by David Risen
Rider gave her a tired look. “Mind sharing? I’m sure they’ll send some of that my way.”
She developed a shocked look as if Rider suggested something plausible that she hadn’t considered. “And I’ll be with you all the way.”
Rider ran his left hand over his bristly buzz cut and looked out the passenger’s window.
“That’s not good enough. They’ll probably try to separate us like last time.”
She nodded. “Virtue. Any man or woman with virtue can command angels or demons and make them leave forever.”
Rider laughed. “Well, I’m fucked.”
She shook her head. “You have virtue.”
Rider looked out the passenger’s side window at the scenery rolling by the window. “Yeah, if kicking ass and taking names is a virtue.”
“What about loyalty, empathy, honesty, and self-sacrifice?”
Rider looked at the side of her face and furled his brow.
“Did you mean what you said last night?”
She tilted her head and made a tired face. Rider felt a sinking feeling in his gut.
This was the same thing all over again. A woman practically gnawing her arm off to get away from him.
“You know we’re doomed before we ever began.”
Rider looked back out the window to hide his face.
“So?”
His words hung in the air for an indeterminate amount of time, and the longer the elapsed time between his assertion and her response the darker the despair growing in the pit of his stomach became.
“If the girl inside Skitts Mountain, Tennessee is who the sisters seem to think, she’s the thing itself. And by all accounts, there is a Conciliator Patron and an Abysmal Matron.”
Rider bunched his lips and looked down at his lap.
“But as far as moments go, last night was one of my favorites.”
Once again, a long, heavy pause filled the air inside the dingy Pathfinder. Rider didn’t look at her. He was afraid of what expression he might find on her face, and he was tired of picking axes out of his heart.
Then he felt the soft warmth of her hand on top of his. He eyed it for a moment, surprised to find it there, and then he craned his head up and gaped at the side of her face to find a faint smile on her lips.
“I meant all of it,” she replied, but her words felt hollow.
Her answer hung in the air as she flipped on the blinker and guided the Pathfinder off the Interstate and toward a Bennigan’s.
Amelia – her head hovering over a Kilkenny’s Country Chicken Salad – watched with thinly veiled disdain as Rider scarfed down one and a half Barbeque Bacon Burgers.
“Do you always eat like this?” she said.
Rider pushed his food to the left side of his mouth causing his left cheek to look as though it had a tumor.
“This might be my last meal,” he said through a mouthful.
She frowned.
“This is shameless.”
Rider held a finger up, chewed his food a little more, swallowed, and licked his lips.
“I love my daughter, and I said goodbye. I think she’ll meet someone someday who will love her as much or more than me, and Ben Viracocha will keep her very safe until then.
“I also love Barbeque Bacon Burgers, so I’m gonna say goodbye my way.”
Amelia picked at the last few bites of her salad as Rider polished off the last third of his burger and sucked the catsup off his thumbs.
“Are you finished?” she said.
He gave her an irritated look. “I guess.”
She nodded. “We shouldn’t stay long. I’ll go pay.”
Rider nodded. “Let me swing by the restroom.”
She stood and started for the register.
Amelia feels exposed.
A feeling of impending doom descended in her chest the moment they pulled into the parking lot, and her sense of urgency grows by the second.
Her eyes dance from rearview mirror to rearview mirror, to the clock, and to the front door, and she finds herself wondering what precisely Rider was doing inside the Bennigan’s restroom that is taking him more than fifteen minutes.
But her reason to panic isn’t just fear of the sisters or another encounter with a demon.
She doesn’t want to lose the only person she allowed herself to become close to in over seventy years.
She sighs hard, sits back in the tweed driver’s seat, and closes her eyes.
That’s when all four doors on the SUV lock.
Her eyes pop open.
Lauren Fields-Rider stands at the front of her car glaring across the hood and through the cracked windshield.
Rider wasn’t going to leave his fries.
It was almost four in the afternoon, and he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and if he left it up to Amelia, he probably wouldn’t see another meal until in the morning.
When he returned from the restroom, he sat back at the booth, squirted a hefty gob of Catsup by his fries, grabbed three, dipped them, and stuffed them in his mouth.
Just as he was about to swallow his first massive helping, a short man with dark, curly hair peppered with strands of gray, a thin, patchy beard, and a dumpy table muscle wearing a black, leather jacket sat in the empty seat across from him.
Rider gave him the stink-eye.
“Can I help you?” he said through a mouthful of half-chewed food.
The man grinned back at him like an old friend.
“I just wanted to say hi,” he said.
Rider squinted. “Do I know you?”
The man laughed – an obnoxious mousey laugh.
“Of course, you do! Everyone does.”
Rider swallowed what was left of his fries and then gave the man a weary look.
“Buddy, I don’t know what you’ve been drinkin, but you should take your ‘I love you man’ somewhere else.”
“I’m Adam,” he offered.
Rider leaned closer. “We’re not payin attention, are we?”
Adam pointed at him. Rider snarled at his rude behavior. “And you’re Blake Rider.”
Rider’s eyes bulged. He looked out in the isle for someone to help him, and that’s when he realized that all the other patrons had simultaneously fallen asleep – most of them lay face-first in their food.
His mouth fell open, and he gaped dumbly at the short, pudgy man. For an instant, the man’s eyes glowed white.
Rider sprang for the isle just as Adam planted a knife in the backrest of the booth.
Rider charged toward the front of the restaurant.
Three steps away from the booth, a thick platter caught him in the right temple shattering in two on contact. Rider stumbled left.
The second platter crashed into the back of his head so hard that it took his feet out from under him.
He scrambled back to his feet.
Warm blood dripped down the right side of his face.
He bolted for the front counter.
He only managed to plant one foot when the cash register sailed through the air after him like a bullet, and bashed his face.
Both his upper incisors cracked.
Rider fell backwards, and the cash register landed hard on his chest.
Rider rolled it off him and pushed himself up again just as three steak knives stabbed him. He looked down at his chest to find the wooden handles of the steak knives poking out – one in each shoulder and one in his solar plexus.
He staggered after the front counter, and just as he reached it, a loud crack resonated through the building as both his legs broke.
He fell to the tiled floor in a heap, and he dragged himself forward with his arms.
He only made it two feet before he spent all his energy.
He rolled over and pressed his back flat against the counter.
Adam stood by the first set of booths with the same, dumb grin on his face. He turned his palms up.
“You give up, yet?”
Rider didn’t acknowledge him.
>
The engine of the Pathfinder whinnies and roars of its own volition. The air conditioning vents blow cold at first, but then smoke from the exhaust billows through the vents.
Amelia yanks the faded gray lock knob at the top of the door up and pulls the latch, but the door locks itself back.
She concentrates hard on the glass of the driver’s side door window.
The safety glass spider-webs then blows outward, but as quickly as it does, the shards suck back in toward the vehicle, fall back in place, and the cracks disappear as cleanly as if someone pressed a rewind button.
The smoke stings her eyes, and mucus drips from her nose. She squints through the smoky cabin and out the cracked windshield.
Lauren Fields-Rider grins back at her from two feet before the oxidized, black hood.
Amelia focuses her mind on the yellow Hummer.
The yellow Hummer in the parking space behind Lauren levitates, spins, and broadsides her.
Lauren falls in a heap to the asphalt.
The driver’s side front wheel of the mammoth SUV lands between her shoulder blades on her back.
Amelia yanks the lock knob up again, but as quickly as she does, it locks itself back.
The engine revs and exhaust fumes pour into the cabin from the broken, black vents in the gray dashboard.
Amelia coughs.
Through her windshield, she watches Lauren push herself up SUV and all, and then she rolls the vehicle over on its side as easily as one might roll a small couch on its back.
The fat, aging Rabbi calling himself Adam sat at a booth not far from the counter where Rider slumped – his back pressed against the hard, wooden counter upon which the cash register once sat.
Rider felt hot acid burning through his belly. His legs throbbed. Blood poured from his mouth and down the right side of his head.
Adam didn’t notice. He was too preoccupied with his vocal enjoyment of someone’s hamburger. The same stupid grin still curved his bearded face.
Not that it mattered.
Rider was done.
Adam pointed his dark beady eyes at him.
“Don’t die before I finish this, please,” Adam said through a full mouth.
“Fuck you,” Rider snapped.
He intended the statement to be hateful, but it came out listless and tired.
He smiled broadly. “Say what you will, but one of the things I miss the most about mortality is food. My wife, Eve....”
Adam shook his head with awe. “She was the absolute best cook, but she wasn’t even close to this.”
Adam took another bite of his burger, and then grinned through a full mouth back at Rider. He chewed for a minute, swallowed and then winked at Rider.
“What do you think you’ll miss about mortality when you’re gone?”
Rider released a shuddering, frustrated sigh, and blood gurgled up his throat as he did.
But the images of his favorite moments came to his mind just the same.
The warmth of Aurora’s body beside him as both fell asleep watching SpongeBob SquarePants on the couch.
Looking down on her as she lay on her back in her bed of pink polka dots awaiting his answers to her oddly adult philosophical questions.
Lauren’s full lips pressed against his own in a slow, gentle embrace.
The crispness of the air in the fall.
The sweetness and greenery of the spring.
“Seriously,” Adam intruded. “The meat is plump and juicy – full of flavor. It bursts in your mouth. The best part about it is that it comes in neat packages already ground up. Most people don’t even give a second thought to where it came from. For all they know, it grows on trees.”
Rider sighed again. Adam’s incessant prattle was as bad as the screaming pain.
“Just shut the fuck up.”
Adam bunched his lips and nodded – still with the mischievous glint in his eyes.
“You’ve ruffled a lot of feathers in the Spirit World. Your friend made it so that my brother can’t come back to mortality, and that’s part of his job. Funny thing about it is that you two still insist that you’re not upsetting the balance.”
Rider squinted at him. “Do you really mean to tell me that some desperate chick fucked you enough times to populate the earth?”
Adam shrugged. “I’m a little avant-garde in the flesh.”
Adam pointed toward the ceiling. “Not up there, though. Up there, my name is Michael and I’m the Archangel.”
Rider cackled bitterly as if someone told him a dirty joke.
“What?” Adam said.
The grin fell off Rider’s face.
“You look like you’d have trouble wiping your own ass.”
Adam smiled, took another giant bite of his hamburger, chewed it halfway, and then looked back at Rider.
“You’re not looking very frisky, and I didn’t do all that by accident.”
“You’re a little, fucking cherub. If half of what they say about me is true, you’ll be hating life as soon as I’m out of this body.”
Adam shook his head emphatically.
“No. You know a great deal more in spirit form than you do on this side of the veil. Believe it or not, we’re friends.”
He sat his hamburger down and turned up his palms.
“I’m one of the good guys, here! Yes, all the souls in mortality are the spiritual children of The Great Spirit, or Heavenly Father, or God, or whatever you want to call him, but physically, they’re my descendants, and I remember how it felt to be a man.”
Rider shook his head slowly.
Adam shuffled his feet and licked his lips.
“If the six of you get together now and blow your little whistle, Daddy will come running. The problem with that is that the kiddos have been very naughty. It won’t be good for any of us. The best thing we can all do is just wait. If we let them sit in their iniquitous, dirty diaper long enough, they’ll realize no one is coming to save them, and they’ll snap back to grid.”
Rider cackled again.
“What now?” Adam snapped.
“You look like a fat, wet rat, and you sound like a pussy.”
Adam nodded to himself.
“That’s right. Go ahead and take your best shot, but as soon as I’ve finished my meal, I will stand, walk over there, and I’ll break your neck like a toothpick.”
Amelia throws up in her console.
Then she hunkers low to the floorboard, draws a deep breath of the cleanest air in the car, rises, and zeroes in on Lauren.
She hits her with the only thing that worked on Rider’s mother – a vivacious attack.
But the woman only stands in place regarding her with a mocking grin.
Amelia feels as though her lungs are about to explode.
She climbs over her console coughing.
Then she clambers up the back seat and summersaults into the cargo area trying to get as far away from the noxious fumes pouring from the vents as she can.
She lands hard on her back nearly stabbing herself with the tire iron that the last owner had simply tossed in the boot.
She peers at the back glass wondering what went awry.
Lauren is too strong.
Nothing works on her.
Then she remembers a weakness in the Pathfinder.
When she bought it two weeks ago, from a very polite Hispanic man, he told her everything he knew about it.
He even warned her not to mess with the back glass—that one of the plastic hinges that held it in place was broken in two and the other was cracked almost all the way through. The latch mechanism was the only thing holding it in place.
She reaches up and pushes it.
The lock releases, and the window falls sideways. The other hinge snaps, and it shatters on the asphalt.
Amelia hurls herself out and lands in the pool of safety glass pellets below.
As she collects herself, she hears Lauren’s footfalls approaching.
Amelia reaches back in
the boot area of the SUV and takes the tire iron from the cargo area.
Lauren rounds the corner.
She swings the tire iron like a slugger.
As soon as the iron touches with her face, Lauren Fields-Rider dissolves into smoke.
Amelia stares at the empty space for a long moment in a daze. The woman seemed invincible, but the moment she launched a physical attack….
That’s when she realizes that no cars populate the roads.
Not on the interstate or the access road that connects it to the Bennigan’s.
She’s sleeping.
And all of this is just a stall tactic.
Amelia lurched as she awoke in the driver’s seat.
Rider!
Adam stuffed the last bite of his hamburger in his mouth, chewed it slowly, swallowed, and looked at Rider.
Rider was still alive but failing. His breathing was shallow and labored. Dark blood stained his shirt where the wooden handles of three steak knives protruded from him – one in each shoulder and one lodged in his solar plexus.
His face looked like that of a boxer after fifteen rounds with a hearty opponent. Both eyes swelled shut, and blood streaked the right side of his face from a cut imposed by one of the platters Adam hurled at him.
His legs bent at angles never intended before him.
Adam wondered if he shouldn’t simply allow the man to expire on his own, but he decided against that almost instantly.
The spirit was suffering within the dying body, and Adam didn’t want to piss off Father Fury any more than he already had.
Adam wiped the grease and catsup off his fingers and mouth with a napkin, stood, and smiled at Rider.
“You ready to settle up?”
“Go to hell,” Rider grunted.
Adam stood grasped his belt and adjusted the sagging waistline of his charcoal slacks, and then he started across the tiled floor.
Rider gaped dumbly as Adam sauntered toward him surprised at how little emotion he felt.
Adam bent down and cupped the point of his jaw in his right hand, and placed the palm of his left hand flat against the back of his head.
Adam’s eyes darkened with intellectual intrigue.