “All guns have been tagged and will be teleported to another safe location about thirty minutes ahead of the power high, even if they are not part of the attacking team.”

  “So we got a lot of people to scan,” Jewel said. “And we can’t assume it will be only men this time.”

  Laverne nodded. “It could be anyone, including children. Those who follow the Blackrow do not value human life in any form.”

  Jewel did not like the sound of that. Not one bit.

  NINETEEN

  DEANNA SAT ON the edge of her bed, waiting for the nurse to bring her some pain meds. She loved this condo more than she wanted to admit, and was glad she had insisted on staying here.

  She had a large closet to the right of the bed, Elliot had a smaller walk-in closet to the left, so they had just decided that their sides of the big king bed were closest to each person’s own closet.

  The bathroom door was at the foot of the bed and the bathroom was huge and modern, with a large shower and two sinks and enough room for both of them to get ready for work at the same time.

  They had had a lot of fun in that huge shower. Now Elliot was gone and she doubted she could even stand long enough to take a short shower at this point.

  No reason to even try.

  Her time was almost up. She could feel it.

  The doctors said her last few weeks would more than likely be spent unconscious. She honestly wasn’t going to mind that as long as they kept the pain under control.

  Hospice had promised it would and every morning they had someone check in on her very early. She called it the “pulse check” to see if she still had a pulse.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she looked around the bedroom, studying every detail. The large framed pictures of skydiving covered one wall on Elliot’s side. All of them had been taken by Elliot. She loved the colors of those. Bright greens of new spring fields and reds of a sunset. She hoped those pictures found a good home.

  She had some of her family pictures on a dresser near her closet door. And a picture of some of her office co-workers. She honestly hadn’t thought much about missing her job. After Elliot’s death, she just never went back. Corporation law just went on and on. Her office managed without her, she was sure. She had good people there.

  Her grandmother’s hairbrush lay on top of her dresser. She didn’t use it often, but she loved it. More than anything.

  This condo was hers and Elliot’s place. Everything in their lives were mixed together in here.

  Neither of them had ever expected it to end.

  At that moment, the nurse came in and gave her three pills.

  Still seated on the side of the bed, Deanna took them with a small glass of water. Then she asked for her grandmother’s brush.

  The nurse got it and Deanna tried to brush her own hair, but the nurse ended up finishing for her and then put the brush back on the dresser.

  “Thank you,” Deanna said as the friendly nurse with a smile on her face helped Deanna get out of her bathrobe, lift her legs around and get into bed.

  The nurse pulled up the sheet and blanket and made sure the glass of water was where Deanna could reach it on the nightstand.

  Deanna just lay there. She felt exhausted. More than she had felt in weeks.

  She stared at the ceiling until the nurse said goodnight, then shut off the light and half-closed the bedroom door.

  Deanna closed her eyes, hoping the dream of Elliot would be there to greet her.

  But he wasn’t there.

  He was dead.

  She knew that.

  And part of her was glad he couldn’t see her like this.

  And a larger part real
ly wanted him here to hold her.

  She took a deep, shuddering breath and let herself relax.

  Then she said softly to the room, “It was fun.”

  A moment later the sleep took her.

  TWENTY

  JEWEL HAD NEVER walked through so many people in her short year of being a ghost. She tried to just let the people’s memories and feelings wash over here as she kept focused on looking for those carrying bombs.

  They couldn’t actually scan for the bombs. Tommy had suggested that. Seems the bombs were shielded as to not be picked up by regular equipment. Laverne and her people needed to know there was one of the devices present.

  But luckily, what could be seen by the ghost agents was the carriers’ blank minds and focus on moving to one spot.

  Normal people had hundreds of thoughts. Bomb carriers were like jumping into someone with a blank screen with just one sentence playing across the screen.

  Ten minutes after they started, Jewel was the first to find one. It was a woman carrying a large purse with a gun in it.

  “Got one,” Jewel shouted into the air. She went quickly inside the woman and found the small almond-sized explosive in the same place the others had been planted before.

  “Bomb is in same location in their brain,” she said.

  A moment later Stan’s voice said, “Bomb removed, gun removed.”

  As the bomb was removed, the woman staggered a moment, then looked around surprised at where she was. Jewel was still inside her and the poor woman had a thousand thoughts flood through her mind, all confused.

  The woman turned and headed for the front door of the casino at a fast march.

  So much for not alerting anyone that the bombs were being found. Clearly something in the mechanism of the bomb was part of the control of the carrier.

  K.J. found the next one, again a woman.

  Same thing happened. When the bomb was removed and the gun taken, the woman carrier seemed surprised at where she found herself and left in a hurry.

  Jewel went back inside the woman K.J. had found to see her thoughts. The woman was only confused and worried about a headache that might have caused her to be here.